#98 - Cole Mannix @ Old Salt Co-Op - Montana’s Multi-Faceted Regenerative Meat Brand

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #98 - Montana’s Multi-Faceted 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 are joined by Cole Mannix, who is the founder and president of Old Salt Co-op. Old Salt Co-op is supporting regenerative agriculture with a collection of vertically integrated businesses, bringing regeneratively raised meat to consumers. The Old Salt brand was created by a group of family ranches in Montana to provide a better food system and future for their land, their animals, and their customers. Old Salt sells meat direct to consumers online. They operate two restaurants in Helena, Montana, and they're also operating and acquiring meat processing facilities in the region. All with the goal of selling damn fine Montana meat based on one simple idea, land is kin. In this episode, Cole details why these family ranches created Old Salt in search of a better alternative to the commodity market, why their focus is to turn consumers into citizens, and how their model can eventually triple rancher margins by creating equity upside for producers.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:18
We chat with Cole about the why and how behind the complex Old Salt ecosystem of enterprises, the legendary Old Salt festival coming up in June, and why he wants to start a grain finish program plus so much more. This was a fun one, y'all. We hope you enjoy it. Let's go. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the ReGen Brands Podcast.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:49
Very excited today to have our friend, Cole Mannix, from Old Salt joining us. So welcome, Cole.

Cole Mannix - 00:02:04
Thanks for having me.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:06
Yeah. We're stoked to have you. We're not diving into details quite yet. Anthony's having a weird morning, so it's making me have a weird morning. I feel all thrown off. Gonna throw him under the bus. But, you know, for those for for our listeners who are not familiar with Old Salt, Cole, give us a quick lay of the land. What sort of products do you produce, and where where can people buy Old Salt today?

Cole Mannix - 00:02:26
Yeah. We're a meat company based out of Helena, Montana, and, they can go to oldsaltco-op.com. So we sell direct to consumer, and we have a couple of restaurants here in Helena where they can also visit us if they, are through Montana. And, you can also buy festival tickets online, for the big shindig that we hold every June.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:02:48
We we have many, people that have that have attended that are, avid fans of of the festival. So we definitely gotta get out there, and we want you to talk about it. And Cole's already getting, acquainted with how, you know, highly professional this podcast is from how we started off. But

Cole Mannix - 00:03:04
Sounds like our corporate meetings.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:06
Yeah. There you go.

Kyle Krull - 00:03:07
Great fit.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:08
You, you have one of the most interesting business models or businesses, kind of ecosystem of businesses that we've had on the show, and we've had quite a few that are very interesting. So really excited to kinda dive into that. You and I have had the the pleasure of kind of staring sharing a stage at RFSI last year, so I got to know a little bit about what y'all were doing from that. And a quote to kinda tee up maybe the origin story that really stuck out to me that you shared at that time was, you know, this is not a this is not a group of producers looking to change their practices. This is a group of producers that are regenerative, have been regenerative, and need a non commodity market. You know, they needed access to a different market. So, just to tee you up to kinda share, like, what is the background here? What sparked old soft old soft coop, from that perspective?

Cole Mannix - 00:03:56
Yeah. So my family, ranches West Of Helena where I'm based, and we've been around since late eighteen hundreds and, you know, been commodity meat producers for a long time for sheep and then beef. And the the industry has continued to get quite consolidated, over over my lifetime, especially. And we had a family brand. So we we're a cow calf operation. We raise about twelve, thirteen hundred mother cows, and we generally historically have sold sold calves or yearling. But we wanted to, diversify our markets.

Cole Mannix - 00:04:27
You know, back in the seventies and eighties, my my dad and my aunts and uncles started getting in now in Savory and holistic management and had really gone deeply down the biomimicry and using ungulates to sort of mimic using cattle to mimic native ungulates and really playing with impact and rest and grazing and and really working with groups on fisheries and working with groups on wolves and grizzly bears, of which we have a lot. But markets for what we actually sell were challenging. And so in the early two thousands, they started a brand, grass finished only, where we would hold a certain portion of what we raised back and keep them out of the commodity supply chain and start to sell to first, it was to the good food store and then direct to consumer. Yeah. And then, anyway, they built that up small but larger for our area for for local programs. And they built it up, and then during COVID, you know, it grew quite a bit when it they came to this sort of point where, as a family, we had it's gotten big enough, that local brand, that it required a lot of time and energy and expertise that we were starting to not have enough of.

Cole Mannix - 00:05:36
Mhmm. It was big enough that it was taking a lot of time away from changing water, irrigation, actually moving cattle, ranch work. Yeah. And yet we were still tiny compared to actually being able to justify meat as a business. And so we were asking as a family, do we need to you know, we we sold about 300 a year locally. Do we need to build our own processing plant?

Cole Mannix - 00:06:14
If we did, we'd need a few million bucks, a labor force, marketing expertise, and we'd have to do 3,000 instead of 300. So can we make that jump? Do we want to, or should we step back from what this has become? And meanwhile, there's a lot of other producers we knew, some of which had been involved in the same kind of local meat efforts for for, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty years by that point. And it was just a tough road. Mannix had survived, but we were small. There was another group called Yellowstone Grass Fed Beef.

Cole Mannix - 00:06:42
Good brand to hang on to given the TV show, but it it was hard. So they had kinda shut it down. It failed. It was a large Montana ranch that did a great job on the ground, but meat brands were hard. Mhmm. There's another group, one of our core members of the and the president of our board, Seeb and Lifestyle Company, they had been a part of a couple meat brands, local brands that had failed.

Cole Mannix - 00:07:04
Wow. And so, anyway, we Old Salt basically was the gen I I kind of got the initial conversations together with my own family and several ranches we worked with and said, you know, this is hard, but do you guys have the appetite to try again? Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:07:31
It's the Sofia meeting, but it's the Montana Ranch version of the of the five families meeting at the restaurant.

Cole Mannix - 00:07:38
Well, yeah, we met in a in a snowstorm, and we got in on one of the ranches. And we got snowed in an extra day, which was faithful.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:07:47
There you go.

Cole Mannix - 00:07:48
And I think we just basically, we all looked around the table and said, do you think that the current market situation will allow us to be profitable twenty years from now? We we could look around the room and be like, hey. I think each one of these ranches is better ecologically than it was twenty years ago, and it's it continues to improve. And each one is still profitable and relatively stable, And yet, this trajectory of the industry is not good, and so the status quo is riskier than any kind of innovation we might make to try to create a new market, a new brand, diversify. So let's do it. So that that was the origin story. There was three ranches at that meeting. Today, there's five.

Cole Mannix - 00:08:28
And we basically built a brand that is one LLC parent company, but it works like a coop. And so once we kinda pay investors off a certain amount, their principal with interest, now a bunch of our distributions in theory, once we have those to distribute, can be shared with the producers pro rata according to how many of the livestock we use they provided. And so the principle of the way we built the brand was that if this works, ultimately, the producers are gonna share in more of the food dollar, which is how you sustain stew stewardship in the first place. And, another part of that origin story is that we pretty much knew that it was a the wholesale world, once you start to get much scale, is is pretty tough. It's Yeah. It's complex. It's kinda risky. You build up a supply chain.

Cole Mannix - 00:09:27
A a cow, you know, takes two and a half years to finish to bring the market weight. You've got a lot tied up in that. So if you put a whole bunch in a supply chain that is a little uncertain or new, and then for some reason the price goes down or the retailer pushes back at you back against you, you know, you can be really vulnerable. So we decided, look, we wanna build a direct to consumer nucleus. We need to establish more access to processing and distribution infrastructure. And then once we can do that, then we can venture from d to c to diversify a little bit into some restaurant wholesale in our backyard.

