#3 - Jamie Ager @ Hickory Nut Gap

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #3 - Jamie Ager @ Hickory Nut Gap

Episode Transcript:

Kyle Krull - 0:00:15
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators, and investors to learn about the consumer brand supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined with my co-host AC. Let's dive in.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:32
On this episode, we have Jamie Ager, who is a cofounder and the CEO of Hickory Nut Gap. Hickory Nut Gap is supporting regenerative agriculture to their family farm and a group of aggregated farms selling both branded and ingredient cuts of beef, pork, and chicken. In this episode we learn more about Hickory Nut Gap's Origin story. Jamie and the Ager family's journey to both revive their family farm and create a successful regional regenerative meat brand. We also dive into topics like certifications, margins, utilization, and the proper way to fund the scaling of a branded regenerative meat company. We discussed what the future holds for both Hickory Nut Gap and the regenerative agriculture movement at large. So let's dive in. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Regen Brands podcast. We have Jamie Agar from Hickory nut gap here with us today. We're pumped to have Jamie. I know we're definitely going to talk about some some topics that we're all very passionate about 1 being that animals have to be a part of the region Ag equation, but we will cover that and much more. But welcome to the show, Jamie. We're happy to have you.

Jamie Ager - 0:01:36
Thank y'all for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:39
Absolutely, man. Well, well, let's start where it all started. I know you have a lovely wife that was involved and it's kind of been a whole family ordeal, but give the audience kind of just the background on on Hickory nut gap and how it all started and and the journey today.

Jamie Ager - 0:01:53
Yeah, man. So, so I'm a fourth generation farmer here from Western North Carolina. My family's been here since 1916, so over 100 years here at the farm, my great grandparents. Moved to this place back in 1916. And and so we've been here a long time. My great grandparents, my great granddad was a minister and his wife, my great grandmother was an artist. And so they were, they were very idealistic, a good idealistic combination. Yeah. And and I always joked that, you know.

Jamie Ager - 0:02:09
When they first came to western North Carolina in 1916 the western North Carolina was still in the economic doldrums of kind of post civil war South. And and you know as idealistic people some work that they did was they basically their life's work together was they founded a farmer's coop here in this region called the Farmers Federation and because he was a minister. And he had gone to Yale as well. And so he had some like blue blood connections up to the to the rich people in the city. And by the 1920s there was some real money getting made in in that world. And so he would go up every year and they would bring like an Appalachian string band up to up to New York and they raise a bunch of money.

Jamie Ager - 0:03:03
And and bring it down here and build like warehousing infrastructure. They would put a bunch of feed and seeds together every year. They would be have a picnic in every county throughout Western North Carolina and they would kind of have a like. Uh, entertainment sessions with some bluegrass music, with some clogging, with some various singing gospel.

Kyle Krull - 0:03:48
This is like some grassroots gorilla marketing yeah playbook.

Jamie Ager - 0:03:51
Yes, I know. Like, yeah, early 20th century. Yeah. So. So I come from a family with a with a legacy of like learning how to party and throw parties. And and build community and grow food and grow food. And because he was a minister he he kind of was legit in all these communities and could go and and preach on Sunday and and really gain people's trust. And so it's kind of a neat family legacy that we've always had here. And then you know the farm was a pretty typical small farm here in western North Carolina. We never got the road crop bug too badly because it's too steep. And and here in the mountains it just doesn't really work that well. And so we we they they grew up in victory garden during World War Two. So that's always made to read about. And then and then after the war or World War Two I should say they put in a dairy. So that dairy lasted until I was a little boy. We always had beef cattle. We have chickens. The other old chicken house here on the farm. My mom still.

Jamie Ager - 0:04:33
Manages today it's about 600 million and it's the 1940s there at Chicken House the Federation kind of promoted as as the the modern technological methods and so you know when I went to college so so when I was in high school we'd sold the dairy. The farm wasn't like really going a really financially strong but it was a great place to raise me and my three brothers. And that was probably the primary role that it played was like putting up hay all summer, you know feeding cows, doing whatever has to be done, fixing fence and I loved it. I thought it was so much fun every year and and and you know you're kind of working with your family and and by then it was mostly my mom kind of running the day-to-day and so it's kind of very matriarchal culture. In that way. And so it's kind of neat. So you know here I am young guy kind of like my parents were kind of back to the Landers as well. They always grew a big garden. We always kind of ate our own meat. So that was part of what what I was used to and and so whenever I went to college I went to Warren Wilson College just up the road and and had some inkling about what organics was sustainability, sustainable AG, all that kind of thing.

Jamie Ager - 0:05:53
And and the Lauren Wilson has a working farm and they had just brought in a new farm manager who was more oriented towards sustainable lag and.

Kyle Krull - 0:06:32
Everything. Wow. And so real quick, before you get into sustainable Ag, you mentioned that you had some like preconceived notions to organics and preconceived ag before you started school. What did you think about sustainability and agriculture? And then how did your time in school affect those preconceived notions?

