The Legal Field: Legal Perspectives in the Agriculture Industry
Hosted by Agriculture Attorney Amanda Perry Carl, The Legal Field discusses legal topics that are of great importance to the agriculture industry. Our guests provide unique perspectives for the advancement and preservation of this vital industry.
The Legal Field: Legal Perspectives in the Agriculture Industry
Tackling Food Waste: A Conversation with Ben Moore, CEO and Founder of The Ugly Company
Join us on this "ugly" episode as Amanda Perry Carl chats with Ben Moore, CEO and Founder of The Ugly Company. Amanda and Ben discuss Ben's family's farming legacy in California's Central Valley, how Ben was inspired to get into the food waste upcycling industry, and the amazing things that The Ugly Company is doing in this space. In this episode, you will also hear some of the legal and regulatory issues that those in the food waste space face! As we say in the south, "I'm not trying to be ugly... but you better tune in to this episode"!
Welcome to the Legal Field Podcast, where we discuss legal and regulatory topics that are of critical importance to the agriculture industry. My name is Amanda Perry Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer whose family has been farming in Florida since 1823, before Florida even became a state. I have spent almost 20 years as an attorney in the agricultural industry and have made it my mission to ensure that everyone in our incredible industry understands the legal and regulatory issues that we face so that we can keep feeding Florida, America, and the world. So if you're a farmer, rancher, or grower, if you are involved in raising cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, hogs, horses, or other livestock, if you grow fruits, vegetables, or sod, if you are involved with the aquaculture, turfgrass, or horticulture industries, if you are fighting the good fight to help our citrus industry survive, or if you just like to eat and you appreciate our ag produce This podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, lands and way of life, then come join us in the legal field and see what's growing on. Welcome to another episode of the Legal Field Podcast. My name is Amanda Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer here in the state of Florida. I am so excited today to introduce our guest for this episode, Ben Moore of The Ugly Company. Ben, welcome, and thanks for being here with us.
Speaker 00:Hey Amanda, I really appreciate you having me. This is a cool experience for me. I'm all the way out here in California and you're all the way out there in Florida. So we've got the two coasts that have united here, at least for a little bit, right?
Speaker 01:Exactly. Two of the most beautiful coasts, I think, in the United States. And technology is a great thing sometimes.
Speaker 00:Yeah, it's awesome. So yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 01:Thank you so much for being on. You and your company are doing some amazing things. And I think our listeners are going to really enjoy hearing about the things that you guys are doing. And we're going to talk a whole lot deeper into this podcast about the details of what the Ugly Company is doing. Could you give our listeners kind of your elevator pitch of what the Ugly Company is before we dive in?
Speaker 00:Yeah, absolutely. So we are the Ugly Company located here in Farmersville, California. Yes, indeed, Farmersville is a real place. A lot of people think it's a made-up town, but it is a real place. We're a vertically integrated processor of dried fruit. All of our products have no added sugars, no added ingredients. It's literally just the fruit itself. We make some pretty unique fruits. So peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, cherries, and a few others. And one of the most unique things about our business is all of our fruit is 100% upcycled. It is all sourced from our local farms here in Central California. Originally, the fruit was purpose-grown to become a fresh piece of fruit eaten in the grocery store. But for us specifically, we use the unmarketable fruit that has, whether it's cosmetic issues, so hail damage, wind scars, or it has some sort of shelf stability issue like a split pit or some mechanical damage or soft shoulder, something like that. We basically take that fruit that otherwise would have gotten tossed out and we upcycle it and dry it here in our facility in Farmersville. And we're for sale in about 4,000 retail outlets nationwide to include Sam's Club, Walmart, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Giant Eagle, go down the list, CVS, there's a whole bunch of them. So we're very likely to be found in a grocery store near you.
Speaker 01:It's so awesome what you guys are doing. I think that a lot of people this day and age are concerned with with food waste and making sure that we don't have issues with that. And so what you guys are doing is pretty awesome. For our listeners who can't see the video, you have a nickname on your shirt. And I want, can you tell us a little bit about your nickname and how you got your nickname here?
Speaker 00:Yeah, yeah. So my nickname, if you can't see it on my shirt, it's Big Ugly. So when growing up, everybody used to call me Big Ben because I'm a pretty tall guy. I'm a pretty large guy. So my whole life, everybody kind of called me Big Ben. But then once I started the Ugly Company, people started just kind of referring to me as like, oh, there's the ugly guy or there's Mr. Ugly or whatever. And then it morphed. The basis morphed into being called Big Ugly. So, you know, so I've leaned into it. It's kind of my, it's kind of my, you know, I guess my alter ego here a little bit where, you know, normally I'm just a, I'm a very, you know, kind of private life living farmer in rural central California. But then, you know, I put on the, I put on the Big Ugly persona and I go out and I sell fruit across the nation now. So that's where all that came from.
Speaker 01:I love this. And I love that you don't take yourself too seriously. And with a name like The Ugly Company, I love that you guys don't take yourself too seriously. So I know that your family has sort of an agricultural legacy there in that area. Can you talk to our listeners a little bit about that? We talked before the podcast started. My family's been farming here in Florida since 1823. And these long family farming legacies, I think, are so important. And it's so important. More and more people are seeing the how cool it is to have family farms and these farming legacies and know their farmer and know their grower. So can you talk to us a little bit about that history?
