#94 - Loren Poncia @ Stemple Creek Ranch

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #94 - The Bay Area’s Regional Regenerative Meat Brand- (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

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

Kyle Krull - 00:00:13
Welcome to the ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for brands, retailers, investors, and other food system stakeholders to learn about the consumer brands supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined by my cohost, AC, who's gonna take us into the

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:33
episode. On this episode, we have Loren Poncia, who is a rancher and the owner at Stemple Creek Ranch. Stemple Creek is supporting regenerative agriculture with their regeneratively raised beef, lamb, pork, and chicken products mainly sold via their website directly to consumers and also available via select farmers markets, restaurants, and retailers. Stemple Creek's home ranch in Northern California stretches over more than 1,000 acres, and their overall operation manages more than 8,000 acres of land. In this episode, Loren details the family's journey from conventional dairy to regenerative beef production, why they ended up starting a brand even though he never wanted to be in the meat business, and how they've grown to a multimillion dollar regional brand over the past decade. Stemple Creek's commitment to honesty, transparency, and quality was very apparent as Loren shared the story of managing their ranch, developing their brand, and growing their business. He shared his three keys to cracking the code on premium quality and taste in grass fed beef, how their brand is approaching regenerative certification, and the challenges of maintaining a fresh meat program year round, plus so much more. Loren is an epic storyteller and full of great wisdom. We hope you enjoy this one as much as we did. What's up, everybody?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:42
Welcome back to another episode of the ReGen Brands Podcast. Very excited today to have our friend Loren from Stemple Creek Ranch joining us. So welcome, Loren.

Loren Poncia - 00:01:59
Hey. Thanks, guys. Excited to be here.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:02
We're stoked to have you here. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for the help of Avery, daughter technical support assistant. Shout out to Avery. To Avery. Well, we're here. We're recording, and we're we're excited to dig in. For our listeners who are not familiar with Stemple Creek, give us a quick, like, lay of the land. What sort of products do you produce? Where can people find Stemple Creek products today?

Loren Poncia - 00:02:23
Yeah. So we're a small family business. We're in, Northwest Marin County as the main branch. And, we do beef, lamb, pork, and a small amount of chicken. All grass fed, grass finished except for the pork and the chicken actually eat some grains out on pastures. And, most of our most of our business is, direct to consumer via, Internet, our website, farmers markets, or there's about five or six, ten local retailers and, restaurants here in the Bay Area.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:59
Super cool. Mhmm.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:00
Yeah. And I wanna say I saw something like, I was shopping on Amazon or Whole Foods, and I saw some Simple Creek jerky or something lately, Loren.

Loren Poncia - 00:03:08
So have you

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:09
guys brought in the retail footprint in in California?

Loren Poncia - 00:03:11
Yeah. We do we do sell our jerky and our beef sticks on Amazon as well. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:16
Okay. Okay. That's what I saw then. Okay. Cool. Well, man, we're excited to have you. Loren and I met two or three Expo West ago and just great energy. It's it's it's always fun hanging out with you. You know, and I think, Loren, you're doing some really cool stuff. Fourth generation ranch, we're we're working with a thousand plus acres. And we always like to tell these stories of, like, we can do this at scale. And I think you get touted a lot of somebody that's doing it well and and really the right way. And there's some cool, you know, videography and photography out there in the in Internet that proves that.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:45
So we're excited to have you tell that story from a ranching perspective, but also share with us, like, how you have grown the business and the brand over time as well. But before we unpack all that, just back this up for us. I mean, this thing's been going on for four generations. Give us the the family history, the the story of the ranch itself, and, how we got here tonight.

Loren Poncia - 00:04:10
Perfect. Yeah. So I'm actually the fourth generation, like you say. My great grandfather immigrated from Garzano, Italy 18 90 7 through Ellis Island with his intent on ending up on the ranch where we're at right now, which is pretty wild. We're We're doing this for a hundred hundred and twenty plus years. And what's crazy about it is our business now is more like his business back then than the middle generations because we have a direct to consumer, relationship. And there's been this, like, renaissance in agriculture where people wanna know where their food is coming from. And we live here in Bay Area where there's a lot of people that wanna know where that is. So, but back then, he was diversified.

Loren Poncia - 00:04:42
He had chicken, beef, poultry, milk, potatoes, all those kinds of things. And then the middle generations were mostly monotype farms where we did dairy up until 1989. And I grew up on the dairy. I loved the dairy. I never wanted to leave the ranch, hunter, fisher, gatherer, outdoorsman. I never wanted to leave the ranch, and, my parents said, hey. You need to go to college. I'm like, ah, why would I go to college? This is amazing.

Loren Poncia - 00:05:11
This is amazing here. So, anyway, I'm, kicking and screaming, went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Absolutely loved it. After the first quarter, I was like, I know why I went to college. Met some amazing amazing people around the country. And, every summer, I'd come home and I'd work on the ranch, and I thought for sure I was coming home to be a full time rancher.

Loren Poncia - 00:05:33
About my junior year, I got into the numbers, the economic numbers with my parents and realized there was not opportunity for me to come home and be a rancher. So this is the craziest part of the story, and I'm not sure if I've ever even told you guys this. So I went to work in corporate America. My friends were like, hey. You'd be great at sales. So I I started selling veterinary pharmaceuticals, and I went to work for Monsanto selling BST, the Berry Cup. Yeah.

Loren Poncia - 00:05:55
Exactly. And it was unbelievable education, the most amazing I mean, most amazing education ever. And I met some just amazing people from all over the world. I lived in Texas, Florida, Georgia, and then back to California. And when I was doing that, working for these big companies selling veterinary pharmaceuticals, I I realized it wasn't my long term goal. I needed to get back to the ranch and try and make it a real, business. So me and my wife, we're living in Sacramento.

Loren Poncia - 00:06:25
And right around my thirtieth birthday, I just turned 50, so this is twenty years ago. Yeah. I came home one day and said, hey. Lisa, we have to move back to the ranch and try and make this a real business, but we can't just we I don't ever wanna wonder what would have happened. I wanna go out and try. And if we fail, that's fine, but we have to at least try. And she said yes, thankfully.

Loren Poncia - 00:06:47
So we had a pair a meeting with my parents. We said, hey, mom and dad. We wanna come home. We wanna do this. But quite frankly, we don't wanna do it with you. We wanna buy your cattle and lease your land. And they said yes. So that started the ball rolling.

Loren Poncia - 00:06:57
We came home. We did that for three years very conventionally. Like, we'd sell whole we'd raise cattle. We'd sell the whole load of cattle. Once a year. We'd be a price taker, get whatever we could get.

Loren Poncia - 00:07:14
And we realized that was not very good financially for us, and we weren't going to be able to stay in business if we kept doing that. Around the same time, I read the book, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and I was like, this is amazing. You know, we live right here in the Bay Area. I need to actually, you know, create a brand and sell food to the Bay Area. So we started doing that. We had more and more people, asking us for, for our products. And, we came up with a five page website.

Loren Poncia - 00:07:41
And the the week that my daughter was born, it went live. We started getting orders from people we'd never met before in the Central Valley in California and LA, and we're like Wow. Wow. This is kinda cool. Why we both still had our day jobs. You know? So Yeah.

