The Meat Mafia Podcast

Part 1
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[00:00:00]

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Dad didn't start transitioning the farm over to the grass fed model that it is today until the mid nineties.

His famous quote is, Chemical fertilizer is like peeing in your pants to stay warm. It's a good short term strategy, but long term, it's just not what you need to do.

he slowly became disgusted with the excesses in the removal of livestock from the land.

He wanted to march away from something that he didn't feel good about.

It was a very big, swing for the fence move, but it was a swing for the fence move at the right time. He did it at the World Series.

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Jenny, what a treat it is to have you on the Meat Mafia podcast. We had your father on a little while ago. Um, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank y'all for having me. We, we think a lot of y'all and we love to, you know, we love to catch up when we can. So you still [00:01:00] like us even though we're Yankees?

Without question, without question. That's good. That's good. Hold on, hold on. I was raised below the Mason Dixon line. Well, then you're really, you're extra good. Brett's good, but you're extra good. All right, good. I got a little bit of catching up to do, but that's okay. But in all seriousness, Jenny, we're so pumped for this episode.

I think it's been a long time coming. And for the listeners to Harry's point, we've been fortunate enough to come out and visit you and your family at Bluffton, Georgia. I mean, for anyone that's been, I think everyone will say that it's truly a magical experience, especially if you've never gotten that ranch experience before.

I feel like. Your family does such a good job of treating visitors as if they're family. And that's the experience that we've got. So to go from being fans of everything that you're doing at white oak to now being friends and colleagues, it means a lot to us, but Jenny, I don't think a lot of, I don't, I haven't heard you publicly talk much about the actual experience of you as a child growing up at white oak, because I know [00:02:00] your dad has famously talked about, you know, going from conventional practices to regenerative practices.

But I would love to know, you know, what was Jenny like growing up? Do you, do you remember kind of going through that transformation in the nineties as a ranch? I think that would be a great place to kick things off. Well, I appreciate y'all inviting me and I love telling our story to anybody that will listen.

Uh, you know, and I speak for all of us. So I'm a member of the fifth generation, have a younger sister. Who, uh, who works here alongside me. Um, I have a wife who works here and then my sister's husband, John. So, when I speak for myself, I speak for them too. So, my memories are much like, much like Jody's. But, uh, you know, growing up here, I was born in 1986.

That puts me, uh, parked at 37 years old. And, you know, the farm was, you know, something that I did with my dad. I always, always, always wanted to be with him. You know, you, you have. Uh, special relationships in your life, and me and my dad really [00:03:00] clicked, uh, you know, early in life. I can remember being, uh, so little that, you know, I'd get pissed off at him if he would not take me to work with him in the mornings.

I'd make my mama call him and he'd have to come pick me up. And, uh, you know, I'd say we could just avoid this whole thing. Just wake me up. I want to go with you. I want to be with you. And it wasn't necessarily what he was doing. It was being with him. Um, so my early memories of the farm, uh, were when we were still a very conventional commodity farm.

Dad didn't start transitioning the farm, uh, over to the grass fed model that it is today until the mid nineties. So that would put me at 10 years old, uh, or so, and I didn't have any, you know, real revelations or emotions about what we were doing. It was just something that I got to do with my dad. You know, sort of like kids that go fishing with their dads, it's not necessarily about catching the fish.

It's about going [00:04:00] fishing. You never. Here's somebody tell a story that says, yeah, and I caught this fish with my dad. They say, no, you know, when I used to go fishing with my dad, it's, it was the activity that was fun, not the end result. So my memories, uh, of this place, uh, were, you know, any childhood memories, you know, playing in the woods, riding the tractor, feeding the cows.

Um, but when we transitioned, there was a pretty stark difference in the way the farm looked. I wasn't, I was 10, so I wasn't really thinking too hard then, but I could see, and the beautiful, green, lush grasses that I had come to expect and accept this time of year in the spring, uh, you know, during the first part of my life were completely dependent on chemical fertilizer.

If we had not, uh, poured copious quantities of, of chemical to the land, you know, that, that crop wasn't going to happen. And so when dad made the decision [00:05:00] to quit using chemical fertilizer, his famous quote is, Chemical fertilizer is like peeing in your pants to stay warm. It's a good short term strategy, but long term, it's just not what you need to do.