Speaker 00:Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, it's pretty cool. Cause yeah, I mean, the small family farm is, it doesn't matter where you're at, um, you know, in the United States, that seems to be an increasingly kind of relic of the past, right. Um, where that's not so much the case these days, but yeah, so about half, um, half my family, uh, were moved from Sweden. They were Swedish farmers. Um, and then my, my grandma moved out here, met my grandpa who he, um, you know, kind of, I mean, really just like kind of true American lineage, but like at some point that part of the family came from, came from Ireland, had been farming all the way throughout the U.S. ever since. But on the plot of ground where we farm and live now, it's in Kingsburg. I'm the fourth generation in that specific farm. And then the other part of my family, it's kind of interesting that the most wanted criminal in California at one point was related to me. It was an accused train robber that never actually got convicted of the original crime. But yeah, you can look that one up. That's interesting. Chris Evans and John Sontag. It was quite the kind of like the Robin Hood tale of Central California. So that was my great, great, great, great uncle.
Speaker 01:Yeah. That is awesome. I hope all of our listeners look that up because I know I will be looking that up. I like to joke that my family came to Florida in 1823 with no air conditioner, no refrigeration because they were running from something. I have no idea, but you have a family history as well of a train robbery. So I'll have to look that up. That's pretty
Speaker 00:awesome. Maybe you guys are pirates or something.
Speaker 01:Who knows? They came from South Carolina. Who knows what they were coming to Florida for, but I'm glad they did. Well, I spent a lot of time in California over the years as in-house counsel for a large ag company and working for some other ag companies. And as much as I love Florida and our agriculture, California does have some beautiful areas, some amazing agriculture, such a variety and diversity of crops up and down the state from Oxnard to Salinas, the Salad Bowl of America to Central Valley, which is what the breadbasket of America. I think is that the nickname that Central Valley gets?
Speaker 00:Yeah, for people, yeah, sometimes people call it the bread basket. It's really more of the fruit basket, I would say, because it's, you know, where, like, the lion's share of peaches, nectarines, plums, things like that are grown domestically in the U.S. But, yeah, sometimes people call it the bread basket, but it's whatever title fits. I guess it's whatever you're eating, because probably something you ate this morning was grown somewhere within 100 miles of where I'm standing right now, so.
Speaker 01:What are the primary crops that your family grew over the years?
Speaker 00:Yes, I mean, you know, dating back, like, every family farm, it's just continue to evolve. Um, and, and something is, something has changed generationally, um, you know, every, every single time. Um, so my great grandpa, that was one of the original growers and packers of emperor table grapes, uh, that, that basically shipped table grapes by cold rail back through Chicago. Um, and as the legend goes, as far as I understand, um, table grapes were originally shipped via Chicago because they would mine ice out of the great lakes, uh, up North. Um, and that was how they would somehow refrigerate their train cars to someplace or another but um so my grandpa my great grandpa was one of the on the kind of leading edge of that back in the day since then our farm evolved then into mostly being raisin grapes and wine grapes and also stone fruit as well uh we had um some of the biggest plums i've ever seen my grandpa used to grow in this area that was kind of virgin ground that used to be the river bottom um where i live and then now um largely what we have um in production is almonds we have some alfalfa i also grow persimmons as well and we still do have a little bit of raisin grapes a little bit of wine grapes.
Speaker 01:So you and your family, you understand this industry so well. And when you kind of, we'll talk in a minute how you got into the Ugly Company, how you founded that. You understand farming, you understand the challenges of farmers, and you understand this industry so well to be able to enter into this space that you've entered into in the food waste space. On Central Valley and families kind of changing over generation what they're growing, my husband is a diehard Buffalo Bills fan being from Buffalo. So our family's favorite corner back is from the central valley and their family it's from what i've read they've done a lot of morphing from cantaloupes cotton cantaloupes and pistachios i think is what they're now in as well josh allen's family
Speaker 00:um yeah yeah they're from firebaugh and i i as far as i understand they grow quite a bit almonds uh now so yeah it's always pretty cool like central valley guy he he did his junior college ball at the same junior college that i went to for a semester uh as well so it's a pretty pretty cool have have him in nfl kind of representing the central valley
Speaker 01:And MVP last year as well. So doing a great job of representing Central Valley and the farming industry. We watched Hard Knocks because they're on Hard Knocks this season. In the first episode, there was a kid getting an autograph asking how the farm was doing. So it's really cool to kind of see Central Valley. Little kids know that his family farms in Central Valley. So it's really cool to see that on the national scale and in the NFL.
Unknown:Yeah.
Speaker 00:Yeah. You know, and that's one thing with the city, like we, us being, you know, in, in California, like a lot of people just aren't, they don't think agriculture when they think California, but, um, it, you know, we do grow a huge portion of the fruits and vegetables and nuts that are consumed in the U S. So it's always pretty cool when people like, kind of like they break that misconception a little bit and they get a little bit plugged into what we're doing here.
Speaker 01:It's not just Hollywood. It's not just LA. It's not just beaches. It's or San Francisco. It's, it's farming, it's agriculture. And that's such a huge part of the state. Like you said. So you've got this farming legacy, you're fourth generation. How did you come up with this concept of the ugly company? Can you walk us through how that came to be and where you got this idea?