Cole Mannix - 00:10:00
Montana has grown enough in Bozeman and Big Sky and Kalispell and Missoula that there are enough kind of restaurants and customers that are conscientious about this that we can kind of, you know, pick some low hanging fruit and mid hanging fruit and do a good job in our backyard. And then perhaps there will be an opportunity to to begin to grow. And, you know, we I've we mentioned a little bit, groups like Lineage, folks that are building big brands and looking for scaled sourcing of certain cuts. And so, eventually, we may be a a big enough kid that we can start to consider supplying things like that. And so to because because direct to consumer was sorry to to go on so long, but because direct to consumer was such a focus, we wanted to distinguish the brand in some other way than claims, labels. This is the world's best cup of coffee. You know? This is the world's greatest beef or the first ever certified this. You know? We wanted to say, look.

Cole Mannix - 00:11:02
Really, just this comes from a place of integrity in Montana. Get to know us. And we so we launched a restaurant and then another one and then a festival, and it was meant to be experiential. So you break you come into a set of values, meet from a particular place. We we are very proud of the specific stewardship practices, but there's lots of places in the world that have good stewardship practices and lots of places in the world that have good food. We just wanna highlight what this particular place has to offer.

Cole Mannix - 00:11:38
So

Kyle Krull - 00:11:42
Oh, yeah. First and foremost, no need to apologize. It's a killer origin story, well articulated, and it it lays out a lot of the complexity and the solutions that you all were looking to kind of, figure out as an organization. So that's super cool. There was one statement you made that really just kinda, like, struck home for me, and it was, you know, while the families are in the barn, snowed in, and you looked at the current food system and, like, the the outlook for the status quo was bleak or whatever exact language you used. Mhmm. I think that's obviously super relevant for the meat industry, but if you think about the way we develop all of our industrial agricultural food, it's that that's a great thing to keep in mind and why co ops like this is so important. Right? If we can get more people to try to come up with these solutions, it it's super beneficial.

Kyle Krull - 00:12:19
There's too many places we could potentially go with that origin story. I'm having a hard time figuring out where to start, but I'd love to get a better sense for, like, you, Cole, personally. Like, it sounded like your parents got into this in the eighties. Like, when did regenerative become a term that you were, you know, really familiar with, comfortable with? Did you grow up with that? Was there, like, an moment sometime in your youth or your your your young adulthood? What did that look like?

Cole Mannix - 00:12:47
I think rather than a bright line, it was a spectrum. You know, we there was a group called Holistic Management International that spun off of you know, Allan Savory was involved, the guy named Stan Parsons. And my family had gone to this school basically called Ranching for Profit that had a an arm of it that once once you went through the school, there was a thing called Executive Link. And you basically sit sit on a board with multiple businesses, like six businesses from different parts of the country who would basically just coach each other. Like, here's what we do in our little business. Here's what we do. Here's what we do. They'd give each other feedback. They'd ask each other hard questions.

Cole Mannix - 00:13:16
They'd cross pollinate. And, so I grew up going to those meetings, you know, with my parents and aunts and uncles, and then eventually all of us kids. I'm the oldest at four growing up.

Kyle Krull - 00:13:33
Are you, like, six years old? Are you 12 years old? Like, you know Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Mannix - 00:13:36
I'm I mean, I was tagging along. I was I was tagging along for for for, you know, since I was probably in diapers, but, you know, they would start once we're old enough to be interested, we could kinda sit around and and listen. And so, you know, it was it was about practices for sure. Like, what are you guys doing with grazing, or what are you doing with streams, or how are you fin finishing animals, or how are you feeding animals? What's your genetics like? But it was also business stuff. Like, hey.

Cole Mannix - 00:14:02
Are you going for a larger framed animal with heavier calves, or are you going for just more smaller an animals with more calves? Like, what is your market? You know, how are you, measuring overhead? How are you allocating overhead to various different enterprises? And then, you know, they would meet early in the morning, you know, I think maybe once every other week, and they would have a a discussion about a book or or a particular speaker. So it was a continuing ed business education. And so my, you know, my folks were just taking over the ranch from their dad, you know, from my dad's dad.

Cole Mannix - 00:14:33
And, really, it was then it was it was becoming their decisions to make in the early eighties, But they had grown up in it too, and their grandpa had grown up. My my grandpa, my dad's dad had grown up in it and, you know, back to eighteen eighties. So there was a bit of a family story of just learning gradually. You know, some of it was the holistic management international, like intensive grazing, Allen, savory thing, but plenty of it too is just learning in our backyard, working with Trout Unlimited and realizing, oh, hulls grazing on these streams is gonna be much better. And we need to make sure as we're flood irrigating fields that the fish aren't going down the ditches and winding up in the field. So let's put fish screens, you know, on these ditches so that those fish make it to the river, and these tributaries are feeders of the fishery.

Cole Mannix - 00:15:27
And, you know, meanwhile, you're realizing we had you know, really, wolves had come down from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which is our valley where we ranch directly borders the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and then north of that is Glacier Park, and north of that is Canada. So it's a fairly wild place. And even before wolves had been reintroduced in Yellowstone, they had they were present in our valley and so were grizzly bears. And that presence has increased significantly over the last twenty five years. And so there there's all kinds of adapting that needs to be done with how you're gonna use livestock on the landscape and still cohere with that wild habitat. So, anyway, Allan Savory, Holistic Management International, eventually, what became, you know, sustainability and regeneration or regenerative agriculture was just a continuum of how to talk about the same thing, which is like, Aldo Leopold says the, you know, the oldest story in human history is to live in a place without spoiling it, without spoiling your nest.

Cole Mannix - 00:16:16
And, the sort of the furthest end of that spectrum is that you actually might be able to live in a place and enhance it. Mhmm. And it's it's, first of all, a good goal to not spoil it. And then an even better goal when you can actually enhance its fertility while also enhancing enhancing its ecological function. I mean, that's the holy grail.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:05
Good wisdom there, man. I love that.

Cole Mannix - 00:17:07
Hell,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:17:07
yeah. I'm super curious, like, what what has this is we're gonna go super pop culture here, but I'm really curious what it's been like to build this while the whole Yellowstone thing has been occurring. Like, what has that been like?

Cole Mannix - 00:17:26
I've kinda had my head down during the time when that movie has come out. That's fair. I've seen a couple episodes, so I kinda get it and the characters, but I'm not I'm not steeped in it. It certainly has accelerated growth Yeah. In Montana. Right. You know, particularly the Bozeman area, and it kinda happened at the same time COVID did. And so, you know, COVID was causing people to to reevaluate risk and reevaluate their lives, and some of them wanted to move and live in a different place.

Cole Mannix - 00:17:48
And so it's definitely created a lot of changes in Montana. I think it highlights, you know, there's a particular image of the West that it has sort of magnified, and it's kind of a a pretty artificial version. And, you know, it's, you know, it sells, and it's it's, sexy and and interesting to people on TV. But I think and it's, you know, it's I can have fun and enjoy that and also know, what I'm really interested in sharing with people and, you know, the version of Montana and the version of America I wanna live in looks a lot more like, you know, Old Salt festivals, which is kind of a place where we try to say, hey. Like, this is where we really this is what Montana really is. This is what this is what we care about together. We share the land in common.

Cole Mannix - 00:18:42
You know, we share each other's health in common. Now your health has to do with my own health, and so, like, let's let's do good shit because there's so much bleak in the world. Like, let's let's let's eat better together. Let's break bread. Let's make sure there's opportunity for our kids because that doesn't look so good. Let's make sure we've got the foundation of relationships for political sanity. You know, like, let's take care of our soil and not lose it all down the river.