Loren Poncia - 00:08:02
Lisa and I both were still going, doing our day jobs, and we did that for about five or six years where we built the, business, and we I still traveled, still did the term different pharmaceutical, but I went and switched over to pets, and I did, you know, pet medicine. And we did that for years to the point where it was like, we had no downtime. I was like, we need to change something. So twelve or thirteen years ago, in November, I quit my day job, went all in STEMPL. And we've grown the business by about 15 times since that's happened. So it's been fun. This is my full time gig now.

Loren Poncia - 00:08:41
We raise about 2,000 beef cattle a year, about a thousand lambs, about 400 pigs, and, couple few thousand chickens through a partner. And we sell all of that. We don't have really have distributors. We do it mostly our ourselves. And, yeah, it's been awesome. It's been fun.

Kyle Krull - 00:09:06
Well, I super appreciate the story. I really want there to be, like, a a feature film on your great grandfather's journey from, like, Italy wanting to get to this one place in California, like, what that all went through and started the farm. That'd be incredible. But I I also really appreciate the omnivores. I love my portion of the story and how that helped you to pivot your business instead of going, you know, we're just gonna sell at auction to, like, hey. We wanna establish relationship with our customers. Yeah. I also wanna understand what was the trigger point, you know, moment of learning that got you into regenerative versus more conventional.

Kyle Krull - 00:09:27
So, like, what what was the learning point, and then how did you start to implement those systems on the farm?

Loren Poncia - 00:09:44
Yeah. What's real what's really interesting there about the whole regenerative regenerative portion is when we first started the business, we got the whole ranch certified organic, and we were selling And

Kyle Krull - 00:09:55
this is when you and your wife took over?

Loren Poncia - 00:09:57
When me and my wife took over twenty years ago. We got the whole ranch certified organic, and we started rotational grazing. Didn't really know why or how or what we were doing, but my but my dad I knew that it was the right thing to do because we grew more grass when we did that. And so it started out as economics. It wasn't about, like, biodiversity and soil carbon and all those things. I've kind of learned those through the years that it was about, like, okay. We're gonna grow more grass if we do this. And, I'll talk a little bit more about this, but it's like a dance with mother nature, and that's kinda what we do is it's it's a dance.

Loren Poncia - 00:10:23
Every year is different. That's what makes it exciting. But my my dad was very conventional. Like, he had 20 cows in every field. And so we would all wintertime, we would drive back there, and we'd feed them hay, and then we'd drive back. You know?

Loren Poncia - 00:10:40
We'd do that, like, every day, seven days a week. And I was like, man, there has to be an easier way. So I started just putting the cattle together. My dad was already really progressive in our area in terms of creating more habitat, fencing off the creeks, taking care of the riparian areas, planting trees. And I followed in his, his leadership with that and combined that with our rotational grazing. And then, ultimately, you know, we were certified organic. We were gap four.

Loren Poncia - 00:11:04
We were selling whole loads of cattle to Panorama who was selling them to Whole Foods. And and it was it actually worked out well for us. But we realized that, you know, within a few years, that price was gonna go down, down, down, down, down, and we couldn't afford to stay in business. So we needed to sell all of that through our own brand to people that really wanted to support us directly where there was not really a middleman in the in the, picture. So, that's what kinda got regenerative was like we've been doing regenerative for, like, thirty years. We just didn't call it regenerative.

Loren Poncia - 00:11:40
You know, we've been doing this dance for thirty years, and now it's a buzzword and and it's, important really important to get more people that use do these practices. But it wasn't like we changed everything to become regenerative. We've we've we were like one of the OG regenerative, back when. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:10
Two two random questions on when you just had started, when you just first launched the website and you had some initial orders come in, Loren. Were you shipping product? Like because I'm sure the infrastructure to ship frozen meat was, like, way different, you know, ten, fifteen years ago.

Loren Poncia - 00:12:23
Yeah. Were you guys

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:23
like, did you have a delivery van? And, like, why were people buying? Were they just buying it because it was local and they knew who you were? Did you have any of these, like, regenerative or sustainable claims? Like, was it grass fed, grass finished? I'm just so curious at that very early stage, like, what the customer and fulfillment journey look like.

Loren Poncia - 00:12:39
Yeah. That's really interesting. So we and it's fun to think back on it. What we did originally was, like, I was lining this in. I do not wanna be in the meat business. I just wanna sell all of our cattle direct. Yeah. To people. You know?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:51
I've got you now, brother.

Loren Poncia - 00:12:53
Oh, I know. Yeah. So so what happened was we Real quick.

Kyle Krull - 00:12:57
What what was the aversion? Why did you not wanna be in the meat business?

Loren Poncia - 00:13:00
Because it's it's all it was all new to me. I didn't know I didn't know it. It's totally it's something that we can talk about is, like, there's so many people that wanna do this, that are ranchers that wanna do this. So I I I don't discourage them. I encourage them, but I say this is a different business. So you have to go into it with a different mindset. You need a different vision and a different mission, and you need a marketing support. You need inventory systems, and you need all of these things that are not intuitive to ranchers.

Loren Poncia - 00:13:21
They're intuitive to marketing people or salespeople or inventory people or warehouse people or systems thinkers. And so it's a whole different there are multiple businesses. Now when you look at our our family business and we and what Lisa and I have created, we have, like, 15 enterprises, and each enterprise has to manage has to be able to pay for itself or we shouldn't be doing that enterprise. So we're we're actually looking at it from the top down like it's real business. But, we first started by selling quarter beef, half beef, whole beef. So somebody would send us a check when we got, you know, check for a quarter beef. When we got four checks, we would harvest the beef.

Loren Poncia - 00:14:00
They would go pick it up at the butcher. And that's how it is. That's how it started. And then

Kyle Krull - 00:14:12
This is the origin of DTC. I love it.

Loren Poncia - 00:14:14
Yeah. And then people were saying, oh my god. That's the best beef we've ever had, or, oh my god. That's the best lamb we've ever had. And this is actually probably one of the most pivotable pivot pivot points in our business to give us brand exposure was this is not that long ago, which is crazy. It's fifteen years ago. Somebody sent us a newspaper clipping article in the Contra Costa Times. It said, local butcher shop opening in East Bay, Chez Panisse Chef. And they sent it to us because they've loved our lamb so much. And they said, you should check these guys out.

Loren Poncia - 00:14:41
So Lisa and my wife called them, and it was Aaron Ricchino who used to be a chef at Shea. And he said, yeah. I'd love to come see your ranch. They came out. We barbecued. Exact same thing we do today when chefs come over.

Loren Poncia - 00:14:54
It's just like we show them the whole thing. We give them a ranch tour, look at the cattle, cook some meat together, maybe drink a little wine, have a great time. And Yeah. And, he opened with our product. So we went from being this little podunk ranch in Tomales that nobody knew about to all of a sudden being on the shape of the menu a week later, like, three years into two years into our brand. And then other people are saying, who's this? Who's this? Temple Creek. And then the Chez Panisse community supports Alice and everything.

Loren Poncia - 00:15:24
And, you know, most of the restaurants that we work with now have some tie to a chef that worked at Chez Panisse or, you know, had that connection. So that kinda helped us get exposure really quickly, and it was it was kind of if you show up, good things happen, and that's kinda what we did. The other thing is Lisa's really smart, and she we when we said we want I wanna have a brand, we said we want it to be a nice brand, not like a janky website that like, you go and look at a lot of ranchers like us, and it's like, the website doesn't work. It's got, like, you know, different fonts and stuff. We want it to be like, wow. Like, Disneyland wow factor. Mhmm.