Speaker 00:Yeah. So like the quick version of it is, so I left the farm. I have two brothers. We all left the farm. We all went to the army. I was very much like in my life, I was planning on doing two things and two things only. One was making a career in the army and the other was coming home and farming. Um, so I left for the service. I ended up, uh, I got injured pretty bad. So I got medically retired, moved back, uh, but at a pretty young age. So that, you know, the military service door closed shut, um, came back here to central California and, and kind of have that conversation with my dad, like, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm back. I'm ready to start. Like, where do I, you know, where do I get work in here? And he's just kind of like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm supporting and sustaining myself kind of, but there's really not much opportunity here for you. You're going to have to find something else to do. And hopefully, you know, hopefully we keep the farm in the family we can and you can enjoy it but it's it's just it's not really a career there's not really it's not enough to go around at this point right so um so what i did there is i i uh i had my truck driving license because you know us as farmers like it's at least back in the day it's pretty common that all of us would haul our own crops we all have our class a so i went and i drove um truck for a local company hauling oversized loads you know construction equipment basically bulldozers excavators things like that eventually i went out on my own bought my own truck and started um um doing many things but one of them was hauling fruit from um the fields to the packing houses and the farmers would also pay me to haul and dump uh the fruit that was unmarketable so i spent years doing that and then like you know like any truck driver right i mean you're you're you're especially if you work in ag you're eating what you're hauling and you know unless it's shit and even then if you're hungry enough you might consider it right so um i was basically just driving the truck all day long for you know 10 12 14 hours a day eating this fruit that i was dumping out and i'm just like god there's it's just gotta be something better to do with this than, than dump it out. And so I spent, spent a couple of years, like really looking into the, the kind of causal factors of, Hey, why is there all this good fruit? That's edible. That is just the, the, with farms, like all they can do is just dump it out. Like with our farm, I had been exposed to that, but it was on a much smaller scale. Um, and then my, my grandma being from Sweden, like the old school Swedes back then were really, really, um, creative with preserving fruits and vegetables because they didn't have, you know, it's, it's a northern very northern um latitudinal um country so at one point you know they back in the day they didn't have fresh fruits and vegetables year-round so um swedes were just are very well known for their ability to preserve um different types of things so my grandma on our farm she would go through and pick a lot of what was left over um and she would you know whether it was dropped on the ground or it was left in a tree she would she had all these recipes and things that she would make stuff with and one of my favorite things she would do is she would dry fruit on the but it's a nice warm place. It gets a good direct sun, but there's not rabbits and stuff running around, you know, eating on the fruit. So she would try fruit on the roof of the house. And so once I was looking at this, you know, as an adult, as a truck driver, like, well, hey, I know there's things you can make this fruit out of. Why is nobody doing it? Or, you know, why is it not being at least done at scale? And why is the fruit being thrown out? And what I determined was there was really two main factors. One was really on the consumer demand side. So there, if you think maybe in your personal life you've probably never had like a white nectarine juice or a dried white peach or something like that so the the items that you could use this fruit um to to produce a value-added product with just really aren't on the grocery list of any hardly any americans right so there's very little consumer demand for it but then on the other side of it there really hadn't been a generational investment in the production and the processing of of these types of fruits in a value-added sense right for dried fruit especially the specifically so you kind of had this like chicken before the egg problem hey there's nothing to do with the fruit it was grown to be sold fresh it's not sellable nobody's eating the value-added products you could make and then nobody's really producing and producing them at a fully you know commercial scale that could be sold to walmart per se so um i just started the business there and said hey i'm sitting out to solve those two problems i thought the name the ugly company was going to be a great a great marketable thing and then i worked little by little to scale the infrastructure of it
Speaker 01:it's really awesome sometimes the old ways come back and are the best ways. Sometimes like you kind of look back to prior generations and see some of that to have the newer ways come to be, which is really cool. And to create that market and see that problem and come up with a creative way to fix it using your family's heritage and legacy and culture and coming up with a creative way to fix that problem.
Speaker 00:Yeah, definitely. And, like, oftentimes, I mean, people working on the ground, like your blue-collar people, like, have the ideas, right? They see the problem firsthand, and so they can see how they can fix things. But, you know, truly making that jump to scale a full business out of it, it's a big leap, you know, from having the idea to being able to actually execute on the idea. So we've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to do that.
Speaker 01:And it takes a lot of courage. It really does take a lot of courage to jump into something like that, the unknown, and making that leap. So you guys do a really great job with this ugly company name. And I love it. I love all the puns. I love in your marketing, your website, on your packaging. Can you tell our listeners who haven't purchased your product what the front of your packaging says?
