Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-host Jackie Brugliera and Mike Schneider.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow us and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
And while you're at it, we would also recommend that you head over to bevnet.com/communitycall so you can join upcoming Community Calls live with us via Zoom.
That's bevnet.com/communitycall.
You can go over there and see what the shows are and just join us, have some fun.
It's basically joining a live recording of a podcast.
You're a part of the community.
You've got some insights.
Just raise your hand, drop some knowledge.
You'll be on the podcast.
And you're hosting them every week too, Melissa, right?
You had one today, didn't you?
Had one just today.
When you mention it like that, it seems like just such a great, I mean, maybe I should join.
Oh, wait a second.
You should, definitely, Melissa.
In all seriousness, we would absolutely love to see you there.
bevnet.com/communitycall.
You can see the upcoming community calls.
We'll be hosting live and sign up for them.
We're gonna keep talking about community stuff, right?
I mean, of course.
This is the podcast to do it.
Well, then we should definitely talk about Juan Geraldo of Waku.
He just joined our Slack community.
Awesome.
Juan, great to see you here.
Of course, Waku is the prebiotic herbal tea.
They rebranded about a year ago.
They reduced the sugar, added some chicory root fiber.
I actually just had a chance to talk to Juan, and it sounds like they're working on some big things.
Juan and his co-founder are longtime fans of BevNET.
We met them a long time ago when their beverage first came out.
They brought us samples before they released it.
We've seen them through many iterations of packaging, just great members of the community.
Good to see Juan in the Slack.
Yeah, and I got to talk to them at BevNET Live, and who knew we have the same love for Tosh Sultano, which is our favorite artist.
Tosh Sultano?
Yeah, Tosh Sultano, she is an Australian artist, and I guess they saw on my Instagram that I went to her concert, and they were like, oh my God, I love her too.
Nico likes Tosh too?
Mm-hmm.
Nice.
Is it T-O-S-8?
Nico Estrella, co-founder.
T-A-S-H.
All right, I'm gonna have to check this out as well.
Well, you know where I was really happy to see, Waku?
Where?
Market Basket.
I missed the Market Basket.
I do not have Market Basket over here in San Diego.
Now that this is, I'm in charge here, I'm just gonna talk about Market Basket, every single banter intro.
It's a favorite.
I was thinking about you the other day because my dad came to visit, and my wife told him about Market Basket.
And then the next morning, he's like, you know what we should do today?
And I was thinking, he was gonna say, we should go apple picking.
We should go to Market Basket.
He had to go to Market Basket.
He went in old school, grabbed the ad, of course.
Yeah.
A cart, and I was like, oh my gosh, he's ready for battle.
Yeah.
And he was up for it.
Yeah, totally.
He was up for it.
What's the other name?
Demoulas, right?
Demoulas, yeah.
Yep, Demoulas Market Basket.
Not as fun though, I like Market Basket.
Yeah, me too.
We talked about this briefly last time I talked about Market Basket, but I really do want to go grocery shopping with your wife at Market Basket.
Yeah, she'll go.
You grab that carriage and it is, like you said, you're ready for battle.
You're ready for battle.
And I love that so much.
My favorite thing is you're coming down an aisle towards somebody else, and you know that you can't look at them, because as soon as you look, you lose.
I've never lost.
You just don't look and then...
What Melissa's talking about is you're heading right for one another.
You're playing chicken.
Grocery cart chicken.
Did you ever watch that show, Supermarket Sweep?
It reminds me of that where you're racing around trying to find products and get it for free.
It's kind of like that, except not free.
Yeah, except you have to pay for everything.
You're just happy you got what you got.
You're happy you survived.
Yeah, totally.
But yeah, I mean, he was in some sections I've never seen before.
There were some clearance sections.
He's in there going, hey, you want some bananas that are ready to eat right now?
You want some bananas?
They're plantains, dad.
Yeah, but they look really good.
And they're probably like 20 cents or something.
Oh man, I love it so much.
I bet I could talk to him for at least two hours about my love of Market Basket.
I could do a whole podcast on it, honestly.
I wish he would have come over and had some conversations with him.
I know.
What was I thinking?
All right, next time, next time we got to get him on here.
We love you.
I love you, Market Basket.
Anyways, it is very easy to join us.
I mean, who wouldn't want to join our community when this is the kind of fodder you get, right?
This is what you get.
This is priceless.
Some of it, yeah.
So if you want to join us, slack.bevnet.com, we are all there, and we would be happy to talk nonsense with you or sense anytime.