Loren Poncia - 00:16:03
So Lisa really worked on that to create that and to create our brand. And, like, we did all of this ourselves. And, yeah, it's just it's been fun. It's kinda crazy actually when we look back and see what how we started. I had a a younger rancher that I'm kinda mentoring right now asked me last week. Said, when you started, is this what you wanted? And I was like, hell no.

Loren Poncia - 00:16:26
When I started, I wanted to sell all the animals that we raised on our ranch just to be able to survive to do it the next year. And now it's grown and grown and grown. We we now manage we started with 400 acres. Now we manage about 8,000 acres. We are far from big in this community. Like, we're still very tiny, business.

Loren Poncia - 00:16:45
But when you look at our growth trajectory, we've grown we started with 10,000 in sales, and we just broke 10,000,000 this year. So it's been it's been good. But it's been slow and steady. Yeah. It's been steady.

Kyle Krull - 00:17:03
Incredible. I I used to buy popcorn from a very, noncomplicated Internet system like you described. Like, where you go on the site, it's like, I don't know. Someone's just stealing my credit card information, or am I buying popcorn? I'm not sure. So I love that you guys went in with, like, hey. Let's make this look legit and feel legit. I wanna circle back to some of the agronomics because you guys said you do cattle, lamb, pork, and chicken. And I wanna understand, are those all separate systems where they have their own, like, rotational grazing patterns, like just the cattle are in, you know, this acreage, just the lamb or in this acreage?

Kyle Krull - 00:17:27
Or is there, like, a specific follow along? If the cattle go first, the acreage rests, then the lamb come on, then it rests in the pork or, you know, what is that what does all of that look like?

Loren Poncia - 00:17:45
So this has all been I've been adapting and changing through the years with lots of different consultants that you probably had on the show and different, learning, just learning and learning and learning. But we used to have mama cows that would we'd have the mama cows in one group that would go around on our main ranch. And then we had the yearlings. We'd keep those calves over, and we'd have them. And then we had the sheep. They were set stocked in a certain area. And what we realized pretty quickly about maybe six, seven years ago is in order to meet, our economic goals and have a consistent product, we've leased a lot of land in other places like poor land, like hills, steep hills that you can hardly walk on and stuff.

Loren Poncia - 00:18:09
And we put the mama cows there, and we rotate them around. But it's more of a set stock, honestly, than it is an intense grazing because you can't even drive or ride a horse on some of this ground. Are they brushed and poison oak and whatever they can get? You know? They they don't get any supplemental feed at all. And then our main ranch, which is beautiful Rolling Hills, which you'll see mostly on our website probably, is super lush and green, and it's the best feed that we can grow anywhere.

Loren Poncia - 00:18:44
So we wanna put that feed through anything that's getting finished. So around home, on the main ranch, which we call the headquarters, we don't have mama cows or baby calves or any of that thing. They're all on the peripheral peripheral ranches. And then once the calves are weaned, we bring them home, and we start the rotational program. The sheep and this is all real life stuff. Right? So the sheep used to rotate more behind the cows.

Loren Poncia - 00:19:14
Now there's five fields, five pastures that the sheep rotate through, and it's because we have really bad coyote problem. And if we don't have the fields fenced correctly, the guardian dogs get out of the fence. So and the coyotes get in. So we have five fields. The cattle and the sheep go together. But there was a point in time, maybe three years ago, that the cattle and the sheep would follow each other, but they wouldn't be in the same field at the same time because our guardian dogs chase this the cattle.

Loren Poncia - 00:19:41
And we're trying to they they were stuck. Oh, get away from my sheep.

Kyle Krull - 00:19:56
And and Oh, right.

Loren Poncia - 00:19:57
You don't get you don't have the back cattle when the guardian dogs are chasing around in circles all day. So we just the sheep became its own enterprise. The cattle became its own enterprise. They do graze in the same, pastures, but it's not this intense perfect system that's like, oh, one day here, one day here, one day here. But it is the dance that we're we've been talking about is we will have certain times of the year, especially like right now. In the last three days, we've had four or five inches of rain. If we rotate big groups of cattle, we are gonna create tons of mud and do ecological harm. Not good. So we have the cattle.

Loren Poncia - 00:20:22
All the finishing cattle are on a huge pile of wood chips that's, like, probably three acres big. And we're feeding them hay and alfalfa on that pile of wood chips. But then they have, like, a 40 acre pasture that they're eating green grass too so they can come off the wood chips and do that. But at the same time, they're making compost with those wood chips because they're pooping and peeing and and eating the majority of their diet this time of year comes from the hay that we're feeding them to have a fresh product. It's a big challenge, so it's a big bottleneck for our industry is having a fresh product year round, which we do. And if I could just snap my fingers, we would not. We would harvest everything at the peak season and sell it frozen.

Loren Poncia - 00:21:09
So it's a big education piece for us and for people like you to help educate consumers and businesses that maybe frozen is not that bad.

Kyle Krull - 00:21:26
Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, I I think frozen frozen meat is great. But I also really like the real world examples that you shared. I think it's the first time somebody's mentioned the coyote problem with lamb, so that's really interesting to think about and how the level of complexity that adds. Mhmm. Throw in the dogs who then chase the cow, who then, you know, ruin the the quality of the product, the the the yield off the cattle. Right? So I super appreciate that example and the rain. The fact that you've gotta take the cattle off, you know, the pasture during the rain and have you still use utilizing that opportunity to create compost?

Kyle Krull - 00:21:49
I think that's a really, really cool solution. So appreciate the share. I don't really have any follow-up questions. I just really like running out loud.

Loren Poncia - 00:22:04
Yeah. Well, you gotta come see it. You gotta come see it with your own eyes or,

Kyle Krull - 00:22:08
Tell me in, man. We're gonna do we're gonna do a roadshow here one one of these days. Maybe take a couple of weeks to just hit all the farms.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:22:14
No. NorCal is like the hot spot. Like, we definitely have, like, a nice density we can hit in NorCal.

Loren Poncia - 00:22:19
If I can, I'll give you, like, another, like, two minute summary of, like, all the enterprises that we have on the business because I think it's really important. I think it's really important for consumers and other brands to understand that, like, it's a very marginal business agriculture, and it's very capital intense. And Lisa and I have done some really cool things. Like, we bought the ranch next door from my family's ranch in Marin County, and people like, well, how can you buy a ranch next door, you know, unless for millions of dollars unless you're rich? I'm like, well, I we bought it when we were 30 let's see. I'm maybe 35. We were not rich, and we're still not rich.

Loren Poncia - 00:22:50
But, the way that we bought it was trying to figure out how do you solve for a problem instead of just, you know, like, oh, we can't do it. Like, don't tell me how we can't do it. Tell me how we can do it. And we figured it out that we we bought this place. The owner financed it. He really wanted us to have it. He still financed it to this day.

Loren Poncia - 00:23:11
And then we took all the little buildings there on the property, and we converted them into revenue generating, things. So we have four farmstays on the ranch that's its own business and a big barn that's we call it the party barn or the event barn, and we do 15 or 20 weddings a year. And every one of those weddings and every one of those farmstays helps this brand grow because people come there like, oh, Stempel Creek. And they eat the good meat, and they breathe the fresh air, and they see all the birdlife, and they meet us, and they they just know it's, like, true authenticity, and it's 56 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. And so it's a real marketing, advantage, frankly, compared to some other brands. It's like we're right here. We get lots of media exposure because we're close to the city.