Jamie Ager - 0:06:51
So, so that's a great question. I I guess when I was in high school I really got like the the ability to kind of you know do what you have to do on a farm, make a drive tractor, hook up trailers, manage equipment, do all that kind of stuff where I build fence. And so I loved all that stuff and then you know kind of had a a notion I guess culturally as my parents kind of. Had some level of of interest in organics in, in, and in this particular part of the country was the home of Mother Earth News magazine. And so a lot of the original founders were kind of from here too. So a lot of the the people that lived on the farm at that time kind of had worked at Mother Earth News. By the time I was kind of in middle school and high school, mother Earth News had gotten sold and moved to most of their operations to New York. But so all these people were no longer working there, but they had a very cultural, you know, back to the land or organic deal to everything. And so and then Warren Wilson definitely had that as a as an institution. So, you know, more cultural I would say I was interested in it, but I didn't really understand it super well. But then when I got to college, it was kind of like I got into it and then a girl that I was interested in, which is generally true of young dudes at intern at John Salatin's Farm.

Jamie Ager - 0:07:50
And. And she asked me if I wanted to go with her for a weekend to visit a farm. And I was like, sure, let's go and.

Kyle Krull - 0:08:26
Could have been anywhere but it.

Jamie Ager - 0:08:27
Happened to get a farm. Yeah. And then I got evangelized to all weekend by like the master of evangelizing. And that pretty much changed my life. I mean, Joel Selton definitely changed my life and that I was, you know, 19 years old and had a farm and wanted to farm. And then he kind of gave me the literature and the and the sort of practical. Ability to kind of chart that path. So that's kind of what what got me interested in in I feel lucky because by the time I was kind of a sophomore in college I kind of found my passion and and just kind of a full bore at that .0 the.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:06
School you're at wasn't ag school.

Jamie Ager - 0:09:08
So it's a, it's a liberal arts school, but they do have a well working farm and part of the part of the curriculum at the school is a. It's a triad, it's a work service, education triad. So there's actually a work component to it. So we all had to work 15 hours a week. It's a great school and it's got an amazing farm. It's a couple 100 acres and it's it's a real resource for young people and a great place to kind of, you know, when you're working hard in school, it's nice to go build fence for a couple hours to kind of blow off steam and use your body for a minute.

Kyle Krull - 0:09:43
When?

Jamie Ager - 0:09:43
You're under, you know that age.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:46
So you graduate and you go immediately back to the farm then?

Jamie Ager - 0:09:50
So, so an important detail that I left out. Probably the most important detail that I left out is that I my, my, I found Amy and she.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:10:01
She I.

Jamie Ager - 0:10:01
Was waiting for this farm. She, she was working on the farm as well there at Warren Wilson and she was actually kind of picked by the manager to kind of help build their marketing program for their beef program to start direct marketing the beef off the farm. And so we we started dating and then our senior year we were dating for a couple of years. We started our sophomore year, took a little break and then got back together our junior year. And then our senior year, we did a independent project around like this farm and kind of put the book, started getting into the books a little bit, which were most of like my mom's handwritten notes and, you know, things like that. And and we, we just kind of came back here young, fired up and idealistic about saving the farm and making it all work. And now we're in our 40s and we're still idealistic and fired up about saving farms and making them work. So it's pretty cool.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:10:59
So did you ask Amy out literally on the college farm? Like out of the farm? Was that when you asked him for the first day?

Jamie Ager - 0:11:05
So I was pretty shy in in college and I actually, you know, as a as a big family farm here, I've got lots of cousins and I was roombased with one of my cousins. And he was a little more extroverted than I was, and a little more handsome. And so he was a great resource because he was. He asked her to go to lunch with other men. That's right. Total wing man. So it's fun. We had a good time.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:11:37
So y'all are back on the farm and how do we get from then to the Hickory nut gap of 2022?

Jamie Ager - 0:11:43
Yeah. So I mean basically we graduated, started selling local, local we raised. I can't remember maybe 1000 chickens that first summer. No, not that many, maybe 400. And then we did a batch of turkeys, a couple batches of turkeys for Thanksgiving and then we we raised some hogs as well, sold those, we did some. We started getting the beef program kind of oriented towards the grass finishing thing. We also traveled a little bit those first couple of years. Amy and I worked in Hawaii for a couple of months on a grass fed ranching operation. Rick Habine and his wife had just had a baby and my brother was in the Navy and was in Guam at the time. So we all traveled there and met up in Hawaii and then we worked on these ranches and a big produce operation. You know, the farm here at home was was functional in the winter time just feeding cows and stuff and my mom and dad were totally able to do that. So I, Amy, came back to the farm with a compromise that we got to travel some.

Jamie Ager - 0:12:16
In the winters, in the second year, we actually went to New Zealand and and worked on some farms over there as well. So we got kind of exposed to all these grass based paradigms as part of our travels. I think she still complains but but also participates in the fact that whenever we travel anywhere we go visit farms and and look at agriculture. So that's always been part of the deal. But you know, we started selling grass fed beef, pasture, raised pork off the farm and and we had some success. I mean people were interested, there was enough interest. We were kind of stringing it all together.

Jamie Ager - 0:13:09
And then?

Kyle Krull - 0:13:23
He was a timeline, you know, when did you start selling grass fed? Because you know, grass Fed is gaining the popularity still. But I'm curious, you know, how early?