Speaker 00:Yeah. So our packaging, it says, hello, I'm ugly. And so, you know, that's what just jumps out at you at the shelf. You're walking through the supermarket and you see something that says, hello, I'm ugly. And like your first instinct is like, what the hell is that? You know? So that was part of why I think I want to communicate from the shelf as clearly as possible. Like this has been made with Ugly fruit like there's you know there's upcycled product in this bag um and we have you know kind of bright pastel colors and things like that we got some of those puns like you know pit happens on the back because every so often there's a pit fragment trace or whatever so yeah we definitely try to lean into being a little bit quirky and living up to our name ugly
Speaker 01:so i know you said you spent some time in the military and thank you for your service um and i know you spent some time in georgia and alabama so you are familiar with some of our southern sayings most people around the country know bless your heart is a condescending ending phrase or with all due respect but we do have one that's I'm not trying to be ugly but so you guys could look at that one too I'm not trying to be ugly but that's our you know other bless your heart or with all due respect because what comes next is really always interesting
Speaker 00:oh yeah that's cool because we'll in that case we should if we ever start selling Publix or Piggly Wiggly or anything like that we'll do some marketing around that concept
Speaker 01:yes I think that's why that hasn't made the national rounds we use it a lot in the south and it's you know a little more under the radar than bless your heart that's gotten a lot of notoriety yeah
Speaker 00:that's awesome i i think i was telling you earlier when we were chatting i i think very fondly of my time living in alabama and in georgia because i i'm a rural guy um and i i love like i mean there's just nothing you know i mean in a lot of ways like there's just not a whole lot there's not a whole lot happening it's a slow pace of life and you get the nature and then i think it's like this one time i was at my for my friend, my roommate's car was broken. And so I had tied a rope to it and I was like pulling it to the mechanic from, you know, some, somewhere in Fort Mitchell. I don't remember where we were going to Columbus or something like that. And it's like, you know, it's like something I'd like do on the farm. It's pretty normal. But like if in California, a CHP would pull you over for doing that, you know? And I said, and the sheriff, like I just happened to be like the, the one time a week you see the sheriff, he's like driving by the other way. And I was like, Oh no, he's, he's definitely going to pop me. And like, he just waved. He just waved and gave me a thumbs up. And I was like, yes. You know? Yeah. Bye.
Speaker 01:Well, I'm glad you enjoyed your time in the South because, uh, those of us in the South are very fond of our, our location.
Speaker 00:Yeah. Yeah. No, I have a high level of respect for, for the place and I really think very fondly of it. So.
Speaker 01:I know we talked a little bit about the mission of the company, but do you want to expand a little bit, um, on your mission and kind of what the ugly company is striving to be even moving forward? Um, you guys have made such great strides and it's so amazing what you're doing. What's your what's your mission if you could summarize that to people
Speaker 00:yeah so i mean the big mission that's just you know drawn on the wall is we're working to prevent 100 million pounds of fruit from being discarded by the year 2035 so in the next 10 years like we're at a blistering pace to try and prevent that fruit from being thrown out and so everything you know every goal and every part of our mission is kind of a subset from that right like with the north star that hey we're trying to help farms get to zero waste right and so we're doing it here in my backyard to start and the industry i know very well stone fruit um but the goal is that hey every piece of fruit that that tree produces is ultimately consumed by a human being um and what that then results you know for the larger the larger um you know just ag economy is that hey farmers can do better because they're getting an actual full return like you know the concept of sell the whole tree that's great but then we're also more efficient with our resources too uh you know it takes a lot of water to grow a pound of peaches right and so um the more pounds you get uh you know the more consumption you get right like the more efficient it your water usage is and your, um, whether it's your diesel from your tractors and things like that. So, um, that's, that's the main goal here in the short term is to prevent a hundred million pounds of fruit being thrown out. Um, but then larger, the way, the way I look at this is with our branding, with some of our processing, you know, expertise and uniqueness, like we can take our model and then pick it up and put it really anywhere in the world because wherever food's grown, food's wasted. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, down in Mexico, we work with some Mexican farmers down there for our mango program. Um, you know, been to South Africa, been to Rwanda have been to some all these different places like there's always all of us farmers have like this these kind of shared experiences and one one thing is like hey we we need to you know be profitable stay in business um and so oftentimes farmers are faced this decision like ah you know what it's just more economical just to throw this out or or dump it versus trying to get it to market right so that's something we seek to help farmers with globally as we scale our business
Speaker 01:and i i really admire business owners founders like your who kind of get in the you know get down and get dirty when you have to to help with the company you're not just in your office you know you're in the weeds helping as things need to be done um tell us a little bit about your day-to-day on things um you know you're not just sitting in your your office and barking orders at people like this is this is real work having to be done
Speaker 00:yeah you know definitely i mean that's you know it's interesting right because you know as a family farmer like you do i mean you basically do everything right everything from your accounting your finance all the way down to you know servicing your tractors and and fixing things that are welding all that type of stuff um but you know the reality is like the small farmer in central california like that that business model is no longer really sustainable and so all these small farms have have gone out of business or they've sold out or they've really scaled and becoming much larger farms and so it's kind of interesting actually because you know that's that's really my tendency i'm much more of a uh much more of a worker than this is like this is the first ever office job i've ever had like sitting in the office and it drives me nets, you know, eight to 10 hours a day. Um, but then, you know, it's interesting to being, you know, being in the infantry, like, you know, one of the most common things is like, you know, to lead, to first lead, you must first be able to do right. You have to be able to functionally have the skill that you're, you're asking other people to do some of these things. So, um, you know, that really helps me in the sense that, Hey, I'm, I'm very well positioned to lead this type of business because I do have some version of all these skills that, that make up our business, even though I'm definitely not the best at lot of these tasks but i have the ability to get to get down there roll up my sleeves but for me specifically you know it's it's kind of like this evolutionary thing of like hey my tendency is to get to roll my sleeves at work but truly i i need to i need to be more managerial right i need to pull myself out of that because hey my time is ultimately most valuable spent you know interfacing with our customers working on the larger strategic things so that is uh something i've had to learn kind of the hard way of like hey you know it's not valuable for ben more to be the truck driver anymore and um You know, I could kind of give you some day-to-day examples of that, but I don't know how much you want to hear about things like that.