Cole Mannix - 00:19:08
Let's we have an interest in a stable, environment. We're destabilizing it. So, like, let's, let's go ahead and and transform a little bit and sort of evolve to accept to to accommodate and to to meet the new challenges that we face.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:19:36
What's up, y'all? Quick interruption to do two things. One, say thank you. Thank you for supporting our work. Thank you for listening to this episode. We greatly appreciate it. From Kyle, myself, and our whole team, thank you so much for your support. It it truly means the world, and it is why we do what we do. And secondly, we're asking for your support. For the first time ever in this new nonprofit structure that we've created, we are raising money via donations. So what does that mean? It means that we are asking our audience, people like you that listen to the show, that in that engage with our content, to see value in it, to support us with a donation.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:04
All these donations go to our 5013 nonprofit, which means that they're all tax deductible. And right now, we are doing a fundraising campaign where one generous donor has pledged to match all of the donations that come in in the next few weeks until we hit $50,000 total raised. This is a big opportunity for us. This is the first time we're doing this. So we're gonna celebrate with a couple cute cool things. As you can tell from this episode, this is episode 98. We got episode 100 coming up.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:36
So every single one of you that donates any amount at all will get invited to our community call that's happening here in a couple of weeks where we are gonna celebrate episode 100. We're gonna throw a big party. We're gonna have a lot of fun. We're gonna have some very special guests. So any donation, any amount, book your ticket to our community call in a couple of weeks. Our other really fun incentives are if you make a recurring monthly donation of at least $25, you'll be entered to win a epic, epic, epic 1,000 plus dollar valued giveaway of regenerative products.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:20:59
We got some awesome stuff in there from Good Sam, Roots, Tomato Bliss, Kettle and Fire, all the amazing brands that you've heard on this podcast, some epic regenerative goodness coming at you with a chance to win that. And then last but not least, if you make a 100 plus one time donation, you'll be entered into a raffle giveaway for a force of nature meets grill master box. This is a $300 value with 16 items, some amazing regeneratively raised meat in there for y'all. So if you make a one time donation of over a hundred dollars, you'll be entered for a chance to win that box as well. So, y'all, please support us if you have the means. We would greatly appreciate it. We've gotten to the first one hundred episodes pretty much all on our own.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:48
We need your help to get to the next hundred episodes. So if you do wanna support, you can go to donate.regen-brands.combackslashpodcast. That's donate.regen-brands.combackslashpodcast.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:55
We greatly appreciate you being a listener, a supporter, part of our community, and we would greatly appreciate your support. Thanks so much.

Kyle Krull - 00:22:20
I I was super intrigued by your answer to, you know, when did you hear about regenerative? And it really feels like the way you described it is it wasn't a focal point of the sort of business group that your parents and grandparents were a part of. It was just a part of the process. And I don't know if that's a specifically Montana or the area you're in thing because it's such a beautiful place you wanna try to protect it or it's just like how business works there. But that struck me as novel. Like, I don't think there's a lot of people who grew up in a system where it's like, hey. This is just how we're gonna do things, just to prioritize the land. So that was really interesting to me.

Kyle Krull - 00:22:46
Another thing I really wanna tap into, because we've never had a conversation like this before on the pod, is the relationship between ranching and wolves and that sort of ecosystem. I've read American Wolf by Nate Blakesley. I think it's a phenomenal book about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone, stone. And they talk a lot about the friction between, I guess, the natural conservationists and the ranching community. So it's like, talk to me about what that actually looks like. You know, is there a lot of pushback to do ranchers hate wolves? Do ranchers love wolves? How do you protect your herd?

Kyle Krull - 00:23:16
Share some share some knowledge there because I I know nothing.

Cole Mannix - 00:23:26
I mean, it's not monolithic monolithic. Right? Some ranchers, are very frustrated by wolves, and it has a lot to do with who's under the most pressure. Right? There's more wolf pressure in some areas than in other areas. But it's also just, one of our member ranches, JBRL. Hillary Anderson is one of the principals there, and she was a wildlife biologist. Her whole focus was on wolf restoration, and she found herself as a rancher because she was trying to protect big open habitat, keep it open, unfragmented, use ungulates to, you know, to, manage the ecosystem and keep it intact and pay for it to stay intact. And at the same time, you know, that that allows for wolf and grizzly bear habitat. And so some ranchers ranch because they want to see large carnivores thrive.

Cole Mannix - 00:24:08
Folks that happen to be ranching and happen to be under a lot of pressure from those large carnivores can can find themselves quite frustrated. So it's a spectrum. How do you, mitigate wolf impact? A lot of it is just, you know, time and energy and thought. So it's just like anything else. It's like, hey.

Cole Mannix - 00:24:28
Can we stay out of these areas where wolves are denning, in certain times of the year? That's not always easy. Can we more closely bunch our cattle together and have a more frequent check-in with them? Can we use drone technology and telemetry? Some wolves have telemetry collars on them, so you have a good sense of where they are. Can we start taking the bone piles that have, you know, traditionally existed on these ranches? During cabin season, you lose animals.

Cole Mannix - 00:24:59
All all across the year, you lose animals, and everybody's kinda got a bone pile. Well, in my backyard, we started working together to take that, bring it to one location to compost so you don't have attractants on the landscape. You know, it's you beginning to use guard dogs, and, all that takes time and money, and you really can't sell sort of the impact to the the positive impact to the wildlife. And so it can be frustrating. But on the other hand, you know, just sort of a more beautiful version of the world to live in if these large carnivores can thrive and that and we can still do okay. I'd rather that than a landscape in which my kids don't know the grizzly bear or the wolf. You know? And I I say that. I'm not a rancher.

Cole Mannix - 00:25:49
I grew up in ranching, but I live in town. And as a person who lives in town, I think a lot about, like, what is my responsibility to rural areas to feed the things that I wanna see work in the world. And so, you know, that's, that's a lot about what we're trying to communicate in our brand is, no. I don't I don't want a group of customers who just trust me. I do want them to trust me, but I want them to be they are citizens more than they are customers. Customer's only one part of who they are.

Cole Mannix - 00:26:23
They're citizens who are choosing, what am I gonna invest my food dollars in? What am I gonna invest my investment money in? Like, what is the version of the world that I wanna feed? And so, you know, I, as a customer who lives in town and does not bear the pressures of keeping an ecosystem intact, I want to feed the kind of ranching that I got to grow up in, if that makes sense.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:26:56
The the integration of place in the brand is so much more present, I guess, than, like, average. Right? Like, everyone wants to talk about where they source something from and put the picture of the farmer, rancher on the label, or whatever. But the the way y'all are integrating, it just feels feels much different to me. And, Koa, you you've you shared at a high level, but I would love for you to take us through each of the business entities and maybe the order that they were, like, kind of created in because I think that story is woven through that. And and then I'm sure throughout the conversation, we'll maybe double click on on some or all in in more detail.

Cole Mannix - 00:27:35
Yeah. So the first thing we did was we launched, Old Salt Outpost, which is a kind of a smashburger place that doesn't use any seed oils. So we render down our own fat, and we cook, you know, our potatoes in, beef tallow. And we we have a, you know, a single or a double smash burger and a sturdy salad, which you you put a patty on a on a kind of a hearty, salad. And then we had we started with a chili. But very simple, we leased a kitchen from a an existing bar, so we didn't have to own real estate. We didn't have to own an alcohol license. The bar's sales increased a bunch just because people were coming in for food that had never been in before.

Cole Mannix - 00:28:08
So their alcohol sales went up. And, you know, we we wanted to know, can we execute this? Will people like it? And they showed up, and they kept showing up. And so now it's about it's coming on its fourth. This fall, it will be four years old.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:28:31
Nice.

Cole Mannix - 00:28:32
And so we kind of have some hopes to maybe replicate that, but haven't done so just yet. It's sort of a fast casual, very simple concept, and it's been good great for a meat company because it moves between four and eight hundred pounds a week depending on the season. So this time of year, four four hundred, four hundred 50 pounds of grind a week. When you're a meat company, you need to move grind. You need a good outlet for it. And we wanted, you know, a brand, a burger joint that told a story beyond itself. So that's what the outpost was.

Cole Mannix - 00:28:53
Second thing we did was we started a festival. And Andrew Mace is our culinary director. He was employee number two. He'd come from Portland. He he grew up in Laurel, Montana, but had been a chef in Portland at places like Le Pigeon, Lazy Susan, and Steve was a wood firing a wood fired cooking nerd. So I'm like, Andrew, I've had this idea for a festival for a long time.