Or if you actually have a problem, a question that's keeping you up at night, ask it and we will make sure that we find some answers for you.
In some cases, we might have you do a script flip.
We are always happy to see what people are working on.
And really, that's how a lot of these shows come together, because it's always more fun to address a problem that actually exists in real time, because you get some really interesting and creative answers.
Well, I've got a few beverages on this table right now.
Have you all tried the Crooked Owl Tapache?
I have it right here.
I'm super curious right now though.
I think that one has a little more alcohol than I'm looking for at the moment, but it looks really tasty.
All right, well, I'll be happy to be the guinea pig.
I've got the Pina flavor, the Passion flavor and the Jalapeno flavor.
Which one do you have, Jackie?
I have the Jalapeno and the Passion.
I'm gonna try the Jalapeno.
Jackie's going for it.
All right, then I'm gonna try the original, the Pina.
It's like 8 a.m.
over on the West Coast, right?
You know, a little hare, the dog that didn't bite you is okay too.
It's like a lunch beer, you know?
Right, right.
Yeah.
Well, not only did we have these samples in our fridge, but we also saw Cam Bailey of Crooked Owl post in our Wins of the Week plaque.
So Cam Bailey posted that Crooked Owl just launched in the SoCal region, which is super exciting because that's such a great market.
She said that they are mostly in indie stores right now, but working on chains, and they're approved at Total Wine, which is such a great chain.
How is it?
It's really good.
It doesn't taste like alcohol at all.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, it's really nice.
I mean, I have seen Tabache, and I know that's something that's becoming a little bit more popular as a fermented beverage, but I haven't seen hard Tabache, and Total Wine is huge down here in San Diego, and I go there pretty frequently, and they always have some really unique, interesting products always coming onto the shelves, so I'm excited for them.
Very exciting.
We actually had Ritual Beverage on a community call a little ways back, and he was saying that they present a lot of opportunity for non-alcoholic as well, because when consumers are going to buy a bottle of whiskey, then they're also more willing to spend approximately the same amount on a non-alcoholic version, which I thought was really interesting.
The Crooked Owl is really tasty, and I very much appreciate that there are zero grams of sugar.
And also gluten-free, which is nice too.
It's not often that you get the nutrition facts on an alcoholic beverage, and there they are right there for you.
100 calories a can, not too bad.
How much sugar?
Zero.
Yeah, zero sugars.
And it's nice also because it's only 5%.
So something that tastes like this would maybe be a canned cocktail and would be higher in ABV, but it's just like drinking a beer, so you could drink a couple of them.
The fermentation must eat the sugar because there's pineapple juice in here.
We were just talking about fermentation in an earlier episode.
It sounds like the way that you make tapate is by fermenting pineapple scraps with water.
Pineapple scraps, yes.
Pee-lon-ceo.
Is that how you say that, sugar?
Probably not, but that's okay.
I know.
I know it's tough out there.
Sugar and spices, and it's a traditional drink made in Mexico.
It's very tasty.
And I like the fun design.
Yeah.
What do you guys think about this design as marketers?
I love it.
I love the Mexican style that's infused into the can, and I like that each skew and each flavor has a clear color to it.
So right off the shelf, you can tell, okay, these are different flavors.
I like it.
I like the owl.
The owl is kind of fun.
A little confusing for me, though, Jackie, because the pasión is yellow.
The piña pineapple is green, and jalapeno is red.
I would have definitely made the jalapeno green and the piña yellow.
And the pasión, I would have just inverted that one.
I think the purple and yellow...
First of all, I love that color way when you use that southwestern style, purpleish or almost maroon and like a really bright yellow.
That's one of my favorite color ways there is.
In fact, you might notice it's pretty similar to the one we use for NOSH with the pom-nana, our pom-nana palette.
Anyway, so I probably would tweak these a bit just so that it's easy to know what the flavor is.
I wasn't quite sure what pasión meant as a flavor.
I love the fun design on the candle.
Passion fruit?
No, I'm sure you're right.
I just, my mind didn't go there.
I was like, oh, this is the passionate one.
That's okay too.
This will fill you full of passion.
Right, right, right.
So maybe it doesn't matter either way.
It's a functional beverage.
Right, right, right, right.
Got it, okay.
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, anyways, Cam, congrats on all that information, and thanks so much for being part of our community.
So great to hear about all of the great news.
And I'm thrilled to introduce this Community Call to all of you that we had with Harmless Harvest.
They will be chatting about how they use their sustainability mission to drive decisions about supply chain, innovation, and brand strategy.
Enjoy.