And so, when he quit using chemical fertilizer, this farm was ugly. I mean, you know, the grass was brown, the cows were hungry. Uh, you know, and he was talking about this big, broad vision of grass fed beef. And, you know, the thought was, how do we do that? There's no grass. You know, we're literally in recovery mode going through withdrawals from chemical fertilizer.

You know, how do you get grass fed beef from what we have to work with? And thank goodness he's as bullheaded and stubborn as he is. He's stuck with it. And, you know, thanks to, you know, animal impact and, uh, and that vision, he started to heal the land, uh, you know, using livestock. [00:06:00] One of the, one of the amazing things about getting to know your dad is just the, the level of passion that he has for what he does.

And I'm curious if you have any insights into where that comes from. Um, because obviously he's been able to hand that down to you and and the next generation, which I think is so special, given the current state of farming where the average age of the farmers in the U. S. today is 65. So there really isn't this pipeline of of younger generations of farmers coming in.

So I'm curious, you know, what do you think? Really sparked that passion for what he's doing. You know, he, he, he was an only child and his parents were children of the depression. And I think that when, you know, parents go through something like the great depression, it shapes them to be a type. You know, my granddad was uber conservative and not, not Republican Democrat, uh, conservative, but financially conservative.

He [00:07:00] was very risk adverse. Uh, you know, if you couldn't pay for it in cash, you didn't have it, you know, you know, my, my, my grandparents never bought an automobile that they did not write a check for. Now, that meant they drove a vehicle for 20 years, but, you know, they, they, they just didn't go into debt. And I think that, you know, the pendulum swung really far in the other direction with my dad.

He was an only child. He lives on the edge with everything that he does. You know, if the wind blows a little too hard, he'll fall off. And I think that, uh, that was a response to, you know, his upbringing, which was, uh, you know, with two parents that were quite the opposite. He talks a lot about transitioning the farm and what led him to it, and he didn't see a burning bush or, you know, hear direct words from God or any of those other really cool, sexy things that would make a movie really awesome.[00:08:00]

Uh, you know, he just slowly became disgusted with the excesses, uh, you know, in the removal of livestock from the land. You know, when you. If you take land off, or land, uh, livestock off the land, you know, you wind up having to truck feed into them every day in copious quantities, and then they, you know, they, they mess up the land because they're confined in a small space, and so you've got mud and excrement that's, again, in copious quantities.

And in order to keep them alive, you have to use copious quantities of sub therapeutic antibiotics and, you know, growth hormones and steroids. And so it was like, I think in every direction that he turned, it felt so excessive that he wasn't necessarily interested in marching towards something different.

He just wanted to march away from something that he didn't feel good [00:09:00] about. And the timing was, was pretty lucky for us. He talks a lot about You know, the fact that, you know, when, when he decided to transition our farm over, the market was kind of primed and ready for a product that was different. That was when people started focusing on nutrition and health.

And, uh, you know, the, the way we treat our land and, you know, rural communities being, Uh, you know, drying up and becoming ghost towns. And so it was, it was a very big, uh, swing for the fence move, but it was a swing for the fence move at the right time. He did it at the World Series. So timing definitely played a part in that.

So I appreciate you shedding some light and some context into that. Jenny, it seems like if anyone knows anything about regenerative agriculture, people will immediately point to White Oak, kind of is like that North Star, just that beacon of, hey, this thing, this model [00:10:00] can be, replicated amongst other farms and people really point to you.

Um, do you remember when you really felt like you started, White Oak started to gain public traction and public recognition and when the name and the, the process of what you're doing in a regenerative way really started to get out there a little bit more? Yeah, that's a good question. So, you know, we are, I'm the fifth generation of this 160 something years, so that, that was not very new.

And, you know, there were people that were raising livestock in this way, you know, all over the country that started, you know, way before we did. I think that what really moved the needle for us was bumping up against, we want to farm this way, and we know that people want this type of product. But there's this huge void of processing.

You know, people don't buy cattle and goats and sheep. They buy beef and pork and lamb. [00:11:00] And in order to turn those cows into beef, we relied on outside processing during the early 2000s, which, it worked short term, but from a growth perspective, You know, was was not really ever going to take us anywhere.