Jamie Ager - 0:13:29
The 2002 thousands when we came home and started doing so, it's pretty early. Pretty early, yeah, total. Like nobody even knew what it was. It was very early. It was very early and then we started, you know, but we were Super lucky in that. Asheville was a great. Market for us and and we're 20 minutes from the from downtown here at the farm and so we were able to kind of start to talk to chefs and the the food scene in Asheville was really starting to blossom at that time. So you know everything just kind of came together and we started selling more and more product locally and so by 2003. We we were making it work and and and you know put a bunch of fencing infrastructure on the farm and all the kind of water lines and all that kind of things that you need and then by 2004 we were like 26 at that time and. We got pregnant with our oldest son who just turned 18 yesterday. So that's kind of cool crazy deal. But but we we were we were doing fine economically but it was you know more of a reality check and like oh crap, here we go now we got a kid like lights happening and and so at that time we also were selling at tailgate markets. We were selling to some chefs and and and the man just kept was pretty strong.

Jamie Ager - 0:14:28
And and I could sell. I could go to town and sell. I always joked that I was, I was go to these restaurants and you'd be like, hey, do you want to pick twice as much for your ground beef? That was kind of my introductory line, you know, and that was a good way to kick things off. But and then it gives you a chance to explain the product and why it matters and all that and so from there. Well, I guess in 040 we got to travel to to Terra Madre, the the slow food gathering in Italy. So I traveled over there and you know I think it was interesting. I sat next to Michael Pollan over there during during Prince Charles's speech and I asked because I was hanging out with Joel Salatin was there as well and I saw the two of them hanging out and I had read Michael Pollan's the botany of Desire Book.

Jamie Ager - 0:15:21
Just in my sort of general life. And I was like oh he's a smart funny guy. And so I I chatted with him the whole time because it takes forever for these guys to come out and actually make a speech. And he was telling me all about the sort of thesis of the omnivores 11 and. And so then you know when that came out in 2006, I feel like that's when the lid really blew off the grass fed industry and the pasture based livestock world. That was kind of the first cultural. He had an article in the New York Times magazine, the, the.

Jamie Ager - 0:15:48
Power Steel I think it was called where he traced an animal all the way through the supply chain and kind of told that story and they contrasted it with Joel salad and it's kind of pasture based livestock program and and really kind of you know created a a nice dichotomy and a a bifurcation of the two the two models and and. And so it's just kind of an opportunity that in Asheville grew and the natural food stores wanted product. But then I also had taken an Ag leadership class through NC State and met a bunch of other farmers and I was kind of the weird organic guy, but also able to, you know, it's still agriculture, right? And and at the end of the day, that's kind of where I stand is like the farmers that make agriculture work. Are just trying to make a living, be on the farm, do it right. The only option that farmers have had for the past 100 years was was basically driven by consumer demand for cheap food. And so whoever went, the only people that want were able to win were the ones that could do it the most cheapest, fastest, whatever and that. And then and then the opportunity to kind of think about quality, to think about a more holistic model just didn't really exist. And so as I took this act leadership class.

Jamie Ager - 0:17:02
I met some other farmers. We kind of saw, I saw that the market was going to grow beyond what we could produce here at the Home Farm. And so I met Sam Dobson was really the first one I met. And Sam's just a great guy, great friend, and he's a dairy farmer in Iardo County here and had some extra capacity with his grazing programs. And so he just started growing some. He's doing some really nice ryegrass finishing for his dairy cows, stuff like that. And so that just kind of was a good synergistic partnership.

Jamie Ager - 0:17:31
And we were harvesting pretty close to the farm over there. So we we were able to kind of provide a fresh beef program to to a local natural food store at that time. And then from there we just kept growing you know we we we earth there is a regional chain of natural foods around here. They were interested in products. So we just kind of kept syncing up our, our. Our supply chain with farming partnerships with the with the customers.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:33
Jamie, I'm guessing the first thing you went into in retail was in the meat case, so non branded, right? But when was the first Hickory dot Gap branded product and how did that come about?

Jamie Ager - 0:18:42
That's a great question. You know, we didn't think a lot about branding and marketing before we we we kind of had numerous iterations of our name. Yeah. We first we were called Spring House Meats. That was our one of our original names. And then but but our farm is decently well known in this region. We've had people around the farm all over the years. My my granddad was a public figure for sure in this region and so. The Hickory Nut Gap was a known thing to some degree in in the really local community. And so as we sort of started thinking about that, the founder of Earth fair is a man named Randy Talley and and he's become a really good friend at this point and as well as a great customer. But Randy came up to me a farmer's market one day. This was like 0506 and he's like, he's kind of a charismatic business guy and like Jamie.

Jamie Ager - 0:19:18
Yeah. This is the next thing. This is like natural meat 2.0, like you're on it, man. And and and like the way you do this is with the branding. And he kind of went on and on and gave me some of like the marketing books to read like Seth Godin and some of these others. And I was like, OK, cool, let's check it out. And and we actually found one of our customers.

Jamie Ager - 0:19:45
Was shopping in the store and they were a design A graphic designer and so we were like hey, do you want to like can you help us out and they're like we'll trade for meat and so basically they traded for $1000 worth of meat and we went through the whole like and he is super artistic and and and remarkable around her ability for like an eye for things. And so she really led that charge 100% and kind of made all that happen and. And so then we kind of got a brand that we still use today, the Hickory Nut Gap brand is, is what we kind of built from that time and and so I guess your question Anthony? Was reminded what the question was and you know branded product, so.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:20:49
First, first product and customer was what, like a brick of ground beef? And then?

Jamie Ager - 0:20:53
And it was like a big bag of of ground beef that was like super disorganized and like, like how big? Like a £10 sack of of ground beef. Oh my God. Yeah. And then the, you know, the white white butcher paper was the way that those old butchers did it. So that was really probably the first one. That we did. We sold like quarter cows like that and then.