Speaker 01:I think it's important, like you said, it's kind of that servant leadership that you can't expect others to do things that you wouldn't be willing to do yourself or you haven't done yourself. And so I think that's really important to have people respect you in that position. But on those stories, we do want to hear a few, maybe some of your most entertaining stories, maybe some of the high points anything you'd like to share about your time as you guys have scaled up and into this venture
Speaker 00:yeah I'll give you a I'll give you kind of a traumatizing story from like way back way back then and I still have like these like so I still kind of had honestly this like enters my dreams in the form of almost nightmares right so going back to like when I started the business there was two big challenges right one of them was to try and get customers excited about putting really a dried peach on their grocery list like going to the store to intentionally want to buy our products um and that's you know it's it really is a huge accomplishment when somebody chooses to spend their dollar you know their hard-earned dollar on what you've produced um that's a really big accomplishment right so um but back in the day like i said nobody was really buying dried peaches right and so we had the marketing thing pretty well figured out at a small scale like the brand i mean all that stuff worked really well but early on you know we weren't a vertically integrated business and we had um with product quality was one of the one of the most challenging things that we dealt with back back in the early days because um you know using this fruit that's being tossed out like there's there's a bunch of considerations to it and there's a whole bunch of um there's a whole bunch that lot that goes into trying to make like the perfect dried peach right from something that was unmarketable and so one of the biggest issues we used to have way back when was pit fragments right and i used to do a lot of sampling in the stores myself so all the different little locations i would sell into i would sit there and do sampling with customers and talk to people get their feedback and try and keep working on the product to improve it and i can think of this one time that this lady um you know very nice gal came up to me uh it was it was in santa monica in california and um she tried our product and she got a pit fragment and she she was trying to be nice and i was like oh oh my god i got a pit fragment i was like oh i'm really sorry um you're trying to try another one and she got a pit fragment on the second second one it was just traumatizing because i was like man here i am i'm trying to do a really good thing i believe by upcycling this fruit uh you know getting on the market but um and i'm doing everything i can from the operational basis to work with our co-processors at the time to like get some of these pit fragment issues sorted out but yeah i mean there's nothing worse than like disappointing a customer but also like giving them a bad experience it was it was it's terrible and especially when you get it face to face it's horrible um so that was one of those kind of north stars for me as well as like hey like we need you know we i've always known we need to invest in the processing but it really is like the table stakes to start an ag processing business in california California is millions of millions of dollars, right? There's no way to scale into it like the old days. We used to be able to process under a tree in your backyard. That's just not how it works anymore. So we had to make this huge scaling leap. And yeah, one of those kind of just awful, awful experiences. It was one of those things that really kept me very motivated to make sure we can improve our product quality.
Speaker 01:And that actually segues really nice into kind of the next question I wanted to ask you is, you talk about how you can't really start a processing facility inexpensively anymore in California or anywhere, but California definitely more so than some other places. Some of these things are legal challenges and, you know, potential liability issues and FISMA and regulatory issues. I've been allowed these things that go along with the food waste space. And I know then in all my years in ag and in ag law, one of the issues that some people cite as not wanting to go into this upcycling of food waste is They're worried about liability issues if they sell, say it's the grower or the original processor and they're selling that then to an upcycler. They're selling to a third party and they're worried about liability or perceived liability issues. A lot of states and the federal government have passed legislation. Florida is one of those that has regulations in place and the federal government does somewhat recently for donations to nonprofits, but there aren't necessarily any laws that in a lot of places that have helped if you're a for-profit corporation in terms of upcycling food waste because it's not donations to nonprofits. And then we've got FSMA as well. We can talk about that a little bit more in a minute, the Food Safety Modernization Act for our listeners. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of these issues and how you guys work through some of that from the ugly company's perspective?