Loren Poncia - 00:23:54
We, share with it. It's a really unique spot. It just yeah. It's awesome. So that's there's those enterprises, then there's cattle, sheep, pigs, mama cows, yearlings, finishers, honey, hay, custom grazing. Like, we have all these different enterprises.

Loren Poncia - 00:24:13
Maybe only one of them makes a thousand dollars a year, but one of them might make a hundred thousand dollars a year. And when you they're all part of the story that makes it special and unique and authentic. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:35
The, the dancing metaphor is with mother nature and also with the spreadsheet and the p and l. I can do that. You know? So you're you're doing a lot of dancing.

Loren Poncia - 00:24:43
We're trying. We're trying.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:24:45
Two two two questions, Loren. One is, like, talk to us about how you've cracked the code on grass fed, grass finished, like, flavor. Is that a genetics thing? Is it a is it a management thing? Like, how have you really done that? Because these really nice restaurants in San Francisco have been a huge boon to your business, and they wouldn't do that unless the meat was really good. So we'd love to hear you speak to that. And then I do wanna double back to the seasonality and just have you unpack that for the the layman of, like, why is that a challenge? What are you talking about there? So, you know, cracking the code on, you know, grass fed, grass finished, and and that seasonality, please.

Loren Poncia - 00:25:18
So the code on grass fed, grass finished is we're still working on it, but we're doing a pretty good job. Like, we still have variability depending on the time of year. But there's three secrets to grass fed beef in my opinion. One is age at harvest, two is genetics of the animals, and three is good groceries all the time. So if you could figure out how to do that, you'll have a good product. And we've Mhmm. I've made tons of mistakes in this space.

Loren Poncia - 00:25:38
But one of the reasons why our brand is still here and has a great reputation is because we've we own 90% of the cattle or more that we harvest. And if they're not ready, we don't harvest them. We'll go to another pasture and harvest them. And we're very nomadic here in California. So, like, we have cattle over a really a 800 mile stretch between the border of Oregon border up by Alexander's who've been on this show, all the way down to Humboldt County and down here into the Bay Area up into the mountains. So as things dry up here in the summertime, those cattle migrate via a truck to you know, like the wild animals would have migrated, you know Right.

Loren Poncia - 00:26:23
Thousand years ago to the mountains. And we have this amazing pasture between Mount Shasta and Mount Lassen that they thrive on. And then when they leave there, they go straight to harvest. So we we, we just rotate the cattle around as we can. And then really come, like, November, December, those cattle are carrying the fat forward. There's they're fat ready to go, honestly.

Loren Poncia - 00:26:47
In a purple world, if we could harvest them all, that would be better for us financially. But we have retail customers that need fresh meat. So we we just keep them going, and we keep feeding them mostly dry forage. A lot of it's grown here on the ranch, or some of it's comes, you know, we buy it in the form of alfalfa or something coming from the Central Valley. And, I mean, you can't ignore that. You can't.

Loren Poncia - 00:27:18
When we start cutting corners and maybe not feeding them a little bit of alfalfa, in the summertime, our quality of product goes down. And I'm our I'm our very worst, critic because I Yeah. Want it to be good every time. And then the other thing that's really cool about this I don't know if any other grass fed guys are doing this, but we grade everything at the kill plan. So we get a report that says what the back cut is, what the rib eye area is, what the marbling is, yield grain.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:27:51
Like if it was finished with grain.

Loren Poncia - 00:27:53
Yeah. Just like it was finished with grain. But I pay a I pay a lady to come and do that, and then we can we can we know, first of all. And I I have the it's not a very sophisticated operation, but I have the head butcher put an s on the box that anything is select. And then I can take that and use it for a customer that doesn't care about quality. I'm not sending a select to shave. I'm sending the really good stuff. Right. And real realistically, we're, like, 90 plus percent choice anyway, so we probably don't need to get the data.

Loren Poncia - 00:28:18
But it's just nice to have the data and to be able to move the the less quality product around. And then that being said, I ate so, my GM or we just hired a new GM. He's awesome. We can talk about him too if you want. But, I told him I saw some of the data from a couple weeks ago, and I was like, hey. There was, like, 10 selects in this group.

Loren Poncia - 00:28:40
I wanna, like looks like we harvested them too early. I wanna taste the meat. So will you give me some of the meat? So he brought me two rib eyes that were select, and I cooked them the other night. And they were freaking delicious even though they weren't fat, marble, whatever. They were delicious. I'm like, okay. We could put our name on that, but it didn't look Yeah. As appealing as I wanted it to. But so that was interesting.

Kyle Krull - 00:29:12
I wanna circle back to the three things that you mentioned before, and it was age, genetics, and I think you said groceries. So what is your age versus the standard age? You you all give it more time, and that helps to develop the more more sorry, more robust flavor and, like, better fat profile, or what's the secret there?

Loren Poncia - 00:29:32
The secret is the older they get, the easier it is to make them choice or, choice plus or prime. And so, like So it's like finishing age. Exactly. Like, what do they do? It'd be I use the analogy of you us three here, Anthony playing football back in the day. You could eat, like, a pint of ice cream, three pizzas, and a six pack of beer and not gain any weight. Now that you're getting up in age a little bit, you're still in great shape. But, like, use me as an example because I'm a little bit I'm a little bit Bill, I'm, like, the perfect grass fed steer now. I've I got a bunch of muscle.

Loren Poncia - 00:30:04
I got a bunch of muscle and a real nice fat layer, but that didn't start coming until I was, like, in my thirties. Right? You start getting a muffin top, and it's no matter what. But it's the same with cattle. They're done growing around eighteen to twenty four months, and they start putting the fat on. So, like, in a perfect world, if I could financially do it, I'd harvest them around twenty eight months.

Loren Poncia - 00:30:22
Most of our cattle now are twenty four to twenty six months, but we get we dip down into eighteen to nineteen months on occasion depending on where the cattle were and, you know, how they've gained and those kinds of things and what our supply chain looks like. And we always go to the fattest cattle first.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:30:48
Yeah. So it's slaughter age, the genetics, which you're using mostly Angus, and then good groceries, you're talking about basically good good feed sources and

Loren Poncia - 00:30:55
you're putting them around. Yeah. Good grass, good hay, good whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the genet people a lot of times in the industry say, well, these genetics can do good on grass. You still have to have good grass for them to do good on grass. Like, you can't it's like you can't use cardboard and have the genetics show for it. That'd be good. Yeah. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:16
Yeah. It's kinda like humans. You know? It's no different than humans. Like, you can have good genetics and have a shitty diet. It's not good.

Kyle Krull - 00:31:22
Thought? You know? Like, animals need nutrition just like we do. Yeah. Crazy.

Loren Poncia - 00:31:25
Yeah. And we make everything way too difficult. Go back and think, okay, what would mother nature like, what was mother nature thing? This is not that complex. It's like we humans make it way more complex than it is. So

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:39
Seasonality. I I know I asked you a two parter. Yeah. Why is that so challenging? Like, why would it be more ideal to just slaughter harvest everything one time a year, basically?