Joining us today are Ben Mand, Heather Cutter, and Mathieu Chamont from the Harmless Harvest team.
We are kicking off Earth Month with a discussion about Harmless Harvest actions and initiatives to promote social, agricultural, and environmental advancement, and how those objectives have resulted in business growth and innovation.
So thank you so much.
We have Ben Mand, Harmless Harvest CEO, Heather Cutter, Chief Growth Officer, and Mathieu Chamont, Director of Business Development, Procurement, and Agriculture.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks.
So let's start at the beginning.
Harmless Harvest has always had a focus on sustainability since day one, but so much has changed.
Can you talk about how your supply chain has evolved over the last two decades?
Where did you start and where are you now?
I know that's a big topic.
Yeah, so maybe I'll just start with a little bit, but Mathieu is our longest tenured person who has been on the front lines in Thailand, can certainly jump in and add a little more color.
I think what's interesting is most founders, when they start a business, they have a very strong notion of what the product is that they want to sell or the service, and that is usually the genesis for starting something.
And I think for Justin and Douglas, when they started Harmless Harvest, they had absolutely zero clue what kind of product they want to sell, but they firmly understood the type of business that they wanted to run.
And so for them, it was this notion of constructive capitalism.
So the idea that not just investors benefit, but everybody starting with farmers all the way through should benefit from all the actions that the company is taking.
So they spent some time.
I won't go into all the details of how they figured it out, but in the process of looking at some various different berries in South Africa or South America that they wanted to make into a juice, they started cutting it with something that was less acidic.
They were using coconut water.
They started tasting all these coconut waters, and they said to themselves, there's got to be a better way to do coconut water.
And that's how they came up with the idea of coconut water.
They discovered the Nam Hom in Thailand.
The Nam Hom cultivar is, we feel the best tasting coconut for coconut water.
And when it's harvested young, it's lightly sweet and nutty, and it's that favorite taste that so many of us enjoy.
But in early days, there was no fare for life.
There was very little, if any, and Matu can certainly correct me if I'm wrong, organic.
And so to start developing this and building it, the early days was about establishing fare for life practices and making sure both on the farms, anybody we work with and all that, that those practices were firmly in place and that we were starting to, with each coconut and everything that we did, getting money back into the communities.
So certainly a strong foundation in this notion of constructive capitalism and doing what we can.
I think what's exciting for me and I think the rest of the team is how we've taken that torch and really we stepped back and figured out how can we go further and really take it to the next level.
And so I think the thing that's most interesting for us is how we've now, it's not just organic, but we're working to transition farms to regenerative organic.
So a more biodiverse farm that is better from a carbon standpoint, better from a financial standpoint for farmers in the long term, and just certainly better from the environment.
In addition to that, how do we just keep streamlining our supply chain, simplifying, getting out of any virgin packaging and trying to use recycled plastic materials, recycled cardboard, all of those types of things to try and make an impact.
So I think the foundation, interestingly, for this company was set very early on.
And I think we as a team throughout the years have really done our best to try and take it to the next level and try and push it even further.
Matu, you made a comment that I thought was really interesting as we were getting ready for this comment.
You said you have to start with agriculture to impact livelihood.
And it's something that I know you've spent so much of your time working on.
Can you talk us through some of the examples of how you've done just that, how you started with agriculture to impact livelihood?
What were the changes you made?
And we can even get into some of the nitty gritty of what were the challenges, what were the results?
What are some of the changes that you made that have really made a big impact?
Yeah, I think Ben summarized that very well.
When we started and when I joined the company 10 years ago, the whole purpose, you join a company whose name is Harmless Harvest, that means a lot.
And as an employee, you always wonder what does it mean?
How do we express that in our daily actions?
And so moving to Thailand to develop the sourcing activities and the organic, that was our primary focus.
Organic is going to help us make better agriculture and help people with health and get a better product.
And so this was really the angle that we had to develop our sourcing.
And then as we went a little further, we grew a little bigger and we started having more scale.
The next step naturally was to take care of the community of farmers and the community around our factory.
And so we focused on Fair for Life to make sure that we would bring something different, a different value proposition to our partners and making sure that from the farm workers to the workers, to the truck drivers, all along the supply chain, all the way to the US, every term of trade would be fair.
And we would make sure we take care, we leave no one behind.
And that was always what we had in mind.
And so we grew on those two foundations for six years, trying to manage the growth of the business and to give a better value proposition as a business.
And at some point, the drought hit Thailand, and suddenly the yield dropped 30%, the farm yield.