And so our, you know, the bottleneck for us in growth was processing. And again, my dad's, uh, you know, my dad's, you know, visionary attitude, uh, matched up against a very stubborn, hardheaded, uh, you know, way of life. caused him to have the confidence to build processing on the farm. And I think that when we vertically integrated processing to raising livestock to create that final product, That was when people were like, Oh, wow, this is an actual food system, you know, that they're, this is possible, you know, we're not a link in the chain of a food system.

We're a food system. [00:12:00] And that's sort of when, when, uh, you know, when the story became a little bit more rounded out, uh, and it was a lot easier to tell. Hmm. I'd love to dig into the topic of processing a bit more, because. It seems like I think there used to be something along the lines of like a processing facility in almost every single county.

And now there's just a huge void in the whole butchery market in general. And, um, it seems to me like someone like your guys farm, White Oak Pastures, getting a processing facility gives you so much leverage to Start to access new markets because you're now able to reduce costs down, but it's a huge leap and a huge cost.

So I'd love to dive into that. Like, do you think that this is a model that can be replicated across, you know, in other areas and other cities being able to get a processing facility on some of these farms that are doing things the right way? Absolutely. You know, [00:13:00] it is sad to think that prior to World War II, there was a butcher in every town.

You know, food was very local. And then, you know, some, some president said, get big or get out, and the market responded and did just that. And so today, there are, you know, four or five multinational, uh, corporations that control something like, You know, 70 percent of the beef that we consume and so the, you know, the response to that was they got big or or got out and that type of plant is not what we want.

We wanted to build a plant as small as you could build it and you can't really build one any smaller than what we have. Uh, but build it as small as we could, we could build it to feed our community, whatever our community is, you know, whether they're in Texas or New York, our communities defined by people who, you know, use their food dollars to endorse systems that, you know, [00:14:00] have high animal welfare, you know, high environmental land, you know, regeneration practices.

And the enrichment of rural communities like Bluffton. And so the, the, the processing plant, uh, changed things for us. Not that it allowed us to take cost out, but it allowed us to operate at a level that, you know, justified being in the business. You know, running a USDA inspected processing plant is hard.

In fact, my, my office used to be in town, but I'm at the plant now because there's, there's a new fire every day. And I don't mean fire is in literal fire, but, you know, it's, you know, highly regulated. It's, uh, you know, you really have to be watching the metrics with, you know, the animals that you're processing and what you get out of them.

Um, so running a plant gives us a lot of opportunity, but it also comes at a great risk. [00:15:00] And to your point, Jenny, I remember looking at the processing facilities with your dad and he described it really is like this closed loop system that you built for yourselves. And I don't know if listeners remember this, but in the beginning of COVID, like 2020, 2021, there were a lot of shortages of meat in the grocery stores.

And I think those were partially responsible by the big four packers. He was saying that you guys were, were pretty much unavoided. It was like business as usual. You had your own processing facilities. You're feeding your customers. I know that you saw a huge spike in DTC business just because you're one of the few ranches that really weren't affected by all these shortages that were going on.

So maybe you could speak to that too, because I thought that was such a powerful point and really changed my perspective on like, just the self dependency on the, on the ranch that you have. Yeah, it was, it was really interesting. You know, COVID was just such a weird and wild thing for everybody, whether you're a farmer or a manufacturer or a, you know, a consumer, [00:16:00] nobody got to escape COVID without feeling some effect.

And for the big packers, uh, you know, let's just, let's just, you know, scale it out here. So, uh, the packer that I, or the type of packer that I mentioned, they process, you know, 400 head an hour, 16 hours a day. Uh, you know, we process 25 head of cattle a day. So the, the scale is very, very different. And in those big systems, when they didn't have the people there to make it work, nobody was cross trained enough to, to fill in.

So what we had was market size animals being euthanized. Because they, they, there was no room for them to stay, you know, new animals were coming in, no, no room for them to stay, but no way to get them processed. And that is a real bump in the road when you, when you come to efficient [00:17:00] scale, high volume production.