Cole Mannix - 00:29:23
We were gonna call it Four Fires, but everybody had heard about the Fyre Festival, that documentary of the one that went wrong. Oh, yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:29:35
Good call to disassociate yourself from that.

Cole Mannix - 00:29:39
And, you know a bunch

Kyle Krull - 00:29:40
of meat people, that'd be that'd be no good.

Cole Mannix - 00:29:45
But, you know, that Andrew made it possible because he he was like, yeah. We we can create an awesome outdoor wood fired cooking experience. And then it the music a guy named Sterling Drake, who's one of the musicians but curates the music, the the music kinda component felt possible once I knew Sterling. And and then the the general store became possible when Kate Halstead and all of her friends started being like, yeah, we've got followings. You know, we got brands that we're trying to share with the world. And then the Land Talk Lounge is a a big speaking tent that happens at the festival about food systems, conservation, nutrition. And that that started the second year of the festival, which was last year, '24. And, it just kinda keeps adding things to become this cultural experience about how do we take better care of each other?

Kyle Krull - 00:30:38
How

Cole Mannix - 00:30:38
do we take better care of the land? Oh, and by the way, land and community are the same thing. Land is a community. We're not separate from this environment. Its health is part of our health and vice versa. And so, the the third thing we did was to start a meat processing enterprise because we didn't have enough, access to custom meat processing. So we basically else

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:05
catch the sigh in the middle of meat processing? Yeah.

Cole Mannix - 00:31:12
I could've I could've actually extended that a little more for emphasis, but Sorry to cut you off, Paul. My friend, Corey Carmen, she's got a meat brand as well, a really cool one called Carmen Ranch. And she would Yeah. She told me, please, whatever you do, do not ever ever don't even think about building a meat processing facility. And, so we did. And, what we did was we bought a wild game plant that processed elk and deer, and it was very small, and it didn't have a slaughter facility. So it's just a place to age, cut, and wrap meat. We bought that. This we thought the city was gonna allow us to add a slaughter facility. They didn't.

Cole Mannix - 00:31:46
They there's a animal ordinance in town that doesn't allow anybody to hold large animals unless they're a pet store or a vet clinic. And so we we couldn't get around that. And so what we have been doing since '22 when we bought it, July of twenty two, is learning how to cut meat, learning what it costs us to do a beef or a hog or a lamb, and sending those one that we we moved through our own brand and our own restaurant to a third party for slaughter. The carcass is chilled over twenty four hours, and we go pick it up with the truck. We bring it back in quarters. We hang it up, age it, cut, wrap, and fulfill from this little tiny facility in Helena proper.

Cole Mannix - 00:32:31
And then we've spent a lot of time in the meantime trying to either build or acquire somehow a USDA facility, which I think we are only a couple months away from at this point. That would allow us to sell wholesale. Thus far, we've only been able to sell direct to consumer other than to our own two wholly owned restaurants, and that's by quirk of a bunch of strange meat processing rules. The third thing we did was oh, go ahead.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:33:05
That that basically then turned into a butcher shop and kind of, like, almost like a commissary kitchen type butcher shop that fulfills the other business needs.

Cole Mannix - 00:33:11
That's right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And it also does a little bit of custom processing. Like, we process deer for the city of Helena. Wow. Just just to keep throughput. We do a little bit of wild game processing. We do a little bit of four h processing for fares and that kind of thing. And then the next thing we did is we wanted a home base, a flagship brand where we could really host people. And so we launched the Union, which is the Wood Fired Grill and Butcher Shop. That opened last April. That was the biggest chunk we bought did off because we had to buy the building and renovate it.

Cole Mannix - 00:33:42
And it was an it's an old ninth early nineteen hundreds building. And in, January, it was nominated for a James Beard in the best new restaurant category, which is super exciting.

Kyle Krull - 00:33:56
Oh, yeah. Congrats.

Cole Mannix - 00:33:58
So it's that's been a a beast to organize, but it's also been incredibly fun. And we're just we're still learning on how to operate that thing. It's kind of a combination butcher shop. In the mornings, you can come in and get breakfast sandwiches, and it's got a a fresh case and a prepared foods case. And then, you know, it's also open for lunch and dinner with a big wood fired grill right out in the middle of it. So it's it's a pretty cool spot in Downtown Helena.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:25
Nice. You know, when when we first started talking before we record, Cole, I thought I'd come out to to Montana to go see Glacier National Park, see Yellowstone, and now I'm gonna go eat. You know? I wasn't expecting that. But, man, I am, like, mouthwateringly hungry after all these descriptions of these incredible restaurants.

Cole Mannix - 00:34:41
You can do both.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:43
I I can can and will. Can and will do both. Sounds like there's a lot going on with Old Salt. You'd mentioned you had the idea for the festival for a long time. Tell us why was that so important to you? Why did you wanna make the festival happen, and what do you see for the future of the festival? I think you said this will be year three. You know? What's what's your long term vision for this thing?

Cole Mannix - 00:35:05
Yeah. Well, a couple things about why I thought it was important. So I grew up in an area where I was the only kid in my class most of the time between kindergarten and eighth grade. I had part of the time, I had one classmate named Bill McCormick, and the rest of the time, I graduated as the only kid in my class, at the at the top of at the top of my class. So There you go. And, Nice. But when you grow up in such a a very rural place we were surrounded by towns only an hour away, like, you know, Missoula. Helena is only about an hour away. Missoula probably has 80,000 people. Helena has 45,000 people.

Cole Mannix - 00:35:38
But you're just pretty aware that you depend on the outside world for all kinds of things. Resources, talent, it's also your market. And I wanted a way to share what these rural places that are ecologically intact offer to the world, but also to share what we need from the world. You know? And so the other thing is that I am somebody who I I right out of grad school was involved with a failed meat company that tried to build a brand. Mhmm. And it got a bath in kind of the commodity meat world in The US.

Cole Mannix - 00:36:20
And I didn't want to build a brand that that used a certification as the primary means of differentiation. It's not that I'm against all certifications or anything like that. It's just once a the four massive meat companies that really dominate the industry, they all have dozens of brands. It appears to the customer as if there's a lot of diversity, a lot of options to choose from. There's really not. And it's so hard if somebody doesn't grow up in the meat industry. There's so many parts to it.

Cole Mannix - 00:36:55
There's the the calf stage and the yearling stage and the feeding finishing stage, the farming stage, the the actual packing stage, the distribution stage, the retail stage. Like, it's just so complex. And no brand and no certification can communicate that perfectly. It's quite imperfect on the shelf. So I wanted an experiential way, and I thought first, like, well, how about how about a bunch of yellow school bus tours to all these member ranches of Old Salt that happened throughout the growing season. But when you think about taking bites of twenty and forty people at a time Right.

Cole Mannix - 00:37:37
It's not that I'll never do that sort of agritourism thing, but it's a festival with a way to bring a a few thousand people to a place and have them not just see the landscape, but get to know each other and break bread. We've come together around food and fire for a long time as a species, and it's a good setting to go deeper. That's might be your you might recognize one of the band or one of the chefs or one of the artisans, and you come out there with your family. But you end up finding your next business partner. You end up finding your next project to fund or your next investor. So you asked about my vision for the future of the festival.

Cole Mannix - 00:38:15
I think of it a little bit like an outdoor RFSI or regenerate conference where I wanna see not just Old Salt thrive, but I don't want Old Salt just to to become a a big company that becomes part of the problem. I want us to stay regional and bite and manageable, and then I wanna see a thousand more Old Salts. And, of course, it's not all about Old Salt. It's like we're bringing together a pre festival gathering of investors and brands. I'm thinking of Cairns Spring Mills. They're building a mill in Pendleton.