Loren Poncia - 00:31:49
I mean, it's goes goes back to the mother nature thing. So animals get super fat in the spring and summer. And then in the wintertime, they there's not as much green, high quality forage, so they usually burn some of that fat. And then in the springtime, it goes through it goes back through again. So, that's the biggest challenge is it's very hard anywhere in America, and it's a little bit of, like, an elephant in a room. It's like, is it grass fed if it's if it's, you know, in a 20 acre pasture eating hay, or is it not grass fed? And for me, I just try not to confuse people with the fact that we're just, like, totally transparent about it. It's like, our cattle are out on out in the open all the time.

Loren Poncia - 00:32:31
They're always eating, hopefully, a living root in the ground or have access to it, but we do supplement the heck out of them in the wintertime. And it's more expensive to supplement the heck out of them in the wintertime. And if we and when we first started this business, we would rotate them, rotate them, rotate them in the wintertime, and we were actually causing compaction, causing a decrease in biodiversity, then it's almost better to sacrifice one area, let the other pastures grow. And when I use the analogy of growing of of pastures growing, I use the analogy of, like, a solar panel on the roof of your house. Like, if the solar panel's covered with leaves, it's not gonna work. And if the solar panel's out there available, it will work Right. When the when the sun.

Loren Poncia - 00:33:11
So if you eat a plant down this short or you stomp it into the ground so it's mud, you're not gonna do any photosynthesis. There's zero chance of photosynthesis. But if you eat it, so it's, you know, six inches or four inches and you keep the cattle moving or you let it rest, it's just pumping liquid carbon into the soil, feeding the microbes. And then when you come to it, it'll bounce back. When you come to graze, it'll bounce back a lot more quickly. That makes sense.

Kyle Krull - 00:33:49
Mhmm. Totally makes sense.

Loren Poncia - 00:33:50
Yep. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:33:53
Let's pivot to you know, you mentioned, like, the start of the DTC side going I think you said it was full half quarter count. What was the evolution of that and, like, waiting to collect checks to today's environment where there's, like, custom cuts, more robust DTC system online? I don't know if you guys use Shopify or any other, you know, product like that. But walk us through some of that transition, and when did retail start to become a factor for your business?

Loren Poncia - 00:34:15
It's actually really funny because it's like you always begin with the end in mind, and this we did not begin with this end in mind. And it's not ending now. It's getting more complex. But, Yeah. So we started quarter halves of holes, and then the local Marin Farmer's Market, the, Sunday San Rafael Farmer's Market asked us to be part of the market. And I was like, oh, no. I'm not doing Farmer's Market. I'm never gonna do that. But it's a very coveted spot.

Loren Poncia - 00:34:41
It's, like, hard to do it hard to get into that farmer's market. And, like Mhmm. Somehow, I caved, said, okay. We'll do it. So we that was our first USDA beef that we got harvested, and they cut it, and we brought it to the market. And we sold it as USDA packaged meat. And then that market gets lots of exposure. So there was a chef from Zuni Cafe.

Loren Poncia - 00:35:01
It's, like, one of San Francisco's elite restaurants that's been around forever. And they came to the market. You guys will get a kick out of this. Came up and said, hey. Yeah. My name is Ken. I'm with Zuni Cafe. You know, we'd love to work with you someday.

Loren Poncia - 00:35:18
I'm like, I came home and I showed my wife the card. I'm like, who the hell is this? Zuni Cafe? Like, whatever. I didn't have my clue. I didn't have my clue. And she's like, oh, that's like a really good restaurant. And, long story short, we ended up getting in there.

Loren Poncia - 00:35:30
And so then we've got half a beef half a beef for, the farmer's market. And no. We've got a whole beef a week, and we'd take whatever they didn't take to the farmer's market. And you were asking about how we distribute it. Like, I would throw a cold box of meat in the back of my pickup, drive to San Francisco, dump it off at Zuni Cafe, and drive home. And then we're like, for one delivery. You know? And we're like, okay. This is not sustainable. We need to get a delivery van.

Loren Poncia - 00:35:58
So then we got a delivery van, a a cooler Yeah. Delivery van, and then we got another one. And now we still try and use other people's wheels as much as possible, but we have a box van that holds six pallets, and we have another van, like, that holds three pallets. And that's pretty much our distribution. And then we have we do pallets now. I didn't really answer your question, but now we go weekly.

Loren Poncia - 00:36:22
We take a whole load of cattle in a big truck to a harvesting facility in Merced. They go in on a Thursday night. Friday morning, they're harvested. Monday morning, they're cut into boxes. Wednesday morning, the all that 15 pallets is back at our warehouse, and we distribute it, you know, as boxed beef. So we've pretty much gotten away from the whole carcass business now, and we just do boxed beef.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:55
And Is that because boxed beef is higher margin now?

Loren Poncia - 00:36:58
It's not necessarily higher margin, but it's way more easy. It's way more consistent. It's way easier, and the shelf life is better. Like, we can hold some of this product for sixty days before we do something with it. And, yeah, that's just better. But it's all because Loren didn't wanna be in the meat business. Right? It's like quarter half beef, it's paid for, it's gone. Full beef, it's paid for, it's gone.

Loren Poncia - 00:37:14
And we don't have to manage inventory. It's a lot it's a big problem for smaller companies like ours to even know what they have in their freezer or not have in their freezer, like, dollar wise. Yeah. Like, we have Right. Sometimes we have a million dollars worth of stuff in the freezer. It's like, if you lose a box, you know, there goes your profitability or, you know, those kinds of things. So, that's the part about it.

Loren Poncia - 00:37:36
Like, you just have to learn another business. And I really me personally love the ranching side of the business, and I love the consumer facing side and the brand building side and the education piece. But I don't like once the animal is harvested until then, I don't like all those details and, like, knowing all of that. So we just hired a GM, Connor Hackett. He's a farm kid from up in Humboldt County. I've known I've done business with his family for, like, fifteen years.

Loren Poncia - 00:38:02
Real smart guy. And he's gonna be the GM of the of the meat business, and I'm gonna be the GM of the ranching business, and we're gonna both work together. But they'll be separate businesses. And then that way, as we grow, if we grow, we can give portions of the business to our employees or raise capital to be part of the business to do new things or whatever, and I don't have to sell the ramps or any of that. You know what I mean? I don't wanna really wanna sell anything, but I want to be able to give away, parts of the business to get people excited about staying.

Loren Poncia - 00:38:37
And and we've worked really hard to create this honest, transparent, quality business. We don't wanna mess it up. And so we're we've always gone gone slow to go fast. And so that's this is a big deal for us to split the businesses in two this year. Mhmm. Yeah. So we're excited about it.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:39:04
Oh, yeah, man. I love it. It's so it's so fascinating. I I like part of me wishes we had the money to do, like, really deep dive case studies on every episode that we have because there's so many things in, like, capitalization, corporate structure, strategy, team. Like, there's all these these have been passed, pieces that are so compelling. Loren, I wanna pivot to commercial side. We're we're kinda going there. We're talking about kind of market channels and and developing the business. Regenerative, this term this term in terms of, like, using it on pack.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:39:27
You know, I've spoken around the website, and I got one of the pages pulled up. You guys have, like, on a ground beef brick pack regeneratively raised, and then it has, like, I think, an asterisk with some some copy underneath it that says, cattle get a significant portion of their food from grass grown in pastures that are specifically managed to build soil health and biodiversity in order to store more carbon in the soil. You're not certified. You're very clearly regenerative, so I don't think you need to be. But I'm curious just to hear you talk to us about, like, how do you guys think about making these claims, like, to consumers? Are you kinda insulated from playing the whole game because you don't have a ton of retail exposure and it's mostly direct to consumer and you're just telling your own story?