Speaker 00:Yeah, well, there's definitely a lot there. I'll say this because it's worth mentioning, right? Like we get sued quite often and the lawsuits always come from California and New York. So go figure, right? And that's usually on the consumer package good side. Specifically, we go out of our way to do an audit of our packaging before we ever send anything new out. Like we get our packages audited to make sure they're in compliance to all the rules, this, that, and the other thing. And I mean, it's just the slip and fall, you know, get sued for everything you can imagine, like under the sun is just out of control, in my opinion. And it's, it's not only is it like detrimental to our business because i basically have to i have to set aside a pretty significant portion of our budget just knowing we're going to get sued every so many months i like literally like clockwork if every six months we get sued you know and sometimes it's more you know we got a back-to-back one here that we're dealing with now um so you're not only on a business level does that does that hurt um but like i mean personally i'm a human being myself and i'm sitting here trying to do something i got great people working here we're moral people we're doing what i believe to be a great thing for the for the world and it genuinely hurts like it genuinely hurts me as a human being to get sued by somebody when it's just like wow this is the next level of just absolute scumbag right so that hurts I think it's worth saying because anybody that enters the space and consumer packaged goods like you got to have a tough stomach and you got to be ready just to get sued left right and the other thing and you know I've actually talked to our congressman about it and some of these things and like there's I don't know there's no real there's nothing in the pipeline that I can tell it's ever going to prevent somebody from, you know, some consider package good business from getting sued for just absolute nonsense, um, coming from New York and California. Right. So they go figure. Um, but then on the, the more applicable to the ag portion and to the upcycling and, um, you know, some of that kind of liability. Right. So I'll give you my experience early on. So, yeah, I mean, early on, I mean, you know, no nonsense. Like it was very tricky, um, for Ben Moore to go to farmers and say, Hey, I want to use the product that you're throwing out. Um, here's my plan for it. And almost every farmer was like, Hey, honestly, it's not worth, it's not worth the risk exposure. There's no role. And you got to think like, I'm, you know, they were paying me to haul and dump the fruit, but, but I'm over here saying, Hey, let me take the fruit. You know, I need you to handle it in the same sanitary manner. You're handling your, your fresh product. Right. And so, so it still meets all the food safety requirements, things like that. But I also, I am not, I'm not able to pay you very much for it because I'm a, I'm a small fledgling business. And so most people either like, you know, abruptly or politely like slam the door in my face to use their fruit but there was a few farmers that saw the saw the vision saw what this could be saw how this could benefit them and were willing to take that risk and so like i said early on i mean you know even me having these relationships with these people being from here and being a you know a relatively trusted person that's from the industry um that you know it was even difficult for me right so to be an outsider and to come in and do it would be probably even much harder and you'd probably probably need way more resources than what i was able to do uh myself but um yeah i mean there's definitely a level of kind of risk exposure that um farmers have when they when they send their value-added product out to people um and then they basically need some assurance is that like hey this is not going to come back not going to come back to in a negative way and with our process and us being completely vertically integrated now like it's something we take very seriously we just we just you know did and passed our primus audit the other day and so We got all of our ducks in a row. We have a great state-of-the-art facility that we're doing. And it also helps that the farmers can come visit our facility, check it out anytime that they want and see what's happening and be comfortable. Hey, what we're doing is really not going to expose them to much risk. So yeah, it's definitely something to be aware of. And doing the actual audits and things like that that are really driven by the retailers primarily, that very much helps everybody from all sides of all stakeholders be comfortable with what's happening here because ultimately the fruit yeah it might be ugly it might have it might have um you know wind scars and things like that but it still is the exact sanitary standard of what's going to the grocery store right so there's there's no functional difference it's not like picked up off the ground it's not you know rotting in a field i mean it's literally just just great tasty food that had a cosmetic issue or something that it just couldn't be sold in the grocery store so
Speaker 01:that's what i was going to say like with fisma the food safety modernization act for our listeners you guys still have to follow all of that you still have to have your primus audit you still have to check all these boxes. It's not as if food safety requirements are not there as they are otherwise in the industry. I wrote an article a few months back earlier this year about some, you talked about the audits and things going to retailers. A lot of times retailers, actually most times retailers, have much higher standards than what the law requires as far as sustainability and food safety issues. And I wrote an article a Yes, you know, you comply with the law, but then there's this next level of requirement of being able to be in a lot of the larger retailers around the country. And so these audits and a lot of these things play into that as well. And so consumers can feel safe knowing that this is safe product. It's just, it's ugly. It started off ugly in
Speaker 00:the first
Speaker 01:place.
Speaker 00:Yeah. It's funny. I mean, that's a great point. Cause like legit been more of the truck driver. I mean, people would joke that I have an alligator stomach. I'll eat anything. You know what I mean? I'll eat it off the brown. It doesn't matter. I'm cool with it. I never get sick. I'm good, but that's not what we're doing. Right. As, as actual business, you know, we have, it's good. Like I said, it's completely, you know, traced all the way back to the field, like in a sanitary way. And yeah. And I think it's cool. Like we work very closely with a lot of our retailers to exceed what the actual requirements are. Um, because that's, it's really driven by them. It's room by, hey, what does this retailer need? They got a reason for it and we want to be the people that can meet that. But with that said, it doesn't matter. You're still going to get sued. So be prepared for that.