Cole Mannix - 00:38:46
They have one in Skagit Valley in Washington. Really high quality artisan grains and flour. Range Revolution, we mentioned Kate already who's building a a regenerative leather brand. So I'm trying to use the festival as a place to just further a lot of the things we all kind of care about in common, this paradigm change. I mentioned the status quo was risky. Yeah. So I wanted to be a place where innovation is catalyzed.

Cole Mannix - 00:39:15
And that's kinda my, I guess, the vision for the future of it.

Kyle Krull - 00:39:26
What? I already wanted to go, and now it's like, man, when is this thing? Like, I I I gotta be there. I'm super pumped.

Cole Mannix - 00:39:34
Yeah. People just have to think, like, summer solstice. So it's it's always that kinda June, but that comes somewhere close to the June twenty first solstice, the three day festival where people they there's glamping, there's car camping, there's RVs, and then there's also cities about an hour away if people want a day trip and commute.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:39:56
Yeah. The dates are June 20 to the twenty second. We'll obviously drop the link in the show notes. I I feel dumb that we haven't asked this question yet, Cole. Why Old Salt? Where did the name Old Salt come from?

Cole Mannix - 00:40:08
Well, I thought it was a a good kind of neat name. I like salt. I like salt.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:40:15
I think you're right about that.

Cole Mannix - 00:40:18
I like saltiness. The company that I worked for that failed was called Salt of the Earth Ranchers Cooperative. Too much. And it was a bit of a mouthful. Yeah. And, I like the idea that people, when they organize in a certain way, can actually enhance landscapes in the same way that salt enhances the recipe. You know, salt of the earth is a little it's an idea that, hey. If we really interact as stewards rather than as owners or as customers where it's just purely about production, consumption. I like the idea that we can actually shape ourselves, our lives, our brands, our businesses, our buying habits to enhance our places rather than to extract. And I like you know, Old Salt is kind of a mariner name, but it's it's sort of describe the person who's salty and who's, maybe they like to laugh and they're they're they're they're they have and respect, but they don't they're not afraid to tell a dirty joke. Yeah. It's just a it's a certain kind of a it's a certain kind of an attitude about, the kind of people.

Cole Mannix - 00:41:28
People who are salt of the earth people, a lot of times, they talk about, they might not be fancy. They but they they'll they ask more about what can I give to my community than what can I take? What's in it for me? That's

Kyle Krull - 00:41:54
a great name. So and I'm curious to know once you have the name, you have this concept of you wanna start a brand that doesn't rely on certification. You you've seen me businesses fail. How do you then go from that concept to developing the brand and creating the messaging to to attract the right customer slash citizens that you mentioned previously? And how do you do that both from a DTC perspective and from these various, you know, brick and mortar restaurant location perspective? Sorry. That's a big question. It's a

Cole Mannix - 00:42:23
great it's a great question. It's a great big question, and it I don't know that we have the answer, but I think right now, for example, all of the ruminants that we raise never have grain. And yet I don't see that as a fundamental aspect of the brand. It's just that raising them in that way is what my family had done to build a small brand called Mannix Family Grass Finish Beef in the Missoula area. That's kinda where we came from, and that's what our customer base wanted. And by finishing them on grass, we don't have a lot of farming in the mountain valleys in which the member ranches start of Old Salt at least, started. We there's plenty of farming in Montana, but just not in the farming was not part of our core expertise.

Cole Mannix - 00:43:06
And so finishing them on grass was a way to just see all the aspects of the production system and feel like, yes. This has integrity, and we can represent it as having integrity. I do think that Old Salt, one day soon, will have a grain finish line of beef. And I think that incorporating grain, they're actually important as long as that's done in a way that's very different from the way that the industry currently does it. And that means there's one particular operation in Central Montana that I really like and will try to replicate. And, basically, what they have done is to take a historically a piece of land, let's say it's about 4,000 acres, and it had originally been a dry land wheat farm, which wasn't a good ecological fit.

Cole Mannix - 00:43:48
But this particular person bought that place, developed water and fencing, and then what he did was to aggregate commodities that were just byproducts of the grain processing that happened in the Billings area. So I'm thinking of wheat midds, feed grade barley. And he bought a vertical mixer, and he aggregated those feedstuffs. And then he essentially pulls a a wagon train of bunks on wheels behind a tractor, and these cattle have access to that grain, and they have access to pasture, and they're moving intensively in that piece of land. Wow. It's beautiful compared to ten years ago because it's taken and incorporating all these nutrients. And in the meantime, the product ends up being pretty luxurious.

Cole Mannix - 00:44:37
The holy grail is to take what he's doing and then to trace the grains back to the farms Right. So that they have the best provenance possible. And in in this particular case, that producer buys cattle out of live auctions, and so you're not sure where they came from before they were, you know, yearlings. And so I wanna basically, we know the ranches that those calves are coming from and originate from. We know the grains that are aggregated that we use for finishing, and then we control the finishing operation as well. And to me, that's a a grain finished brand that I aspire to launch.

Cole Mannix - 00:45:26
And, that excites me because I think it's a good use of resources, and it ultimately enhance enhances soil, microbial life, all the things that create nutrient density in a product. So at the moment, when people come to the Union Butcher Shop and the Wood Fired Grill and they see the case and they have it on the menu, we actually don't tell customers that it's grass finished. Wow. We don't tell them that they've never had grain. We're we only tell them about well, I mean, we when they ask, we're happy to to share. Right?

Cole Mannix - 00:45:54
It's just that we don't use it on the front side. And so we talk more about the place. We talk more about the the large carnivore integrate you know, the the large carnivores that inhabit these landscape, the migratory birds that it supports, the health of the fisheries, and the nutrient dense meat that is the result of eating phytochemically diverse diets. When we start to incorporate grain, then we're gonna have to say, okay. Well, this is grain label. That means grass only throughout its life. This is gold label.

Cole Mannix - 00:46:26
It's a combination of grass and grain throughout the life, And both are different products or different eating experience, but they both come from integrity in the production process. And I think that's just gonna be it's gonna be a gradual process of telling that story in an authentic way that doesn't try to capitalize on BS marketing that that kind of, I think, often obscures as much or more than what it reveals. You know, for example, a lot of people in the grass finished world market omega threes, higher in omega three content if they've had grass throughout their life, which is factually true. But if you take a quarter pounder of grass fed beef and a quarter pounder of grain fed beef, while the grass fed product has about three x more omega threes than the grain fed product, the daily recommended nutritional requirements for a man of omega threes is about 1.6 grams, for a woman about a gram, and a quarter pounder of grass fed has about point zero eight grams, and a quarter pounder of grain has about point zero three. So you're gonna have to eat a lot of quarter pounders of either one if you're trying to meet your omega three needs from beef.

Cole Mannix - 00:47:44
If you are trying to really supercharge your omega threes, then fish oil, spinach, etcetera, are maybe better. So I don't wanna use marketing that I don't believe in, that I don't believe is meaningful, if that makes sense.

Kyle Krull - 00:48:10
Yeah. It totally makes sense. It's factually true, but it's statistically insignificant. That's right. And I wanna circle back to this grain finish concept because I gotta admit, when you first said, I was like, why on earth would you start to do a grain finish product? And then the way you described it was so interesting and so cool and so unique, and I wanna make sure I'm understanding correctly. These are cattle that are still on pasture that have access to grain, and it's really they choose how much grain they do or do not consume while at the same time still, diversifying their diet with whatever's grown on pasture. Correct?

Cole Mannix - 00:48:43
That's right. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:48:44
So there's there's a book, book rec. Always happens.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:48
The episode, baby.

Kyle Krull - 00:48:49
It's either the Dorito effect or the end of craving. And at some point in time in this book, they talk about nut nutritional wisdom that animals have, and they do a study where they have, like, this bio, you know, nutritional guy who's, like, a cow professional, and he puts together the perfect diet to create the perfect, you know, system for a cow. And at the same time and and maybe there's, like, five to seven different foods. I don't remember exactly how many. And it it's very regimented. They have to eat a specific amount of x, y, z. And then in the other portion of the experiment, they have the same exact foods, but the cows choose what they do and do not consume.