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:08
Like, how do you how do you think about that, and how do you see this whole, like, regenerative claims thing on on packaging?

Loren Poncia - 00:40:21
I so this is, like, just full disclosure. Like, I struggle a little bit with a lot of the certifications. We are GAP four certified. We are organic certified. We are, Autobahn burg friendly. We are we have been savory land to market in the past. We're not right now. And I'm like, why don't why am I paying people to come out here and give a stamp of approval to say this is what we do? I just wanna be first person certified. I wanna, like, know you to come and see us and to trust us.

Loren Poncia - 00:40:53
And I realize that becomes a little bit more difficult when you're going into big, more corporate type businesses. So, like, if we're going to if we're if Whole Foods was our market, we would need more of these certifications. But we like to be agile, full, transparent, authentic. And, you know, if we have to lock the catalog for two weeks, like, we wanna be able to tell our our customers, not, you know, not be like, oh, don't come today for the inspection because the cattle are locked up today. You know? Like, there's so many games played in these certifications and lack of authenticity in in some many of them that I don't really like it.

Loren Poncia - 00:41:30
It doesn't feel good to me, and I don't wanna pay somebody to give me a gold star to say what we're doing. So and, frankly, we haven't had to yet because we we've grown doing it the way that we're doing it. We haven't nobody's really said, hey. We're not gonna do business with you because you don't have this certification after they come and see what we're doing and whatever. So I don't know if I'm answering your question or skirting it, but we just wanna focus on honesty, transparency, quality on help educate people. We wanna there's so many games that are played in this space to get a label.

Loren Poncia - 00:42:12
We just figured the way that we do it is we we manage everything for soil health. That's gonna hopefully make the land more healthy, more biodiverse, and build more soil and create more life. Is like that's the whole regenerative thing to me. It's like, we wanna create more life and do this dance that's amazing. And, frankly, we haven't had to have all of the certifications. More conversations lately are are we gonna continue any certifications. We're just gonna be Stemper Creek certified.

Loren Poncia - 00:42:47
And I think if we wanted to be a national brand, like, blow it up and be in every Whole Foods Yeah. We would have to have a certification. But that's not necessarily what I want to do. I wanna be a strong regional brand that's known for quality, honesty, transparency. So

Kyle Krull - 00:43:13
I think you answered the question extremely well. Yeah. And I like the fact that you acknowledge that there's different business models and different goals, and certifications can play a a vital role if you're trying to be a national brand where it's harder to have that direct connection to the farm. But like you said, that's not your goal. And I admire the fact that you wanna be a regional player. And, you know, one of my big goals in in oh, I can't even say my goals, but I'd love to see change in The United States is more regional food systems celebrated. So, I mean, also just wanna give pause and shout out to the food scene in the Bay Area for prioritizing local and, you know, people who raise food that does, you know and not just great things for nutrition and taste and flavor, but also for the environment. So that's really, really cool. You mentioned you're Autobahn certified, and you had previously mentioned, like, you know, when people come and they see the birds.

Kyle Krull - 00:43:52
And I'm curious to get your perspective on and and AC is gonna kill me because we're going back to, like, agronomics when he's trying to go to commercial. You're fine, bro. Since you started to really implement these systems twenty eight years ago, have you noticed a legitimate, like, return of, you know, clarity of water or more biodiversity, different birds coming back to the area? Like, what have you seen change on your land since you really started to implement these principles?

Loren Poncia - 00:44:23
Yeah. I I briefly mentioned that I'm a big hunter gatherer, so I love to forage for mushrooms and and hunt for all kinds of different wildlife. And and when I was a younger child, I was around 15. My dad started fencing off the creeks and planting trees, And I was like, oh, this is not gonna be good. It's gonna flood. Who's gonna have to fix the fence? And, really, it proved me wrong. We we see, so we've we've since multiplied that to the hundredth power.

Loren Poncia - 00:44:41
We've planted more than 10,000 trees. We fenced off five miles of riparian zone. And we have 55 types of migratory birds that nest on our ramps now that didn't nest there thirty years ago. So, yes, it's working. Amazing. I see insects now that I've never seen in my life. I see birds now that I've never seen in my life.

Loren Poncia - 00:45:07
And I knew every bird back then because I had a BB gun, and I was a little boy, and I tried to shoot the prettiest girl. The prettiest the prettiest bird. Right? I was like, that's what little boys do. And now I'm like, no. No. No. Don't shoot the the pretty birds.

Loren Poncia - 00:45:20
But but back then, it was like, the prettiest bird was like a trophy. You know? So Yeah. I knew every bird we had, and I see a lots of birds now that we I never saw when I was a child. So I don't know if that answered it. But

Kyle Krull - 00:45:38
It it does. I'm so glad I asked the question. I mean, 55 different bird species coming in nest on your land. That's that's huge. That is so, so cool to hear.

Loren Poncia - 00:45:45
Mhmm. If you build it, they will come. If you build the habitat, they will come. And now I'm working on beavers. There's no beavers in our area. And we have all these beautiful trees. I want the beavers to come and dam up the creeks and make create more habitat. And half of my neighbors are like, no. Don't do that. It's It's gonna be horrible. And I'm like, we live in a drought area.

Loren Poncia - 00:46:01
I want as much water as possible. If I make a dam myself, I'll go to jail because it's environmental. You know? It's environmentally wrong. Right. But if a beaver makes a dam, it looks it's applauded. So I want beavers now.

Kyle Krull - 00:46:20
I I love that goal. It reminds me of the there's an incredible book called, I always talk about books, American Wolf.

Loren Poncia - 00:46:26
And

Kyle Krull - 00:46:27
it talks about the trophic cascade that happened when they reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone and how it quite literally all these things changed, and it changed the banks of the river because the elk were no longer overgrazing because they're being forced to migrate, brought the beavers back, then the water came, and the birds returned. And I love using nature to build dams for you to keep more water. There's also a theory a a friend of mine told me about a while ago that one of the biggest contributors to climate change that nobody talks about is the fur trade of the eighteen hundreds and the decimation of beaver populations in the American West. Because a lot of that water, to your point, was being held up by these natural dams. It's now just flowing straight through to the ocean. Yep. So love the idea of getting beaver back in that area and would love to see that accomplished. It's gonna happen. It's like It's gonna happen. They're such cool animals.

Kyle Krull - 00:47:05
Do do they have to be reintroduced, or will they come naturally? And if so, like, where would they come from?

Loren Poncia - 00:47:16
I get a sorry, Anthony. We're going down this back to nature thing again. It's fine. What I did, I did, we got a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and made 26 fake beaver dams. They're called beaver dam analogs. So So you create the habitat for the beavers in the creek. And now they have a reintroduction program where we can legally probably get some beavers reintroduced to the area. So we'll see.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:47:49
Wow.