You know, for us, sure, people had COVID and they were out. Somebody knew every week that was out, but we all were nimble enough to readjust, uh, you know, and, and, and cover for that person that was out. And, you know, we have not missed a day of processing, uh, you know, since the pandemic broke out. So. You know, I think that that speaks to, you know, highly scaled food is really, really awesome when we think about cost and efficiency, but it's also a very fragile food system that can't really operate when there's much disturbance.

And so consumers have got to decide how, you know, what type of food system do they want? Do they want a a food system that is, you know, uh, scaled and efficient, or do they want one that's resilient? [00:18:00] And, you know, for, for us and our customers, we know that that resilient piece, uh, you know, is, is pretty damn important.

Have you observed, I know you guys are so focused on what you guys are doing within the fences of white oak pastures, but have you observed a change in the sentiment around resiliency? Because, One of your dad's famous expressions is regenerative agriculture, uh, isn't scalable, but it's replicatable and I use that word earlier and I, I do just feel like we kind of have this whole idea around food wrong when it comes to how we think about it.

And so I'm just thinking about the future and just the idea of there being pockets of the U. S. that might struggle to be able to provide food is really a scary thought, but it was truly stress tested during COVID. So have you heard more people and more interest coming to White Oak and people talking about how they can replicate what you guys are doing and building that resiliency that you guys have?

So I, you know, I think [00:19:00] that the word regenerative from a buzzword perspective is on the rise. I think it is the new sexy thing that people are talking about. I think that the, the number of authentic farmers that are actually producing regeneratively produced food is getting smaller and smaller. I think there are fewer of, of farms like ours today than there were.

You know, a year ago or 5 years ago or 10 years ago, and that's that's really sad. What I see happening is is more of the big multinational brands co opting and counterfeiting these terms to produce, you know, really sexy, shiny labels. Uh, full of product that, that, that has, that doesn't have those attributes, you know, a good example of that is, is like free range.

You know, that was a very early word, and I think it was created with the best of intentions. I think it was created by people who [00:20:00] actually raised birds on the ground. But, you know, the, the big multinational conglomerate meat producers realized that they could get it passed so that free range chicken really didn't have to live outside.

It could live In a barn confined, uh, indoors with maybe some access to an outdoor area, but you know, it doesn't really have to be free range. Uh, and I, I see more and more of that, which is frightening. It is frightening. And um, Jenny is the director of marketing at White Oak. One of the things I think you and the team do an amazing job of is really educating the consumer on crucial aspects of the food system that I would say 99 percent of Americans don't know anything about.

And um, something that always sticks out for me is when you started publicly talking about the COOL Act getting repealed, the country of origin labeling law. And I remember thinking to myself that this makes [00:21:00] so much sense because Back before I knew how to connect with a local rancher. I would just go to the Whole Foods And I used to just ask the butcher just as a test just to see if they knew where the, where the ranch was that the meat was coming from.

And I found that nine times out of 10, they couldn't name the actual ranch. They could maybe tell you a, they could tell you maybe a state that it came from. But then when you look at the label, it says pasture raised local beef and green lettering. So me as the, the uninformed consumer, my subconscious is thinking, Oh, this just must be local Austin beef, but instead that was probably raised in a feedlot in Brazil, went through a bunch of different touch points and then hit my plate in Texas and I'm paying like 25 a pound for a ribeye.

So Jenny, for the, for the listener, maybe you could give a little context into what the cool act is and why is it actually harmful for us ranchers that it got repealed a few years ago. Yeah, so this is a soapbox of mine. So y'all sit down. Uh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be here for a while. So, [00:22:00] uh, you know, when we created, uh, the brand White Oak Pastures in the early 2000s.

You know, the demand was so incredible, and I don't know if it was because it was grass fed or because it was, you know, truly raised by somebody like us and there's traceability to the food. Um, but the, the market was really ready for a product like what we produced. And, you know, in 2008, when we finished our processing plant, you know, there were some tough, you know, couple of years to build demand.

But when demand hit. It hit and we were operating at capacity, uh, you know, week after week after week, month after month, year after year, but when country of origin labeling was, uh, was walked back. So, country of origin labeling is, you know, we look in the backs of our shirts and it says, You know, produced in India or Bangladesh or whatever, that's the equivalent on the meat side, you [00:23:00] know, so country of origin labeling was, uh, was walked back and imported product began to intrude the retail spaces that we, we serve and it got so, so incredible that the, the latest statistic is that 85 percent of the grass fed beef.