Kyle Krull - 00:49:17
And they measured the biomarkers after the fact, and the cows who had free choice had significantly higher biomarkers across the border were healthier because they know what they need best, which is part of what is so intriguing to me about this system that you're you're gonna try to put together because that concept of nutritive wisdom is, I think, kind of flying under the radar at this point. But as we focus more on nutritional density, I think that could improve. And I would be really interested to see, like, what the nutritional density studies yield on that, you know, cal preference grain finished operation looks like.

Cole Mannix - 00:49:58
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I think, you know, the, an animal's, you know, just like ours do, an animal's nutritional needs change from stage of life. So a calf needs a little bit different balance than a teenager. A yearling needs a little bit different balance than a mother that's about to give birth or that has given birth, needs a little bit nutrition different nutrition than a a mature mother who's now, like, hasn't rebread yet for the following season. And so it's just it changes over the course of the year. Even even over the course of the growing season, you know, grasses offer something when they're first growing, and then they offer something different when they're mature and they've set seed. So, anyway, I think that the new there's a lot to that nutritional wisdom piece, and there's a lot to self selecting allowing the animal to self select and be an individual.

Kyle Krull - 00:50:51
Yeah. Totally agree. Fascinating. I wanna try this beef bad.

Cole Mannix - 00:50:56
But I think, you know, this is for me, it's what comes down to ultimately what what I think a lot of regenerative brands end up doing is to say, look. Our production is fundamentally different than this commodity status quo, and that's why you should buy from us. And and the fact that our production is fundamentally different is sort of the number one most important thing. But what I would say, and I think I might have mentioned this, Anthony, on our on our panel together, is that if you if tomorrow the food production system is a system. Like, you it everything has to sort of work together from from the very growing of the product to the distribution and ultimately the sale. If tomorrow you made every producer by fiat, just a thought experiment, into the most talented, capable, wise producer you possibly could if you could just snap your fingers. The system in which they sell into would essentially starve that out very fast because it it is designed to consolidate money at the downstream end of the supply chain

Kyle Krull - 00:52:22
Mhmm.

Cole Mannix - 00:52:22
Rather than sending that money back to feed the kind of production we want to see. And so for me, the best analogy is if you starve a landscape of water for very long, it begins to desertify, and the plants that remain are conservative and often prickly, and and they're, essentially, they're defensive. We need to turn the faucet back on to allow water to return to that landscape, which feeds life, and money feeds businesses. So what I am trying to focus on is let's do another thought of experiment and go up to the 10,000 foot level and say, okay. There's Walmart retails more food than the the seven next biggest retailers. JBS, Cargill, Tyson are huge main companies with huge market share. Sysco and US Foods are huge distributors with huge market share.

Cole Mannix - 00:53:21
If you simply if you didn't change anything else, but simply now you've got a thousand distributors and a thousand packers and thousands more retailers, That by itself distributes power in a way that allows more money to return to production. I think that alone I'm not saying we just do that by fiat. I'm just saying if you change if you could change production or you could change that by fiat, I would I would change the consolidation because it would turn the faucet back on for of money returning to these landscape and allowing for the innovation that that people who work with land and animals do naturally. I think there's far more people actually than peep than is realized doing incredible stewardship, and yet they are forced to sell into one kind of commodified system that does not feed ultimately thoughtful management of complex ecosystems, which is basically just planning, measurement, iteration based on the measurement, and then do it again. It's suffering over time. It's it's trying really hard over time and tweaking and optimizing production systems. That can't happen when you're just so exposed.

Cole Mannix - 00:54:41
You've only got one or a few buyers, and it's very hard to innovate, and you only there's just not so many places to send product. Then if you take that same thought experiment and say, not only did you not only now do you have many distributors, many processors, many brands, many retailers, but if you also give producers a share in the upside so that the producers are essentially have an ownership in the end brand. That's how producers get more of the share of the food dollar. And so while I am proud, and I think that the members of Old Salt are exemplary within their field in terms of managing livestock and grazing ecosystems. That's not what I think is the most significant thing about Old Salt. The most significant thing about Old Salt is that if we work and we get to this point where we're distributing money to producers beyond just the cost of their animal, beyond just buying their animal, we're not just gonna make a few founders and investors wealthy.

Cole Mannix - 00:55:45
What we're going to do is send money back to producers. Fundamentally, structurally, that's how our business is set up, and it's what I think makes it most different. Like, feed the things that you want to see grow. Don't feed the things with your money or your investment that you are quite sure are broken, and and will basically send resources to the wrong place, if that makes sense.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:56:32
Yeah. I I love the fact that you took us there because that was gonna kinda read to you up to touch back on the farmer equity piece because you you you mentioned it quickly earlier. And I think it's a it would be a super interesting thought exercise to just quickly have you do, like, what it looks like for a rancher to sell to Old Salt in this ideal system that maybe isn't fully finished yet that returns some of that equity back to them versus just into the commodity system they're selling a a live animal and to really, you know, back in the napkin math or some sort of example there because, you know, you basically just did the ReGen Brands manifesto, a different version of it, where we also said, hey. We can talk about changing practice until we're blue in the face, but there's this whole pathway to the consumer and back to the farmer that, like, if we also don't fix that, I don't think it really matters what's happening on the land in in the long run. Right. So, yeah, we'd love to have you maybe break down that whole break down those economics a little bit more or give an example of, like, how that would differ from status quo. Yep.

Cole Mannix - 00:57:34
To give you an example, so the the ranches that are part of the Old Salt brand, the three founding ranches there's five now. The three founding ranches manage about a 80,000 acres between them.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:57:48
Wow.

Cole Mannix - 00:57:48
And there's there's probably about 4,000 head of mother cows plus some sheep. Let's say 2,000 sheep on those three ranches. As a commodity producer, their gross margin per head I'm sorry. Their net margin per head at the end of the year And by the way, in each case, there's no debt on the land. So they're true they don't have to buy the land. They already have the land. Two of them are have been owned since the eighteen hundreds, and one of them has been more owned more recently by a person who had financial wealth, bought the land, doesn't owe anything on it. Right? So their net margin on calves sold through the conventional system in a decent year. Call it an average year. Think, like, 250 to $300.

Cole Mannix - 00:58:32
It's it's not very big. You know? Like, my family, they could sell that land next year for $50,000,000, but their annual profit might be 250 to $300,000. And so the first regenerative decision they make basically is don't sell the land. We we value being we value being, like, stewards and living this life with not a lot of cash more than we do cashing out. That is just it's not a difference in system. That's just a difference in values.

Cole Mannix - 00:59:17
What I think Old Salt can do, if it works, like like our model said it can, is within ten years, I can triple that net margin just based on sending their animals through a a regional supply chain connected regionally to customers. Part of the longer term view is that at the same time as I aggregate these producers together to sell meat, we can aggregate our monitoring of ecological services together to set ourselves better to put ourselves in a better position to sell carbon or biodiversity credits or to self insure, basically, cooperation to try to get a better position in the market and return more even beyond meat itself to these landscapes. Perhaps agritourism begins to be a revenue stream that that is involved as well. But, anyway, that I don't really want to increase these guys' margin by 10%. That doesn't make a difference. Already, the decision they're making to live this life and not just cash out is far beyond the the $50,000,000 versus $300,000 spectrum. Right? Right.

Cole Mannix - 01:00:34
I just want to make their daily lives and their ability to have their kids come in and be part of the next generation, have enough margin in it to support a family vacation once in a while, to support the labor, ultimately, the talent that, like, I want I just want kids to be like, yeah. I can envision. No. I'm not gonna be a stockbroker. It's not gonna give me that level of wealth. But, heck, I might be able to make a a hundred thousand dollars a year and raise a family in this community.

Cole Mannix - 01:01:16
That's the difference that a regionalized food system can make. It's not gonna make millionaires out of a bunch of ranches who were scraping by, but it can it can give them a good, meaningful life doing the kind of work that society desperately needs and which gives them fulfillment.