Kyle Krull - 0:21:19
Just with like a three note cap sticker, no.

Jamie Ager - 0:21:21
Just like a handwritten box with like, you know who was our first customers? Mike bostick. He's our neighbor up here. He bought a quarter cow. And I was in the back of a truck trying to get it all worked out. Amy was doing the invoicing. I mean it was a very homespun operation. And so, yeah, but then we started thinking about when you know this, this movement was catching the eye of a lot of these kind of old school USDA like freezer beef family run processing operations. And the one we were using first was over in Greenville, Tennessee and East Tennessee. Snaps ferry packing and they kind of got a label machine that we could actually like send some PDF files over to to get clay, you know that type of thing on it. And so this is sophisticated and and he had done some stuff for some of these direct marketers up in Virginia. So we got that all worked out and then from there.

Jamie Ager - 0:22:02
Basically the farmers market was probably the first time we had branded product like in a retail pack and then we really didn't have anything on like any retailer shelf until Ingles our our local like 200 store chain in this area, which is a great partner and very much a local business to Western North Carolina, but a big company $4 billion in revenue, but they picked us up. Yeah, that's a real company and and they've they've done a great job kind of. Building out a, a grocery chain that's western North Carolina, North Georgia, East Tennessee, but they don't hit any of the big cities because they don't want to piss off like Publix or Kroger or anybody. And they really built a great company and you know they they're very progressive minded and they saw the opportunity for like pasture based local grass fed beef and they brought us in probably 10 years ago at this point and that's been a great partnership.

Kyle Krull - 0:23:21
OK. So I mean we're talking grass fed beef, grass finish beef, you know, some pastor is talking, you know, sounds like Pastor is Turkey and chicken as well. When did the term and this is like from a consumer standpoint like regenerative as a new term. When did that term start to pop up on your radar and you know what did the transition from grass fed to regenerative look like from like a practice perspective, from a marketing perspective like what does that look like for you?

Jamie Ager - 0:23:45
Yeah, I mean, I think that. When we and I graduated from college, I graduated with a, you know, I did a major in history in environmental studies, did double major. And so the, the environmental studies degree was in concentration and sustainable agriculture because that was kind of the vocabulary that we used. It was kind of broader than just organics, right. And this was when the organic vendors first came out. And so organic kind of got under some fire because of the rigidity of those. Standards and so and we weren't certified organic here and most meat wasn't right because of the you know the we could have a grain fed organic program. So it wasn't a super helpful word to to connect to customers.

Jamie Ager - 0:24:16
No. And we always kind of came at it with a very regenerative approach around rotational grazing, around like mob grazing became a term that we used for a while that got sort of popular. But these concepts of cover cropping, I mean a lot of them originated with organics and then organics didn't really know what to do with livestock sector super well early on. And so they they didn't really nail the regenerative port part of that production method and and then ultimately you know a standards based approach to to to a definition that's a consumer word like organic is is is just agriculture is way too complicated to be described in a single claim regardless of the claim and so you know our belief in the sort of. You know, Joel Salatin sort of called it the beyond organic belief of like improving everything as opposed to just, you know, meeting a standard is kind of the right mentality. And I totally agree with that. And I think probably I didn't. The first time I heard the word regenerative was I would say like 2014 or 2015 and I did like it. I thought it's a helpful word because because it does kind of help.

Jamie Ager - 0:25:26
Understand and explain that we're not just sustaining something and keeping it going, you're actually creating something that's improving all the time. And and the belief that as humans we can be stewards of the land in a way that that creates a positive impact and that you can eat food, that that actually improves things is is a pretty paradigm shifting. Spiritual thing almost right. Like there's a connection to the that that belief that is that is exciting and so to me that was.

Kyle Krull - 0:26:33
It's like the difference between do no harm and to do good, you know, it's like not do evil, but to actually do something that's making a positive impact. And I, I very much as a consumer, resonate with that paradigm shift that you just talked about. So really appreciate you calling that.

Jamie Ager - 0:26:47
Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean honestly though like by then, so Sam Sam's part of the, we work with Sam now for 10 years by this time. And you know we're all discussing this this word that's come around regenerative and and there's some skepticism, very reasonable skepticism about all the vocabulary around these the natural foods industry, no, no antibiotics, no hormones. The non-GMO claim was kind of hot at that time too and you know that really didn't have much teeth at all to it other than just not being a genetically modified product. But it was still full of chemicals. And so the organic industry was taking a hit on this non-GMO claim as as kind of brands where we're using it instead of organic and kind of you know getting similar shelf space, getting similar retail prices. And so there was some skepticism within the organic community about that claim and. And you know, the regenerative one was like, oh great, here's the next iteration of it. How are we going to do that? And so, you know, I've always had a little bit of a a skeptical notion about just single word claims, but clearly at this point, regenerative is the word that that's that's rising. Yeah. And it's the best word so far that describes it. You know, there is some concern that it's.

Jamie Ager - 0:27:43
Going to get coopted by by various agricultural interests as consumer interest and demand grows for it and my hope is that we can kind of kind of help lead that charge around the definition of regenerative and ultimately help to to kind of secure it as a as a production method that really takes a multistakeholder engagement belief system around you know everybody wins and and the cool thing about a regenerative is that you know. The key to it is that you need good, good farmers on the land to help make stuff happen and that to me is is exciting to to kind of help drive what the definition of regenerative becomes.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:28:52
Yeah. So, so let's go there, right. How is Sacre nut gap regenerative? I know you guys work with Savory and I'll let you kind of explain what that whole process is and what you guys believe in that methodology, but maybe also level set with the regen story. What products are you selling? Where can they be found at? What channels are you selling them in on top of kind of how is Sacre nut gap?