Loren Poncia - 00:47:49
I have to get my neighbors to agree to it first before the Fish and Wildlife Service wants to play, but, I don't know. It's like my my next project that, like, if you really wanna I I dream a lot of times about what it was like five hundred years ago before the Russianians and before the Spaniards and before. You know? And I just I'm obsessed with that a little bit. It's like, I wanna try and replicate that within the fences that we have now and create this really cool ecosystem. So

Kyle Krull - 00:48:20
Man, I'm psyched. I want I want there to be beaver on your packaging. This is beef for beavers, you know, like, whatever whatever slogans we gotta come up with. You know? I think it's awesome.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:28
Just a small beaver on top of the cow.

Loren Poncia - 00:48:30
Yeah. Generation. This cow. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:34
Cool. I I do wanna ask you about working with other brands. Loren, I know you sell some product to other brands. Like, just unpack that for us. Is it just because you're selling all these prime cuts and you need somewhere to to move the trim? Are they just are they good economic opportunities? Is it a little bit all of the above? Is it something I haven't mentioned? Like, what is it like working with these other brands, and and why is it a value add to your business?

Loren Poncia - 00:48:55
Yeah. So, in the traditional meat company not right now, unfortunately, but, well, fortunately, I could say. But trim or ground beef has always been, like, the thing that people can't move. They have no problem selling steaks and, you know, rib eyes and filets and all that stuff. But when it comes to trim, it's really hard. We have an amazing demand for trim right now, and we Nice. We basically are harvesting cows just to meet our demand for trim. Wow.

Loren Poncia - 00:49:13
But we have some partners, that we some, like, wholesale partners that will sell some beef to on a monthly basis, usually smaller amounts, but at times at times, it's been bigger. One of them has been has has been on your show before, Robbie of Force of Nature. We have a relationship with them that we sell them, like, 3,000 pounds a month, which to them is a very, very small amount, but it feels good for us to be able to keep that relationship open and, working together. And I like what the company is doing. You know? It's try it's trying to, get more meat more good quality meat to a lot of different people.

Loren Poncia - 00:49:53
So it's fun to work with, people like that. There'll be a point in the future that we don't we can't afford to sell the trim because our demand's gonna be enough to use it for ourselves, but it's been a great relationship in, so far. And we're open to working with some other brands. We have those conversations weekly, really. Yeah. But there's it's so price sensitive, for most of the brands, and we'd be better off now to just, keep it and use it in our own program than to sell it to somebody else.

Loren Poncia - 00:50:23
I know you've I've I've been following your podcast for a long time, and there's been other brands that are, you know, from Uruguay or import meat from other countries. And it's just so much cheaper to do that than to raise it here that it's really a challenge for some of these big brands to be able to, to keep an affordable price by using a domestic product. So we're in a really interesting time in the in the cattle industry and the beef industry and the new, tariff situation that's gonna come down the pipe. I'm I feel like the live cattle market is about ready to burst because live cattle are the highest they've ever been in history by, like, double. And it just doesn't

Anthony Corsaro - 00:51:17
supply really down too? Like, numbers are

Loren Poncia - 00:51:18
just It just doesn't feel right. But I don't believe we have a meat shortage. I think we have a cattle shortage. I think when you bring in all the other countries importing meat, we don't have a meat shortage. Mhmm. But when you look at just The US, we do have a cattle shortage and a meat shortage. So it's it's very interesting. It's actually a hard environment for us to, navigate right now because the prices of everything are so high. We actually buy a lot of cattle from other ranchers and finish them or or partner with them and buy them on the rail.

Loren Poncia - 00:51:44
And it's extremely high for us to be able to make our margins right now or any margin.

Kyle Krull - 00:51:57
I wanna dig into this a little bit because it's a contemporary issue, and it's it's fascinating to me. And I'm curious from, like, a ground perspective. If there's, like, a 100% grass fed grass finished beef coming in from abroad imported, and they're gonna slap a 25% tariff or whatever on that. How does that price now compare with 100% grass fed, grass finished beef that is domestically raised?

Loren Poncia - 00:52:18
I I can't answer that because I don't I would have to look at the spreadsheet to tell you, but it's I know this I know this because I talk to meat brokers, and I sell stuff occasionally to different people. And I have one meat broker that offered me grass fed, grass finished, organic, gap four, already in a package that says Temple Creek Ranch from Australia for $5.50 a pound. Wow. And I was like, my trim, I can't even make trim for, like, $6 a pound is my, like, breakeven on trim to make it with the price of cattle. Like and that's from, you know, another country. Like, if I was in this for the short game, I would be all over that. Be like, okay. Yeah.

Loren Poncia - 00:52:58
Let's do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Not say anything to anybody and just make money. But I'm not we're not.

Loren Poncia - 00:53:06
We don't wanna be that in that space. And if we ever did go that space, we would be totally transparent about it and be like, look. We're partners with somebody in, you know, New Zealand or wherever else. I'm actually lobbying my wife to let's buy a ranch in New Zealand. I can live there half the year, and I can live here half the year. We could just it's not going over very well yet.

Loren Poncia - 00:53:28
But yeah, that'd be a good

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:38
one, brother.

Loren Poncia - 00:53:39
I mean,

Kyle Krull - 00:53:40
just direct flights from SFO to Auckland, you know, it's not far. You know? You you can pull that off.

Loren Poncia - 00:53:44
Exactly.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:45
Yeah. Moving the cows back and forth alive might be a challenge.

Loren Poncia - 00:53:48
No. No. No. We would just be moving. We would just be moving. We're not doing that, but, I mean, that would be one way that I would do it.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:58
Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting issue because part of me loves the accessibility of that pricing for just any consumer that wants to get a better meat product that's grass fed, grass finished. And part of me totally understands, like, our domestic producers need to be supported and can't compete with that price. Like, what? I don't know. It's a it's an interesting problem with probably no black and white solution there.

Loren Poncia - 00:54:20
I I say this all the time, Anthony, is that consumers vote with their dollars and they you know, I would rather have them eat something from Australia or New Zealand that's grassed and grass finished because they can afford it than than something from a feedlot, you know, down the road that's really a gross polluter. And I don't talk bad about you know, that's about as bad as I talk about it. I don't talk bad about the industry complex because without the industry the way it is now, there'd be a lot of hungry people, but there's better ways to do things. And that's what we're trying to do by example.

Kyle Krull - 00:54:56
Right. I mean, these these potential tariffs are really complicated, and there's a lot of impacts to a lot of businesses. But I always try to look for the silver linings. And if one of the silver linings could be, there's an increase in demand for domestically raised 100% grass grass sorry, grass fed, grass finished, regenerative raised beef, and we get to put more ruminant animals on more acreage, having a positive ecosystem benefit in The United States, that would be incredible. Right? You know, that helps to solve a lot of problems. And personally, another thing I really like about your regional food system is it makes people feel connected to that positive ecosystem benefit. And I think that's really important because people want to have a positive impact for their own environment.

Kyle Krull - 00:55:27
And not to say that they don't wanna help out anywhere else, but I think you get more buy in when people know that, like, hey. I'm increasing the water holding capacity and fire resistance in my own neighborhood, in my own geography. So I think there like like I said, could be some potential benefits from these sorts of tariffs coming in in this particular sector.

Loren Poncia - 00:55:50
We're gonna make it. Like, we're resilient. Agriculture resilient. Yeah. Agriculturalist resilient. Just give us the rules, and we'll figure it out, and we'll make it. But, I mean, I'm excited about some of the new things, and I'm very concerned about some of the new things. And, yeah, we'll see what happens.