Kyle Krull - 01:01:45
I love that. Yeah. It's certainly not like you're trying to, I don't know. Like you said, you know, not make millionaires out of these folks. Just give them an opportunity to stay, a reason to stay, a reason to want to, like, pass the torch onto the next generation. I think we talk about it in some of our very early podcasts, and it's the desperation in the farming community in The United States. And I think the suicide rates are through the roof. I don't know how that's similar with ranchers versus, you know, row crop or or not. But, again, back to, like, the status quo outlook for farming, not ideal. So, you know, trying to change things from that top down approach, I think, is admirable.

Kyle Krull - 01:02:09
And it feels like the the model you've put together for Old Salt, that cooperative model, seems to be working well. Are there different iterations or phases? Like, is there something you haven't yet done that you're hoping to implement soon, or do you feel like the the model's, like, pretty much squared away and he just needs more time? It's how you're selling it in every dark.

Cole Mannix - 01:02:38
So one of the the next steps for us is access to USDA processing. So I mentioned that. And we've been basically, our county has not been very receptive to a new mate processing facility. Zelle local zoning rules, to say nothing of kind of the federal regulatory environment. So it's been very hard. We've had many iterations of properties and design facility designs that didn't end up panning out. We've been under contract for a couple of meat comp meat processing facilities that, essentially, we had to walk away from because of zoning regs or the way that the septic was built, things like that.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:19
Help help us understand, like, what is the primary hurdle there? Is that people don't want to live too close to slaughter facilities and that's the zoning issue? Or, like, what what's the actual barrier? Like, why isn't it coming to fruition?

Cole Mannix - 01:03:29
Well, I mentioned the first one, which is that there was a city ordinance. It's this commercial light manufacturing zoning area in the city where this would be and it's it's kind of by the airport. Right next door is a pet crematory. Right next door to that is the Signs Manufacturing Company. Right next to that is a Verizon facility. It's near the UPS shipping area. Would actually be pretty good for a small slaughter facility, but there's a this ordinance in the city that prevents the holding of more than two large animals by any entity or company.

Cole Mannix - 01:03:52
And I can't wait for that ordinance to be changed while I and and get the investor dollars and the bank dollars that I need to, like, get a plan in order. So then we went out to the county. And in agricultural zoning, right now, our county zoning rules say that the processing of agricultural commodities is okay, but it doesn't specifically say livestock slaughter. And because of who the county planner happens to be that just as an individual, they have the latitude to to basically interpret those zoning rules where they want to. And right now, they just don't really want meat processing. So, basically, finally, after looking at 30 properties, not just looking at them, but, like, investing a lot of dollars towards the potential development of a facility, We, finally purchased a property a year ago.

Cole Mannix - 01:04:42
Out it was the only smallish property outside of any zoning in the county that I could find. And we've been spending the last year we got some federal grant and loan dollars spending the time to design a basically, it's a 17,000 square foot facility. And we are about ready to break ground. And then about a month ago, we were approached by a a packer that already has a facility and a team, and they said, don't build new, buy ours. And so at this moment, as we speak, we're we have a kind of a a term sheet agreement, and we're working towards a buy sell, and we may just acquire that. Once we did that, it will hugely improve our margin, and we'll now be able to sell wholesale, which we haven't been able to in the past.

Cole Mannix - 01:05:37
And we'll also be able to custom process for other private label brands that also wanna sell livestock to the system. So that's one major next step. Another major next step is we need to build out that finishing system that I kind of mentioned, which is a a finishing system that works better for Montana's environment. Since we're selling very locally and regionally, we have some customers that are interested in a grass only product, but there's a lot that still expect a grain experience. So we need to have a product that speaks for itself to the people that want a certain experience and yet also has the integrity that we care about. So it's a much it's a more luxurious, for some, eating experience because it's got more of that high marbling and fat that grain allows for.

Cole Mannix - 01:06:34
That's so building out a finishing supply chain in Montana that works for our environment and the set of customers that we're working with to augment, to add to the grass only line that we have is another key next step. And I would say that further next steps, we think that we can have 10 or 15 of these burger joints across the state. That allows us to move a lot of a lot of grind that ends up being the thing that can build up on you at a good margin to know where it's going. Those burger joints also then help tell our story, help bring new direct customers in the door. So those those maybe are three steps that I would name that are part of the next phase for us.

Kyle Krull - 01:07:31
I love the vision, and I wanna tap into the wholesale piece specifically because so much of what we talked about has been so regionally focused. So if and when the wholesale product becomes available, do you plan to keep that regional as well? And is that wholesale primarily focused on food service, or is that retail, a combination of the two, maybe some other markets?

Cole Mannix - 01:07:50
Yeah. I would say that the grocery side of things is sort of the last place we will look. The first step is regional is local restaurants, that are selling to higher end clientele and want that Montana story. And when I say local, I I sort of mean, yes, Montana establishments, but I consider Spokane and Coeur D'Alene fairly local. And, you know, it's it's it's from this sort of landscape that's not so different than Spokane and Coeur D'Alene. Those two towns are closer than Eastern Montana is in sheer miles. Right. So I think that there's food service to the universities.

Cole Mannix - 01:08:20
We have two kinda larger universities in Montana, and MSU. Park concessionaire outfits like Xanterra that provide services at Yellowstone and Glacier hotels. I think that mix of wholesale clients is probably about right. And then if there's some brands, I'm thinking of, you know, the Kettle and Fires of the world, you know, just to or the the, the lineage provisions of the world where they they can't move whole carcasses necessarily, but they might take a lot of bottom flats for their air dried jerky strips or trim for their snack sticks or, in Kate Hapstead's case, sides for their leather. So that's kind of the the wholesale phase I'm really talking about. And then grocery, you know, we'll see.

Cole Mannix - 01:09:15
Maybe a little bit here or there, but the Whole Foods and the Sprouts of the world are not our target client. It's not that we'll never go there. It's just that I think that will be the last place that we turn.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:09:38
Yeah. And my assumption would be not knowing a lot about Montana retailers, but there's probably not enough local retailer density to really drive the added value of, like, telling the local story. It's probably all national chains for the most part, I would assume. I mean, I'm sure there's some independent retailers, but maybe not enough to

Cole Mannix - 01:09:55
We have a few clusters of grocery stores where there's six or seven play six or seven locations, or 12 to 15 locations. But those retailers are under a tremendous amount of pressure in the grocery space, and they're you know, the margin you have there is is pretty limited. It can be a decent volume play, but, again, we'll we'll go into that very carefully, only as it makes sense. You know? If there's a if there's a local chain that is interested in in developing a long term relationship and we have if we have confidence that they really do mean a long term relationship, then perhaps.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:36
Yeah. And if you can distribute yourself, I think that'd be another key unlock, especially regionally. You know, you're tapping into that existing distribution network like you mentioned before. There's there's too much power and consolidation there, so I think that'd be another key step.

Cole Mannix - 01:10:49
That's that fourth step, that distribution side, it is kind of one of the things in the works currently. Either there's a small distributor where we're either working to develop exclusivity with our meats through that distributor or else possibly owning part of that distributor so that at least in this neck of the woods, we have a really solid option to provide excellent service to these accounts, whereas that's pretty tough when you're driving the truck. You know, when when when you're trying to manage restaurants and and an ecommerce brand and a processing facility, you know, distribution by itself is complex. And, you know, if if somebody's gonna buy meat from you, it's nice if they can buy eggs, and it's nice if they can buy a few additional things that they also need. So you need you know, all of a sudden, you need to step up into a software like a FoodConnex or something where they can check your inventory online without having to get on the phone. They can see what they've ordered from you. They can see when the next delivery is coming. You can get there at least once a week and sometimes twice.