Jamie Ager - 0:29:13
So. You know, regenerative AG is this, you know, improving things all the time, belief system. And what we've done here is you know what one thing we're lucky for is we're in the southeast and the southeast is a great place to grow yearround grass fed beef. We can, we can finish cattle here in the winter time. We work with farmers in eastern North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia to finish cattle through the winter time and then we can work with farmers in the Piedmont and the mountains here. In the summer time, so we really do have the ability to grow grass year round, you know practices like rotational grazing, keeping livestock outside on pasture cover cropping. These are sort of the core tenants of regenerative agriculture and these are all things that we heavily promote with all the farming partnerships that we have throughout a supply chain. But but there really hasn't been a good way of like verifying and testing.

Jamie Ager - 0:29:41
What is regenerative for a long time? And so when we first started working with Whole Foods, they made us get claims like verifier claims to USDA. And so that was a good process. We learned how to how to navigate that. But then you realize that it's not that hard, right? You can just put some protocols together and figure it out and it's kind of this bureaucratic storytelling activity.

Jamie Ager - 0:30:06
That you can do but what what we want to do is really think about food system and and and change in agriculture in sort of a paradigm shifting way. And so at that point we we we're looking around to kind of decide how to do regenerative sort of definition wise and how do you verify it and what I we we we saw Savory Institute as kind of an industry leader. In in that process, and sort of a family connection to that is that my, my Aunt Susie went to the 1960 rhododendron ball with Sam Bingham, and Sam Bingham cowrote the original holistic management with Alan Savory. And so Sam was Sam was preaching to us. Early on and so and we actually have Alan I I I've never met I've met Alan Savory one time but but he's actually coming here for dinner Saturday night so that'll be cool to get to hang out yeah the farm but with with Sam. So these are all like the the figures of my childhood that that we're celebrating these these concepts and so the one thing that we really liked about their methodology.

Jamie Ager - 0:31:21
Is that it's an outcomes based approach to to verification. And so it really is kind of a an acknowledgement that every ecosystem is unique and different and and you know one example of this organic conversation is that we've always grown apples here at the farm and you know it's always been a when I was a child we sort of sold them throughout probably good. Like helped me become a salesman because I could. We were selling apples that will produce stand on the side of the road as a little boy and I loved it. I thought it was so much fun to meet all these people from all over the country and all these tourists that were coming in through western North Carolina and so, but we surely couldn't do organic apples. And so I planted an orchard here, a small orchard just about 10 years ago to with a bunch of heirloom varieties and blight resistant and and have a lot more.

Jamie Ager - 0:32:14
Potential to grow them organically, but it's really hard to grow sort of at organic apples here in Western North Carolina and and have the ability to make them look pretty and and be be acceptable to a retailer. And so I'm, I'm super humble about the the notion that every ecosystem is different, everywhere is different and the organic standards aren't super helpful in kind of building resilient food systems on a broad spectrum level and how you do this well and so. What I like about the savory model is that it is an outcomes based approach. We work with like you know the Blue Ridge bioregion, we work with the Piedmont in North Carolina, we have the coastal plain of North Carolina. We work with folks up in Kentucky. That's a whole different region. So. So that just in our little region there's a ton of small different ecosystems that that are all unique. And So what we need to do is really understand what does regenerative mean and what are the outcomes for each one of these regions.

Jamie Ager - 0:33:10
Look like and if we compare them year to year, we can look for improvement overtime. And so that methodology really appealed to us. So we went ahead and became a savory hub here at our Home Farm and Savory as an organization is kind of promoting these global hubs as kind of experts and holistic management. And and the whole and the sort of regenerative, you know, methods broadly speaking and it's not just EOV, the ecological outcome verification process, that's one component of the holistic management framework. And so really thinking about our decision making as as a holistic decision making around all these stakeholders is really kind of a a savory belief too. So to us that was really consistent with how we were thinking already and so it just became a good fit.

Kyle Krull - 0:34:27
I'm trying to think about this from the consumer perspective for somebody who may not understand all of the agricultural terminology that we're we're discussing here. So could you expand a little bit about, you know the difference between owner organic certification that's input based versus the OV certification? Like what outcomes are they measuring? At what level of frequency is it soil organic matter, is it water infiltration rates like what, what do those two programs look like?

Jamie Ager - 0:34:52
Great question. So yeah, I mean in short. The organic standards are are sort of rules to to how you grow organic and we are certified organic here by the way at our farm too. But you know it's very much like an audit every year they come through, they look at your inputs, they look at your practices and you kind of check the box are you organic or not organic. The EOV process is more around testing organic matter. Testing your water quality, looking at your ecosystem health overall, looking at biodiversity and and then you kind of have you, you create a baseline in year one and then you monitor that baseline over time and you're looking for improvement in all those scores. And so that really is kind of that outcomes based management creates better outcomes scenario versus a rule following scenario that organics is. Both are valuable and and we don't you know really what we want to think about as a company is Hickory Nut Gap is is as a brand. We want to be something a brand of of sort of people who care about agriculture who care about food and and and want to be trusted to make the right choices for the consumer because at the end of the day all that stuff is sort of.