Sold and marketed in America as product of the USA was actually raised and processed in another country. So 85%, we went from in 2008, nine, 10, really capturing that, that demand to country of origin happening, you know, get walked back in 2014 or 15. And the demand truly fell off. And it was not because there was no grass fed beef or people didn't want it.

It's because we were able to import it at a much cheaper price. We, not as white ambassadors, but as, you know, [00:24:00] American consumers, were able to import it at a much cheaper price and have the same product. And so, today, the fact that 85 percent of the grass fed beef found in America was raised and processed in another country is, uh, is incredible.

And I'll, I'll go out on a limb and say it is probably the thing that hurts. Uh, more farmers entering this type of production system than anything else. You know, we, we, we, we can't raise, uh, product for demand that, that is, you know, pretty much being filled by imported product. And so, you know, farmers say, well, why would I do this?

Why am I trying to compete with Lithuania and Nambia and whoever else? You know, growing grass fed beef. They can do it a lot cheaper than I can. Look at the automotive industry. Look at the textile industry. [00:25:00] Uh, you know, so what we've done is taken what was, you know, a very local product and turned it loose in a global market.

And it should come as no surprise that, you know, first generation farmers, or even fifth generation farmers, struggle to compete in that market. Can you, can you play devil's advocate and walk me through the logic that was going, going on at the time to actually repeal the cool act? Like what were the arguments being made on the other side?

I know there was a lot of pressure from. Canada and Mexico because of certain trade agreements, but it seems like the costs of what's happening to the American farmer are just clearly not worth what's happening or what's happened since then. So I'm really curious, like what was the, the arguments being made at the time to actually go through with this decision?

I think you got to follow the money. Unfortunately, it all boils down to how, how can a company, Who's so focused [00:26:00] on quarterly reports and yearly earnings, how can they make more money and you know, that's, that's, that's what we're up against. It's more profitable to import cheap beef from other countries.

Uh, then it is to have it grown here at home. Now, there's a lot more to be said for a resilient food supply so that we're not waiting, waiting for it on a cargo ship that's 45 days out. But, you know, whoever, whoever made the laws decided that cheap beef. Was more important than resilient food. Jenny, something I think a lot about too, to your point is, um, you know, I mentioned whole foods earlier and, um, I'm from Princeton, New Jersey, so we got a whole foods real early.

I think we got a whole foods in 2005, 2006. And I remember you were selling Whole Foods, uh, you were selling your beef to Whole Foods in New Jersey. I think your dad actually made a trip to New Jersey, which I would pay a lot of money to see that man in [00:27:00] New Jersey, number one. I went with him. You did? So y'all, y'all have these things called jug handles.

You can't, you can't turn left. You got to turn right to turn left. That's crazy. He, a funny story about that is we did go up for a demo and we did try to turn left and you can't turn left in a lot of places in New Jersey. And so we got pulled over and my dad, you know, the nice police officer walked up to the window and he says, sir, what brings you to New Jersey?

And that's it. Well, I'm selling my beef at Whole Foods. I'm up here doing a demo. We're just trying to get back to the hotel. He said, well, around here, you can't turn left. You got to turn right to turn left. And that's it. That is the stupidest shit I've ever heard. And if you let me out of this God forsaken state, I swear to God, I'll never come back.

He probably has never been back. He got off with the warning and the cop said, You're exactly right. You know what? You just get to your hotel and we'll call it even. I love it. I love it. Paris is happening. New Jersey. We have been there. We left our mark. [00:28:00] You did leave your mark. And that was one of the, as I, as I recall, it was one of the earlier Whole Foods.

I think it was at least the first one in the Northeast. And you had a, you'd had a longstanding relationship. So when, when that was first built, you were selling your beef there, which is amazing. So for a New Jersey customer, it's like, I can guarantee that I'm going to get grass finished, regenerative beef.

It's what real, real food actually is. I've heard that since the Amazon acquisition, just a lot of their sourcing, sourcing methodology and the way that Mackie used to do business back in the day that really went away. And I know that you very publicly terminated your relationship with Whole Foods for a number of reasons.