Cole Mannix - 01:11:45
All the things that people have come to accept from a expect from a Cisco. Right?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:58
Yeah. I know all about that game, brother. If ever you wanna talk about food distribution, happy to happy to lend some insights. Cole, I'm curious. What does the seasonality look like? We've had a couple, like, meet brands on recently, and they're talking about maybe the challenges of, like, not being able to have a fresh program throughout the entire year. I'm assuming there's obviously some pretty cold winters up in your neck of the woods. Like, what what does that look like, and how does that affect, like, the way you're building these businesses?

Cole Mannix - 01:12:26
Yeah. I mean, it's a huge it's a huge deal in the world of meat where you have a and, you know, I'm sure there's this way with veggies and other things too, but you just can't build a bunch of hoop houses, like you could in the vegetable space. Yeah. That's sort of why the feedlot developed. And so how do you not use the feedlot and still have a year round supply and still stay at a price range that makes sense. And so, for example, right now, the Mannix, direct to consumer program that Old Salt absorbed as part of this plan

Anthony Corsaro - 01:13:05
Mhmm.

Cole Mannix - 01:13:06
They've finished grass animals, grass only animals all year round. And that means that the youngest animals we process are 24 to 26 old, and the oldest animals we process are as much as 38 old. Wow. And it just means that that latest end of the supply chain is far more expensive for those producers to raise. And the young you know, the the earliest end is the least expensive for them to raise, but we essentially spread it out across that cycle. And, ultimately, it's a more expensive product at the end of the chain. So we could deliver fresh, you know, now if the price point was there.

Cole Mannix - 01:13:40
But what we've what we see in the cattle industry right now at this moment is livestock prices are through the roof. They've never been this high on the commodity market because the national herd size is down because of drought. There's also a lot of global factors there, obviously, difference in currencies, what's going on in Australia's market, what's going on in South America that play into this. But, essentially, any old commodity cow is more valuable right now on a commodity conventional market than it has ever been. So to buy it for a fair price in the first place, even in a con even sort of that conventional times of the year from a producer, and then to still sell it for a margin at a level that a retailer can handle is really challenging. It's historically challenging. So it's not that you can't produce it fresh. It's just, can you produce it fresh for a price point that will work for the customer?

Cole Mannix - 01:14:40
And on the other side of that, you could say, well, we're just not gonna produce a very finished luxurious product. We're just gonna produce a very lean, grass only product. And in that case, yeah, you can go threshold all around the year, and yet you're gonna have a hard time finding a client base

Anthony Corsaro - 01:15:10
Right.

Cole Mannix - 01:15:11
Be because that product is going to be more like elk than it is like the beef that they're used to eating. And so it's sort of can you do some things to to balance the luxury part of it by honing your genetics and working on the kind of finishing innovation that I mentioned earlier in the in the show? Can you integrate some of those things, with the realities that of, okay, what livestock cost and what retailers need to get it at and and mash those together in a way that's a happy medium. That makes sense.

Kyle Krull - 01:15:51
It does. And I appreciate the complexity of the answer because it's not as simple it's not as simple as I think the the average consumer understands. Right? There's there's far more complexity than, I think people realize goes into their food. So, yeah, appreciate you shedding a light on that. I feel like I should close it out. I'm gonna I'm gonna throw a curveball here. And, you know, Anthony always asks the last question, and I'm gonna do it today, which I don't know why. Well, you know, as he says often, we've we've kind of been talking about this the whole episode.

Kyle Krull - 01:16:15
But, Cole, from your perspective, how do we get regenerative brands and maybe specifically regenerative meat to have 50% market share by 2050?

Cole Mannix - 01:16:34
Well, I would say it's a combination of things. And I think it is customers being citizens.

Kyle Krull - 01:16:52
Let's just pause on that concept alone. What does it take to turn a customer into a citizen? Because I think that's a really cool concept.

Cole Mannix - 01:17:00
I think it it takes a paradigm shift on the on the part of customers, frankly, to see themselves just as much of a participant and a doer in agriculture as they are a passive receiver. And I'm thinking of a brand that I admire a lot called MeatEater, and it's really a hunting wildlife brand. And one of the things they've figured out is how can we get all these kids and people who might live in New York City to engage in their public lands. They get them interested in gear and how to cook an elk tenderloin and how to actually hunt and be successful and what are the maps that get figure out help you figure out where you're gonna access public land. And it's a way that the the customer, because I don't like to say consumer, can begin to have agency and participate. And then they get them engaged in policy. Right? All these hunting groups. I'm not necessarily saying that MeatEater does a bunch of policy.

Cole Mannix - 01:17:54
I'm just saying by getting a group of customers to be engaged in hunting and public lands, that feeds into membership and organizations like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and like the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and they begin to influence policy. So I think it's how do you help the customer feel agency and become a citizen in the food system in the same way as they do in that kind of wildlife and conservation space. And the things that we need to do to reshape policy are many, but it starts with the farm bill and the way that commodity subsidies flow to crop insurance. We've gotta redo that system because it essentially props up monoculture, one dimensional agriculture. We've also gotta redo we've gotta gain the political will as a country to say that it is an intrinsic good to not let power consolidate too much. Because when it does, it inevitably marginalizes the producer, which are the one place we need to be reinvesting.

Cole Mannix - 01:19:03
So we need to gain the political appetite to enforce the laws that are still on the books from the nineteen twenties. We just haven't enforced them. Antitrust type of legislation. I think we also need to redo the way we think about food safety. So in Rome or in Paris, you can take a a quarter beef out of the back of a distribution truck and cut it at a farmer's market for people to go home with. You can't do that in The United States, not because it's we're so much smarter than everybody else around the world, but basically because the big companies don't have an interest in that kind of distributed power.

Cole Mannix - 01:19:43
And so I'm instead, if I wanna sell a Brazala, I can't just hang it in my shop. I've gotta build a $4,000,000 facility to comply with all the ready to eat regulations. And then I think the other thing is the whole the brands and the investors who are fueling innovation, the investors need to begin to look at how does this if these brands we're investing in work, are they structured in a way that will return value to the producers and that empower producers compared to the opposite? And then the producers need to structure their companies, the brands themselves, need to structure their companies in a way that ensures to those investors, whether they're capital or whether they're debt, that this is not just gonna make us wealthy as brand owners and maybe not gonna make us wealthy at all. Maybe it gives us a good living, but, like, this will feed rural communities. It will feed producers.

Cole Mannix - 01:20:53
It will make Main Street more vibrant, and it will we can start to experience this landscape of terroir where I can come into Montana and experience Montana on Main Street. And I can come in when I go home from my vacation at Yellowstone or Glacier, and when I got to know these these these products through the this regional local food experience, now I can go back and buy it at home and develop a loyalty to a place. Even if I don't live in that place, I develop a loyalty to it in a way I spend dollars, and I and I feed the future of that place.

Kyle Krull - 01:21:37
Yeah. Nailed it. The two that really stood out to be really like consumer activation, is the term that came to mind, and regulatory decentralization. I think we're we're two really key pieces to me, but, I think it's a fantastic answer. And, again, you know, as cool as I get to know you on this podcast, it's nuance and detail. And I really appreciate that about all of your answers today.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:22:00
Yeah. I I wrote down aspirational consciousness, during the interview. And, like, yeah. Thanks for bringing that to the table, man. Thanks for embracing the the nuance and the complexity. And as someone that has been able to support you afar, you know, through a small investment via Steward and just just following your work. Really cool to spend this time with you today and just, love what you're building, man. So thanks for thanks for joining us.

Cole Mannix - 01:22:22
Yeah. Thank you for, yeah, thank you for having me on and creating a space for the conversation.

Kyle Krull - 01:22:27
I'm sorry. You know, for the consumers who or the the customers or the citizens who want to participate in, the Old Bay product, it's sorry. Not Old Bay. Old Salt. oldsaltco-op.com. So there's a dash there. Make sure you let you, go to the right website, And don't buy old days, isn't it? My bad.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:22:49
Thank you, Cole. Appreciate you, man.

Cole Mannix - 01:22:51
Thanks, guys.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:22:55
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