Jamie Ager - 0:35:56
It's it's a lot of noise and so really you got about two seconds to make a choice at any you know at the retail store or whatever. And So what we're trying to do and when we help people that's totally what we look for is does this person understand all the nuance and the confusion and and they're willing to get into the details because we want to ultimately be a be a company that people trust and that's not something you can you can take lightly. And so and it's complicated and it's there's all these little things and we're learning all the time too because this is really hard businesses, you know its own thing, right, learning how to run a business and then learning how to run a a food system or a meat company, it's its own challenge. So in that way I think that you know what we from a consumer facing standpoint, our real goal is to build trust and then layer all these activities in in order to do that.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:23
Yep. And so just tell the audience, Jamie, what all do you sell? Where can it be bought at? Just so people who want to support.

Jamie Ager - 0:37:30
You so we sell 100% grass fed beef raised here in the the on the East Coast and mostly the southeast. We've got farmers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, East Tennessee, Kentucky a little bit in Ohio and and then we we sell you know. All cuts of beef. So we're a whole animal program. We're bringing in a bunch of carcasses every week and her cattle every week. Turn those into carcasses. And you know, the meat business is basically AD manufacturing business. You take one item and you turn it at about 50 skews.

Jamie Ager - 0:37:48
And and then you try to stay balanced and utilize on all of them and then you got like really tight gross margins. So everything goes in the freezer, there's your cash. And so you know, so we basically sell all cuts of beef. We sell food service cuts, we sell sub primals to restaurants. We're in U.S. Foods, we're in Cisco, we're in performance food group for food service customers throughout the regions.

Jamie Ager - 0:38:03
We are selling Whole Foods is our biggest customer here in the South region. They're a great customer and I really helped pioneer a lot of these local beef programs and pork programs. Great Earth fares are great customer Ingalls right up here in the road is is one of our top customers. We sell about $50,000 a week into local restaurants as well. We've got a bunch of great local chefs and accounts. Our little farm store here in Fairview, I'm, I'm actually this is our office too and this little farm stores got a butcher shop and everything else and it does about $25,000 a week out of here. We have a CSA and then we've got fresh direct up in New York carries a lot of our pork and our all the heritage pork they have comes from Hickory Nut Gap. We have some branded product some breakfast sausage up in New York. So basically you can get product from New York down to Florida.

Jamie Ager - 0:38:52
And then we have a yeah from from those of the retailers that we work with. We are talking to Harris Teeter and it looks like we're going to go in there sometime in this summer.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:39:34
Nice. What what's been the hardest part of scaling from direct market to that? I mean, is it processing? Is it aggregating all the farmers? Is it, you know, managing supply chains? Is it margin? You know, what's been the biggest challenge to really growing from zero to where you're at now?

Jamie Ager - 0:39:51
All that stuff, I mean it's basically, it's basically you know the meat business is, is a game of utilization and you're also dealing with an industry that's very consolidated with with the the four bigs doing like 80% of the business in this in this industry. So very concentrated industry, very tight gross margins and then and then making sure you're balanced I think you know. Those are all those all been different major challenges at various times over the years. And so it's hard to know which one is the biggest challenge probably utilization and well here's the utilization in general is always a huge operational issue right. When you when you forecast your harvest you got to make sure that you got a home for all the different pieces and parts of that animal and and then. Like I say, our latest challenge is probably managing for gross margin just with inflation. That's something we're really having to watch right now. Meat processing is also a big deal on the East Coast. There's not a lot of scaled meat processors. So our our partnership and marks Berry Farm is, is a great partnership. They do, they do all of our harvesting, but you know they're learning too and they're a smaller plant that's that's, that's growing to come more of a midsize plant.

Jamie Ager - 0:40:46
And there's a lot of learning curves and a lot of investment dollars there that are all difficult to manage too. So yeah, I think what what I do think is cool about this industry is that that you know our team, most of the partners that we see that want to be successful in this do kind of get that bigger picture and are and are interested in in doing this really in sort of holistic food systems approach. But the business model stuff, there's no doubt.

Kyle Krull - 0:41:41
Yeah, I'm curious from like a marketing and a branding perspective, it sounds like you've got an Omni channel presence within like everywhere you could sell me, you are selling me. How do you maintain the storytelling aspect of like this is what makes Hickory that gap different ads, you know that your your Cisco reps or your your US food reps or all the different restaurants like are there highlights on the menus, is that something that's important to you?

Jamie Ager - 0:42:04
How does that, yeah, we've always had a very low marketing budget because your gross margins are small, your marketing budgets. Small as well. I think we're lucky because we're so close to Asheville. And so a lot of folks from like Charlotte and Raleigh, Durham, Greenville, Atlanta do come here as tourists. And so they, they get to see our product on menu here locally and then they can sort of get interested in that product and want to use it elsewhere. I think the reason that we are affiliated with Western North Carolina and this beautiful part of the country is helpful because there's a romantic element to being, to being in the mountains and and and having that concept is is exciting for people. And then you know, we do a lot of farm tours with chefs and various people and I mean every time we do a farm tour, I feel like.