Speaker 01:I like to always say I'm in probably the most hated industry in the country because of all these frivolous lawsuits. But I've been on the receiving end of a lot of those working in-house for various ag companies. And you're right. There are so many frivolous suits that come out. Consumers that get frustrated or I've had some where a consumer had another issue and they were trying to blame it on the company I was working for. And they thought this would be a good way to not have any issues on the other side of how things really happen. So, you know, you're always going to have, no matter how great of a job you're doing, you're always going to have lawsuits. And it's almost, you're not going to like to hear this, it's almost a testament to how awesome and well-known your company becomes the more lawsuits you get, because, you know, the deeper pockets you have. They know who you are. So the more known you become, the better of a company you become. You kind of are more open for those kinds of things. You're always going to have the opportunity
Speaker 00:Yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's, it's really terrible. Cause like we have a nationwide brand, like we're, we're very well known. Our packaging stands out. And so we, we get targeted along with a lot of the big food companies and we get swept up in this wave of just these crazy lawsuits. And it's like, Hey, the, you know, the $50,000 that cost us, I mean, that's literally somebody's job here that I now can't afford to keep here. Well, I can't afford to hire. I mean, like this, these are human things happening here and it's, it's, it's absolutely gut punched. But then beyond like the day to day, what concerns me is like i mean you kind of have an iron spine to deal with some of this stuff and it's just like it's totally demoralizing and it's it really is like pretty unfortunate and all it does it just increases the barriers to entry to where hey people are it's easy it's better to throw the fruit out right and so um i i definitely you know overall kind of long-term concern of like it just keeps getting harder and harder and harder for a small business and ag to to make it in any form or another we've been able to outpace a lot of these various entry and been able to solve them but like I mean, it's mission impossible times a thousand to start an ag production business in Central Valley of California from scratch. But with that said, I do love California and I do love, I mean, I still think this is an amazing place to live. It's an amazing place to work. So definitely don't want to just, you know, kind of do this all over California here because I think it's, I think it's kind of a larger societal problem that like we're okay with just maliciously targeting businesses for when they're trying to do good things, right? It's kind of a sick, I think it's kind of a moral sickness we have a little bit as a society that's creeping up on us so
Speaker 01:absolutely between the lawsuits and then state local federal regulatory issues you know it makes it really hard for small ag businesses to start up and so i get excited when i see a small startup business um or when i get a new client call me that they're starting an ag business that makes me genuinely excited and i hope that they can succeed because we need more we need more people entering and not leaving this this industry
Speaker 00:yeah yeah no Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Speaker 01:So we hit a little bit on sustainability and a lot of your, you know, a lot of the big retailers are making you check these, you have to do sustainability audits for a lot of these big retailers. What's interesting is just the nature of your business also is sustainability. What you guys do with the upcycling of food waste is sustainability. So you guys are already ahead of the game in some of these sustainability audits as well. Do you want to talk any about that at all
Speaker 00:yeah I mean I'll just talk about the sustainable concept in general right I think that's something that you know hey just pretty universally like anybody anywhere you talk to would like to have a you know a healthier planet a more sustainable kind of ecosystem of various things it's you know that's not really like the point of differentiation right with people like everybody's like yeah like what nobody wants for it to be thrown out so that's a pretty agreeable common ground thing that we all have that we can all agree on and so that's a big part of our brand is to to authentically any, any customer buys our bag, they know if they're buying our bag, like they're saving fruit from being thrown out. So that's a, that's a huge benefit. Right. And it's, and then that's the kind of our special sauce of the brand is like, Hey, like you have been more of the farmer truck driver is the face of the brand. Right. And so they, they know that, Hey, what we're doing is legit. It's not greenwash. It's not some kind of big thing that they, that's, you know, just kind of smoke and mirrors like made up. This is as real as it gets real people, real farms. Um, so that's huge. And then just, you know, big picture, like this is a, a, a, a pretty great time to be trying to do something sustainable, um, in general, because we get, you know, a ton of our support. Um, people often think like, Oh, the federal government is like going to make some rule. It's going to solve the problem. That's like, Hey, I don't know about that, but that's not really been my experience. A lot of this stuff, it really is driven by the retailers. Like they set their goals. They have like, Hey, we're trying to save this much fruit for me and throw out, or we're trying to, you know, decrease emissions here, that, and the other thing. And so that really helps us just that mentality helps us get our foot in the door to, to get an opportunity to, to sell in their stores oftentimes. So this is a really neat time to be alive and have a business like this that, hey, if I was trying to market something sustainable and upcycled 30 years ago like that, we probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention as we're able to now at the corporate level. So I have a deep appreciation for retailers that have sustainable goals and take that type of stuff seriously.
Speaker 01:You know, it starts the consumer and the retailers. And like you said, the federal governments or state or local governments are never going to solve these issues if It really is consumer and retailer driven. And then the legal compliance is one thing, but then the above and beyond with your retailers to be able to sell there and meet their standards and then ultimately meet the consumer standards because it's all very driven in that process.
Speaker 00:Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with that.
Speaker 01:So before we get to some, some more personal questions to end the podcast, I want to know what's your goal for the future. Anything else you want to tell us about the ugly company, anything you want our listeners to know, kind of final words about the ugly company that you want to, to convey. Yeah.