But if you're comfortable talking about it, Jenny, I think that this is stuff that. Consumers need to know and would love to learn a little bit more about that story and that decision to kind of get out of Whole Foods after having such a long, great relationship with them. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say that Whole Foods was one of our first customers.

Publix, for the listeners, Publix Supermarket, they were the first customer that ever gave my [00:29:00] dad and White Oak Pastures a try. And they are still our largest wholesale customer today. Publix has been wonderful to work with. I know they're not in New Jersey, but for those of you living in, you know, Florida, Georgia.

You know, the Carolinas, uh, you know, Alabama, Publix, uh, really took a chance on us back in the early 2000s, and that partnership is one that we're fiercely proud of. But shortly after Publix joined us, uh, you know, supporting us, Whole Foods did, too. And the, the early relationship was great. You know, there were local marketing teams, and, you know, in store demos, and we really felt like, We were making an impact, uh, training the meat teams and meat team leaders, uh, you know, we, we did demos.

I mean, I can't tell you countless demos were whole foods and, you know, that, that relationship, uh, you [00:30:00] know, continued for years and I felt like we were truly partners. So they, they loaned us through their local producer loan program, loaned us money to help build our processing plant. You know, I really did feel like I was partners with whole foods.

But, you know, as the years progressed, it felt more and more corporate. And this is prior to the Amazon acquisition, you know, instead of dealing with the, local meat teams, we, uh, you know, we had to go through the global purchasing department. Well, shit, I don't want to work with the global purchasing department.

I want to work with the meat teams. Uh, you know, instead of having the Florida region, the South region and the mid Atlantic region, it was all rolled up to Austin, Texas. And so the, the feeling became, you know, very, very different. And, you know, in, in production, in, in business, there are cost increases and cost decreases.

And more and more it felt like we were having to beg for cost [00:31:00] increases due to inputs as opposed to You know a partner saying no we need for this to be a good deal for y'all too. And so Uh, the the relationship when it ended was it was sort of my dad talks about it being like a bad marriage you know that we're you you work together because Uh, you you've been married for 20 years or whatever whatever it was Uh, but it was no longer the relationship that it once started and there were no changes on our end.

It happened on their end and they're, you know, they, they, they, they deserve to evolve just like any business deserves to evolve, but it just evolved in a direction that we didn't want to go. Yeah, the sentiment around whole foods changing. It is really interesting. Like, the more corporatized they got. Even on the customer experience side of things, Brett was talking about it earlier, just like going to the store and not having that person who has the unique knowledge about all the different products that are out there, where the beef was coming from.

[00:32:00] Like, I remember the first time I walked into a whole foods, you were greeted by somebody, they were like, Asking you if you needed help finding things and really like this, this different type of grocery store experience that you had never really had before. So it makes sense that you guys partnered with them when they were doing things like that.

I think it's just a good reminder that like things change and these relationships, you know, at one point in time, it's perfect. They're helping you guys get the processing facility up and running doing great things. But eventually, sometimes these relationships kind of just outgrow each other. Um, there's, there's another case study that I would love to talk about too, with you guys, which is, um, your guys relationship with Epic.

It seems like that was a great Like a great case study and really raising the awareness around high quality, uh, snacks that could be created from regenerative, regenerative high quality sources. And that, that was also like a, you know, a seemingly great relationship [00:33:00] and partnership. And I think about this whole ecosystem that's being built around regenerative, it can't really just be.

You know, beef being delivered to us, or it can be, but like, it's more expansive when you have different types of products coming into play, helping raise the awareness. So I would love to just hear a little bit about that relationship from your guys perspective. You know, how did that start? And, um, you know, what happened with, with you guys in Epic at the beginning?

Cause that was just like a beautiful story. Yeah. So Katie and Taylor, uh, started Epic and they're great people. They're entrepreneurs. You know, they are marketers at heart. They do a really good job and they're very smart people. And so when they formed Epic, they were on the hunt for producers like us.

And we were, you know, an early innovator on selling grass fed beef. And so it was a very natural fit. And that relationship, uh, was, was great. [00:34:00] Uh, you know, in those earlier years, they wanted to buy You know, grass fed beef trim for, from us and then have it manufactured into their bars. Uh, so the, the, I guess the labor part of what we were selling them really fit well with what we were able to do.