Jamie Ager - 0:42:33
You get people out, you see the animals, you see some pigs, you see some chickens and you sort of tell this story in a way that people can connect to. Then you that's that's a customer for life, right. Whether that's at Earth there whether that's at angles, whether that's at Whole Foods, they they they they want to buy Hickory nut gap and so to me that's that's an exciting thing. But it is a hard product to brand on shelf and like, you know, there's the glass and not many people really know the the companies behind the glass very well in like a fresh meat department. And then you know, there's a lot of private label out there and a lot of the hot dog brands, they're just hot dog brands, right. They just buy ingredients, process it and sell it. They're not in the whole carcass business. Yeah. So as a company we we've developed a hot dog, but it's hard to get shelf space.

Jamie Ager - 0:43:25
With one item hot dog you need like a four, four skis to kind of get folks attention. So I think it's you know we've been doing a long time too. So when you do it a long time people, people kind of get the experience and and want to buy and we we don't do much direct to consumer other than the farm store out here. And so that is an interesting part of our company in that we're we are having to, we're pretty much all you know. B to BB to B very little.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:27
B to C yeah. Yeah. Well, clearly you guys have evolved and you've conquered so many of those challenges over the years. I mean, how have you funded all this? Have you taken outside capital? Have you bootstrapped the whole thing? You know, what's the fundraiser?

Jamie Ager - 0:44:42
Bootstrap this thing until about 20, so about 2014 is when cattle prices skyrocketed. And we realized we were going to have to pay more for the livestock and we realized that our systems weren't very good for like understanding how much we need to raise prices, how to do that well, all those things. And you know we really just kind of came at this from from an idealistic standpoint in the business side, we really had to learn and so at that point. I kind of we were done maybe 3 or 4,000,000 in revenue. We were starting to matter to people's livelihoods from farmers that we worked with to the to the staff that we employed. And I was like this is starting to feel scary if we can't operate this thing long term. And and I realized the complexity of the industry and so actually look to Organic Valley is kind of a great company to pay attention to and their coop model and so got to know some of those folks.

Jamie Ager - 0:45:15
And and they invited us to their organic annual their annual meeting up in Wisconsin in 2016. And I actually kind of had the intention of like maybe we turned this into a coop. What does that look like when we met the the founder of or the the lawyer who drafted all the bylaws for the original Organic Valley stuff. And I had lunch with him and then he flew down here afterwards and we hung out for a couple days trying to to kind of explore that idea but. You know, the expense of creating a formal coop and the sort of the, the, the coordination with all the stakeholders involved felt like a huge project that we just didn't have capacity to even think about doing. And so the advice I got at that time or or soon after was pretty good from Tim Joseph at Maple Hill and Tim's like Jamie, you're a great benevolent dictator.

Jamie Ager - 0:46:12
Run this thing and and and do it right and then when you get to be bigger you can always pivot to once you get bigger and profitable and you're a strong company you can do an E stop, you can do. You know there's these purpose perpetual trust. There's all kinds of creative business structures that allow for stakeholder engagement. But for now you just got to like build a company and you need creative entrepreneurial. License to do what you think you need to do to make it work. And so we did. I was, you know, we did raise money from just friends and family here locally. We raised a little over $1,000,000 in 2018 and that kind of gave us a kick start. And like, oh, there's value here. How does this all look? What do we do here? And you know, we proceeded to get out of whack on utilization. We proceeded to to make a bunch of big errors.

Jamie Ager - 0:47:00
And and and learn the hard way and and and yeah and you know try to grow and and lead actual leadership team and organization all these things that I've never done before but I learned and read all the books and and and and you know I've definitely learned things the hard way doing all this stuff but I think that's the best way right because then you understand that you've actually got to learn it and it's it's it really sticks. And so at that point we were we were doing, we're doing about 5,000,000 I think in 2017 which is what we raised the $1,000,000 on. And you know today we're we finished 2021 a little over 11 million in revenue and we have a trailing run rate now about 14 million. So we're going to be a pretty good company and then we're super proud of the the farmers that we work with, we're super proud of the team we've put together to kind of operate this thing. And you know, super proud of the product. I think it's, it's getting better all the time and to me it's exciting to sort of really understand what that looks like. But at the same time you know, we made a little money in 2021 we'll make some money this year too, but it's, it's, it's still the meat business and so you know, we don't really feel like we're a great fit for like you know venture capital or any of those folks.

Jamie Ager - 0:48:22
Because of our sort of more stable long term approach to kind of systems change in the in an industry like this consolidated as the meat business, we're not a CPG brand, we're not a like a high tech brand. We're just good old fashioned like doers.

Kyle Krull - 0:49:08
Which is good.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:49:09
I think that I think the potential return here, but it's the, it's the time horizon, right, that's different than most of the the classical like CPG investments.

Jamie Ager - 0:49:17
It's true. Yeah, we, we we're confident that we can get to these to be a bigger meat company that is going to throw off strong net income EBITDA numbers. There's going to be interesting to investors.

Kyle Krull - 0:49:31
So yeah, what what does the future look like? You know, you mentioned you're on a run rate of 14 million this year. You know, other financial goals you're trying to hit for the next year or two, five years. Are there products and innovations you want to get into? You know what are your goals for the future of Hickory duck at?