Kyle Krull - 00:56:06
Loren, super appreciate all the time. Everything that we've learned, it's it's been fascinating. I wanna talk about the future. You mentioned you just, like, split the company into two pieces. It sounds like you did that for some potential, like, what what you see down the road. So talk to us about what is coming in the future for Stumpf Creek. Is it you're trying to get a help of more land? Are you trying to get more animals into the system? Are you focusing more on food service? Are you trying to have a bigger distribution system in retail?

Kyle Krull - 00:56:23
What do you have planned in the next one, three, five years?

Loren Poncia - 00:56:33
Yeah. So we hired a GM, Connor Hackett. He, he comes from a small ranch about two two hundred miles north of us. And he's his whole intent is, to create a food system that is inclusive of other producers and and, similar to what we're doing now, but to be able to, like, make this easy from harvest all the way to, production to consumption to have a really strong regional brand. So I think we're focused on the West Coast as simple, especially with our fresh meats. And, you know, there's massive opportunity for us to do a lot more than what we do. Now we get we we don't have a sales team. Like, people call us, and we decide if it works good. They if they come visit the ranch Yeah. We almost always sell them something or work together.

Loren Poncia - 00:57:20
If they ask for a price list first, we very seldom work together for very long, sometimes short term. Mhmm. So I see, we're gonna be super agile. We don't know what this, is gonna be. We don't have any outside investment in our company, so we might shrink in our top end, to focus on profitability and make it through this really challenging market and then grow. But both Lisa and I really, care about the brand. We care about the authenticity. We've worked really hard to create this really cool thing, which we think is special.

Loren Poncia - 00:57:50
And it's gonna give us more opportunity when we split it up to be able to either bring in investment to grow a certain area of the business or, potentially bring in a silent partner to do something. But the most important thing is to be able to motivate our staff through ownership. So we want to give away or have them buy through an ESOP or something, a a portion that we can you know, I'm not a young agriculturalist anymore, believe it or not. Like, everybody said, oh, you know, the next generation. Like Mhmm. I'm we need to be making plans right now for the next generation. I'm 50. You know? Like Mhmm.

Loren Poncia - 00:58:30
We can't wait until they're 50 to start. Like, the 20 year olds like, I was a 20 year old need to start and get all excited about it. He wrote up. And so I'm excited to bring in the next group of people. I'm excited to potentially down the road take some chips off the table, and pass the torch so that other people can be, excited about the business and feel like it's theirs too. And then, Lisa and I went through this school called ranching for profit that, like, all all ranchers should go through. And it's Yeah.

Loren Poncia - 00:59:02
Everybody laughs about, oh, you can't ranch and make profit. But one of the things they taught us in the school and we've been working towards since then was that it's not a business unless you can leave for two or three months and it still runs. And Mhmm. So Lisa and I have on our long term goals that we wanna be luxuries to the business so that we can be there and add value and be there every single day if we want to be, but we're not required to show up for it to run. There's systems in place, and and we're getting dangerously close to that level where, the team is awesome. Oh, yeah. They love working here.

Loren Poncia - 00:59:36
You You know, we're good there's still challenges, and there's still, like, visionary type stuff that we work on. But a lot of the day to day stuff, I don't Connor does all that for me, and I do the I do the ranch, which is what I love to do. So Mhmm.

Kyle Krull - 00:59:57
Yeah. And, eventually, you know, you can do some of those big vision things from New Zealand. You know, you don't have to be. Right? Yeah. So

Loren Poncia - 01:00:05
it totally makes sense. Hey. Can't afford what you ask for. We'll see.

Kyle Krull - 01:00:09
Right. Well, I I love everything I'm hearing on this podcast for a variety of reasons. You keep talking about the mistakes that you've made, the things that you said you wouldn't do and end up doing, and that you're doing very well. Yeah. And in my brain, I'm putting you into this category that we've had a few times on the podcast, and I hope you take no offense to this, but

Loren Poncia - 01:00:26
it's almost like regenerative by accident.

Kyle Krull - 01:00:26
Yeah. You didn't intend to be a regenerative brand. You were trying to do what made the most economic sense for your farm, which happened to be implementing this is these systems to increase profitability. And I also would just wanna give a shout out to the consumers of the last twenty years, which I don't think we've really done before. But the fact that people are prioritizing eating this type of food is what allows this sort of stuff to happen. Mhmm. And it doesn't happen without the farmers wanting to do and the ranchers wanting to do it the right way and consumers. So it's sort of, like, both at the same time.

Kyle Krull - 01:00:50
But it's just an inspiring story, and I really appreciate everything you've shared and everything I've been able to learn on this episode.

Loren Poncia - 01:00:58
Cool. And the only only last thing I'd say about that is my, it's a perfect storm for us in that space because Lisa comes from no ag background, and I come from major ag background. And Lisa's fingerprints are all over the success of this company. Mhmm. And she's the one that said I'm like, oh, we're only doing seasonal. And she goes, no. We gotta do year round. Figure it out. Like, make it happen. And so I was like, okay. You know? Challenge me to make it happen.

Loren Poncia - 01:01:19
Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing year round. We wouldn't be doing half the things we're doing. But, anyway Mhmm. So it takes a good partner to be able to, Yeah. You know, be successful. So

Kyle Krull - 01:01:35
Hell, yeah. No doubt.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:01:36
Shout out Lisa.

Loren Poncia - 01:01:37
Shout out Lisa. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:01:40
Loren will take us home with our final question that we we ask everybody. How do we get ReGen Brands at 50% market share by 2050?

Loren Poncia - 01:01:50
Twenty '50. ReGen Brands have 50% market share. I think, I think the big thing is just keep educating consumers about the health benefits and the environmental health benefits and the the true cost of raising, these products because consumers are gonna drive the demand for all of these products. And then as if we could replicate kind of like what our model has been is honesty, transparency, and quality, and make it taste good and be as affordable as possible and get the consumers to want it, then, you know, I think I think we'll be there. I think we can be there before 2050.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:32
Hell, yeah. Loren, I love your optimism. Okay. Tell me I bring beavers back at the same time. This is a killer episode, man.

Loren Poncia - 01:02:38
Exactly. Don't tell me how you can't do it. Tell me how we can do it. You know, dream, like, think about how we can do it. Like, yeah, we can for sure.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:02:46
Our our final our final five were honesty, transparency, quality, tasty, and affordability. Yeah. That's that's that's what I got out of that. I love it. Oh, yeah. Nice. Loren, this has been awesome, man. Thank you so much for joining us. Kyle, I'll get us with the website. I can see him I can see him go on a search and read it off, and then, we'll we'll wrap this thing up.

Loren Poncia - 01:03:05
Okay. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:05
For anybody who wants to learn more or to buy some Stempel products, it's like temple with an s in front, stempelcreek.com. Check it out. Pick up some beef and or or lamb or pork or chicken.

Loren Poncia - 01:03:16
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:17
And thanks for the time, man. Really appreciate it.

Loren Poncia - 01:03:19
Thank you, guys. It's been fun.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:24
For transcripts, show notes, and more information on this episode, check out our website regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also check out our YouTube channel, ReGen Brands, for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to future episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, the ReGen Brands Weekly, and follow our ReGen Brands LinkedIn page to stay in the know on all the latest news, insights, and perspectives from the world of regenerative CPG. Thanks so much for tuning in to the ReGen Brands Podcast. We hope you learned something new in this episode, and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, your talent, and your dollars to help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.