You know, from a small processor perspective. They weren't wanting, uh, they weren't trying to buy, you know, retail cut rib eyes and portion controlled fillets. And it was a pretty. easy product for us to produce. And Katie and Taylor remained friends of the farm, but when, when the sale to General Mills happened, you know, the, the, we, we, we sold them and continue to sell General Mills less and less and less.

I pulled a sales report. It's ironic that you asked, but the, the business for, uh, 2022 was about double what it was for 2023. And [00:35:00] so, uh, you know, I think it's, it's just a hard place to be when you're, when you're looking at working with a lot of producers, white oak pastures being worn, or being able to import, you know, through an aggregator that can, you know, fill POs seamlessly.

You know, that, that type of model fits General Mills protocol. We just don't. Yeah, it seems, it seems like we're continuing to see. more and more brands. I, I always think back to like, have you ever seen that visual of the big food web where it's like all the products in the grocery store and there's like 10 companies that control that.

Um, I think that just does a really good job to portray why our metabolic, why the metabolic rate of disease is like 88 percent of most Americans. But I feel like there's this awesome trend of meat based companies that are very vocal pushback to that. And I'm curious from a, from a ranching perspective.

And when we just talk about business and margins is wholesaling product to those [00:36:00] new companies, is that profitable or is just the goal for you to be like, look, I just want to shake as many hands on my customers and just sell steaks directly to them, or maybe it's a combination of both, but I'm just curious, like from a business perspective, how is that from when we're talking about the ranch?

Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I'm going to answer it in two parts, the first being, you know, the food web that you talked about. I hope that when y'all are editing this, y'all will throw up that image. Oh, yeah. It is so incredible. You know, if whatever I'm saying, if I say 1000 words, that picture's worth 10, 000 words.

So the, the food web part is, is really, really interesting because consumers believe that they have choice. When in reality, there is no choice. There's, there's very little choice. And, you know, that, that in, with regard to food security and food system fragility, ought to be frightening to anyone. Um, so that, that's what I'll say about that.

Uh, you know, with regard [00:37:00] to Epic, we still work with General Mills. I'd like to continue to work with General Mills. But it kind of leads into this, this next part, uh, of the conversation, which Is for our business to work, we have to have a balance of wholesale and retail sales. You know, as much as I love e commerce and as much as I love, uh, you know, the grocery business, there's seasonality in book.

And if we're going to raise livestock and we're going to process livestock, and we're going to employ 150 people, we've got to keep something coming through the pipeline all year long. And so from a business perspective, picking the right assortment of customers that balances what you, what you want to do, what you can afford to do and what you have to do is really important.

So, you know, for us, the direct to consumer business was a really small effort up until the pandemic. [00:38:00] I think we Did something like $2 million of, of the $25 million in revenue that we do, uh, 2 million of it in 2019 went to e-Commerce. And then of course covid happened and the grocery store shelves were empty and people were panicked.

And so that $2 million went to $6 million in 2020 really quickly. Uh, and it, it's not that it was capped at 2020, it's just that's all we could do. We, we were, uh, you know, my dad. A quote that he uses is trying to shit in a swinging bucket. We were trying to shit in a swinging bucket in 2020. Uh, and six million dollars was not, not where the demand was.

It was where our ability to supply it, uh, was. And so we managed and maintained at that level. Uh, you know, and then, of course, we had some really good press in 2022 with Rogan, and that business grew to almost 50 percent of our overall revenue. And then, uh, Dab [00:39:00] released his book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, in, uh, 2023, so the fall of last year, and that was another.

You know, nice little boost of sales that has complimented both wholesale and retail. So, you know, I'm a huge advocate of choosing the right customer mix that that accomplishes what you need to accomplish. If you're a seasonal producer, you might not need both. But if you produce things all year round, it's imperative for us to have good working relationships with wholesalers that maybe carry a smaller margin.

for listening. But it's also important for us to take control, uh, of the products that we take so much pride in, uh, and sell them directly, uh, to, to maintain that, that level of, uh, of, of authenticity to our customers.

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