Jamie Ager - 0:49:46
So you know we we've spent the last six months sort of trying to do some equity, great funding and and basically start in May kind of realized that with the economy getting shaky that that was going to be difficult to continue to to be successful at. And so at that time we kind of pivoted to just let's get, let's stay profitable, let's let's kind of weather this this. This economic downturn or whatever it's going to be for the next year or two or whatever it is we're we're actually currently raising some money on a convertible note just to get some cash on the balance sheet and make sure we're we're decently strong enough to make sure we do weather it. We do have some incoming business which is exciting and you know our our terms with customers and our terms with farmers and our supply chain are a little out of wax. So we do burn some cash. As we as we add on customers and so that's something that we pay attention to, but so we don't want to lose the ability to to to not grow because of our cash position. But at the same time what's nice about having a little cash in the bank too is product development. And as we you know right now we're we're kicking off a new product like a primal blend ground beef with some organ meats in it and stuff like that for a customer and always takes some R&D and it takes some.

Jamie Ager - 0:50:40
You know thought around you know all the all the sort of process of R&D does take some money. So these are the items that we are excited to grow and the more branded product that we can put out in the marketplace the better. And really looking at you know our gross margin targets of 15% are are super low margin target. And So what one of our goals as a company is to really add on items that drive additional gross margin over time and really see the value added division of the company. As that tool, that more CPG oriented tool and so we're.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:51:42
You better. You better start calling yourself the Cpg brand man.

Jamie Ager - 0:51:47
Our gross margins aren't sexy enough, no, but it's true like what we're going to do is basically have organize our our financials and everything so that we have our sort of raw material partnerships. Now we have our CPG partnerships. And we'll we'll brand as much product as we can, but keep that keep that raw material flowing from the utilization standpoint. So we can keep harvesting animals, making sure we're utilized making a little margin but then over here continue to try to to to you know. Get some, get some additional value out of the other side and then looking at you know there's a tons of places that this is an interesting industry with carbon credits and all that type of thing. This is, this is all kind of in motion. There's a ton of activity and a ton of really early stage stuff happening, but we pay attention to all that and can that be a helpful tool for the farmers that we work with. And how can we be helpful in that whole industry? There's this whole climate smart Grant, USDA grants that are coming out because we're USDA hub at the farm, we can actually take on a lot of the the, the monitoring services and all that type of activity that's going to be out there infrastructure wise. You know there's some processing.

Jamie Ager - 0:52:41
Activity, there's all kinds of little needs in the processing space that could be interesting. So as we look at the future, we see you know some some some partnerships with other smaller brands like Hickory Nut Gap, do we partner up and and create kind of this hundred $200 million meat company and and that thing is going to really be humming at some point. So I think 5 or 10 years down the road. There's going to be much more consolidation in this industry with good partnerships and really see see us be a big part of that.

Kyle Krull - 0:53:35
Yeah, I'm just going to spitball off that last idea because I'm a CBG. That's all I do. Cbg it.

Jamie Ager - 0:53:40
Could be really cool.

Kyle Krull - 0:53:41
If there were like local food hubs like you're talking about in the beef industry, that somehow I'd like an umbrella banner, call it Hickory nutcap could be the umbrella, but there could be local beef hubs across the country in that. The beef just stays in that area, reduce the carbon footprint and transport and it can have like a nationally recognized name retain that level of localized economy, that circular economy, right. So I think that'd be really cool. I love where your head's at in the space. I think there's a, there's a positive outlook for, for what you're doing. It's really exciting.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:13
Yeah. Yeah. So our our final question for you, Jamie, this is a question we're going to ask everybody and it's. What needs to happen for regenerative brands that 50% market share by 2050?

Jamie Ager - 0:54:28
Like how much, how much what? What is this elevator speech? Or is this?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:33
This is you can hey you.

Jamie Ager - 0:54:35
Can answer whatever way.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:36
You like you can go investment, you can go policy, you can go futuristic. Crazy tech thing? I don't know.

Jamie Ager - 0:54:41
So, so it's all of the above, all hands on deck for sure. I think it's going to, I would say more than anything it's collaboration on all those pieces. Which isn't a very exciting answer but I think it's true and and so and so you know yeah policy wise this is going to be helpful and interesting to see how this this climate smart grant cycle turns out and we can see what happens there. I think collaborations between brands in this space and and meat processing in in particular is going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. But but also super helpful as we think about the growth and scale of the of the overall industry. I think that from a from a financial standpoint you know this sort of interest in a a longterm horizon companies that are going to actually build true value through their through their whole system is going to be part of the equation no doubt. So all those pieces kind of need a little bit of tweaking. But, but it's totally doable and so I guess that's the ambitious, right, so 50% market share.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:55:50
I love that you said that though. I love that you said that though.

Jamie Ager - 0:55:53
As, as, as like the four bigs, maybe 50 billion each. So the industry is what, 260, something like that in the US so that's 130 billion. It's going to hit a tipping point within that time period where where things really accelerate for sure.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:12
No doubt.

Kyle Krull - 0:56:13
So.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:14
Love it, man. Thank you so much for joining us. We've talked a lot, but I learned some things today that I didn't even know before, so that's awesome. But I can't thank you enough for joining us and just pumped to have you on board, man. Thank you.

Jamie Ager - 0:56:24
Thank you all for the opportunity. For sure. For sure, it's cool to cool to have people interested. Thanks, Jenny. All right, see. Y'all.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:37
For show notes and more information on our guests and what we discussed on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com that is regen-brands.com. You can also check out our YouTube channel, Regen Brands Podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to future episodes. Thanks so much for tuning into the Regen Brands Podcast brought to you by the Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned something new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to help us build a better and more legitimate food system. Love you, guys.