Speaker 00:I mean, you know, like the day to day goal is just, just to keep growing, keep staying in business and keep, and just, and keep what we're doing, uh, touching more people's lives. Um, and that's something that's really neat. Like since we've, you know, most, most recently I'll mention, like we answered, you know, walmart and sam's club and that is to me very near and dear to my heart because like that's where i shop right and i've always wanted you know me being a country guy like that's where a lot of us rural people we straight up do our shopping at walmart right and um great value items and it's you know with their business model we get stuff to the consumer at a lower price point than in some other areas so that's very near and dear to my heart um i i love going into walmart now and seeing our product in there and and legitimately like there's there hasn't did like an upcycled zero added sugar you know dried fruit that's available to purchase before and so now as we're expanding across the U.S. and not just with Walmart and then but with our other retailers like it's really really cool to see something like this that it really started with my grandma drying on the fruit of the roof of the house right like taking that concept now to everywhere that's something that excites me and so that's why I'm just honored and excited every day to have another opportunity to wake up and keep at it keep growing and then also the other thing too is we are We are entering a season of fundraising as well because we've been growing as much as we have. We've got some really big plans there. We're very eager to start truly doing some legitimate marketing and having what we hope, depending on how much investment we can raise, some legitimate budget to spend towards building our brand and doing that type of stuff because most all of our investment has really gone towards building our operation. That's the classic ag guy in me is I know the platinum standard of having an ag business is you've got to be able to produce juice like nobody else you got to have the lowest cost of anybody else in your category and then you got to have the best quality and if you can do those three things like you're going to make it well now we're entering this time of our business where hey depending how much fundraising I can raise like we're really going to start juicing up our brand and do it some cool stuff with that so that's really exciting the last thing I don't want to say to the listeners I just really appreciate your time joining in you're probably you know we're probably from all different parts of the world different walks of life so I appreciate you hearing our story appreciate you're hearing about our brand and if you want to support, we're at theuglyco.com. There's a store locator on there that can help you find our closest product. Yeah, just give it a try and see what you like. Every fruit, everybody has a different palette, so every fruit variety, I like them all, but people have their specialties they like, so go ahead and try them all.
Speaker 01:And the store locator on the website is really easy to use. I've had some store locators on some brands' websites that freeze up a little bit yours is really easy to use and it doesn't freeze up and it really pinpoints so um few more questions on the personal note so what do you like to do for fun outside of farming and the ugly company if you had outside of that
Speaker 00:yeah no i mean my favorite thing to do is turn my phone off and spend my time with my wife and my family right like that's that's what i want to do right um so hey this opportunity with my business has been pretty amazing it's taken me you know all over the world and done some things i never thought i was going going to do. But yeah, I mean, ultimately my favorite thing to do is, is to just shut it down and shut the world out as best I can. Uh, but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm pretty experienced welder. So I love, love building stuff. Um, yeah, I love, I got, got my goats and my chickens and things like that. Um, so, you know, I, I just love building things. Right. So I just built like an extremely bad-ass chicken coop. Uh, it's like the Taj Mahal of chicken coops, like, you know, log, it's a log house basically thing. And I, I was, I don't know, I don't know how I got involved that involved in deep in that specific thing, but I'm like, man, these chickens living a nicer house than I do. So maybe I should re-divert my focus elsewhere. But yeah, I mean, that's what I like to do is just hang out with my family and, and just stay on the farm, build stuff, close the gate. Hopefully nobody shows up this weekend, um, and just shut the world out as best as possible. And like, I don't, I don't even have a TV, you know, I, I, like I don't watch movies. I, you know, I watched the Raiders games, like on my laptop, you know, like I'm just, I'm just one of those people. I don't got social media. I'm not, I'm not trying to, uh, you know, I like the face-to-face interaction. Right. So that's how I like to enjoy my time.
Speaker 01:Your chickens are really lucky. They hit the jackpot in terms of places to live.
Speaker 00:The
Speaker 01:last question. There's so many beautiful areas of California. It's so diverse from north to south, east to west. There's so many different things. What's your favorite place to visit and your favorite thing to do in California?
Speaker 00:Well, my favorite place to visit is the kitchen because my wife is always cooking up something good. And I mean, that is my favorite place, right? with that said it's also beautiful too because she's in there but um i i would uh i was i saw the pre-read i was like oh do i really want to answer this question all the way because i do i want everybody to know my secret spot you know uh but since you know hey since you've all taken the time to to listen to the pod and you've gotten this far i will i will share uh my favorite place in california is court right reservoir um it's up highway 168 past shaver lake p and it's a it's a really tiny reservoir like way up you know way up in the mountains the fishing is incredible I mean you're pretty much limit out I mean you have some bad days here and there but like you'll limit out you know within a couple hours almost every time there's no there's no like water sport activities there because the lake is cold you know and so you don't have any jet skiers or anything crazy like that which that's cool but I'm up there to fish and to hang out hiking up there is really awesome camping there's a ton of great jeep trails I take my jeep up there but yeah what I would recommend is hey go to Courtright Reservoir and then do the quick hike up to Maxim Dome and I often like I'll go up there and I'll sleep there overnight you want to be careful a little bit like in the later season when there's thunderstorms but yeah I'll sleep on top of this dome I mean you can see all the eastern Sierras you can see the western Sierras you can see the whole whole shebang up Coronet Reservoir and then do the hike to Maxim Dome
Speaker 01:that sounds amazing sounds like something my family and I would love and I have actually never heard of it or been there so we may have to add that to our travel list thank you so
Speaker 00:there's your secret spot
Speaker 01:well we'll try not to have people take over your secret spot and make it not quiet and peaceful anymore
Speaker 00:yeah sorry i'm willing to share i'm willing to share like so we got good people here if they've stayed this long so
Speaker 01:well thank you for sharing that and thank you so much for your time today i really appreciate it this has been awesome and i know our listeners are going to love hearing this
Speaker 00:i appreciate it thank you very much amanda thanks for your
Speaker 01:time Thank you for listening to the Legal Field Podcast. For more content, please visit the Facebook page of Florida Ag Law or go to floridaaglaw.com and join us next time on the Legal Field Podcast to see what's growing on.