We had less coconuts, and a lot of the things we had been trying to do were not working as well as we needed or expected, because at the end of the day, when the farmers have less coconut to sell, you can have some nice perks, benefits, health support that you provide, but the foundations are not as strong as we thought.
And so that's where we decided to focus on working on the agricultural side more.
And as we were exploring this, we discovered regenerative agriculture, which is a way to better prepare for climate change and global warming.
And we've been focusing the last four or five years on this with a project called RECAP, with a few partners funding from Danone Ecosystem as well, to try to change the way we do farming and not only make sure we don't put anything bad in the farm, but also actively prepare the farm, the soil for global warming.
Can we talk a little bit about RECAP and Fair for Life?
Certainly so many folks in our audience are familiar with Fair Trade, but those are certifications you typically see on coffee, chocolate, that kind of thing.
Can we talk a little bit about Fair for Life and RECAP and how partnering with those organizations and using that branding and using that methodology has helped support your sustainability mission?
Fair for Life, it's on our package.
Consumers understand that that means something good.
We chose Fair for Life for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is that it allows the money that we set aside to go back to the communities, and so it's really impactful on the ground and the community that we serve.
On the RECAP side, that's something that we actually created ourselves as a framework of our program, and we've just really started talking about it in the last year because you have to do all the work before you have something to talk about.
So as we get into our regenerative journey, by the end of last year, we had 25% of our farms practicing regenerative practices.
We have a goal, a stated goal of 50% by the end of this year, which we are very intentional about stating those things out loud so that we live into them.
And as we continue to convert more farms to regenerative, we'll be able to talk more to our consumer about that.
I think the ultimate goal is to have some sort of regenerative certification.
We're not quite there yet, but that's the sort of the north star that's guiding us as we continue our journey.
I heard Ben make a comment about how one of your methodologies is stating what you're working towards.
So if you tell everyone, this was your comment, if you tell everyone you're going to run a marathon, then you have to run the marathon.
Is that something that you use on a regular basis in order to sort of hold yourselves accountable?
Yes, this is a part of me that probably has some good and maybe a lot of annoying aspects to me.
So I am a maximizer, and I do see as part of my role is to be pushing the organization.
And I am very comfortable pushing ourselves and stating some pretty aggressive goals, and then being very transparent along the way, like how are we tracking against those?
So I can't remember if it was four years ago or whatever it was where I said that we would get all our beverages into 100% recycled plastic, that we would start transitioning to regenerative organic, and that we would cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.
And the team rightfully was a bit freaked out because we had been working a bit on this, but we had not discussed these types of goals.
And for me, it's a great opportunity to push us.
And we do a mission report each year, and we track on how we're doing.
We're very honest.
I think the first time we did one, I got some questions like, well, should we even talk about that?
Because we didn't make it.
And we should absolutely talk about it.
We got to talk about what did we learn from it?
Where are we at?
Why are we not there?
What are we going to do to get there?
That's how this works, right?
It's about being transparent and pushing ourselves and really stretch as far as you can, and then see how close you can get.
So I would say on two of the three, we have already made it.
And I think there's a reasonable chance we'll have the 50% reduction in greenhouse gas.
That one is hard.
That one is really, really hard.
But the good news is there are a couple, there are two things that are two-thirds of our contribution, and we have work streams underway to attack both of those.
So I feel cautiously optimistic that we'll get there.
How do you prioritize what you're going to go after?
So whether it's RPET, zero waste, regenerative agriculture, how do you decide what to prioritize?
And could you also talk a little bit about how you make these incremental challenges?
Like for example, the RPET, I know that we published something in BevNET about how you were at 30% and the goal was at 100%.
We have folks who are listening now and they may be running brands and may not be able to make big changes right now.
How do you prioritize which changes to make and talk a little bit about how you bite off the pieces that you can accomplish in the moment, knowing that you have further to go?
I think first of all, anybody who is a brand owner is, you have to step back and understand, what do you stand for?
Like what is your purpose?
And that can be obviously different for each brand.
It can be far more community-based, it can be far more agricultural, it can be a little bit of both.
You have to define what you're about.
And honestly speaking, you also have to understand your consumer, what's important to them and all of that.
And that really, the purpose is the primary thing of what you stand for.
And then understanding what are consumers looking for, what are their hot items.
And that kind of defines your basic principles.
For us, Harmless Harvest, obviously, there's going to be a lot from an agricultural standpoint.
And when you're dealing agricultural, you're dealing with farmers and that community and stuff.
And so we really wanted to make sure that there was a strong people component.
So it is about people and planet for us in a very genuine sense.
And for us, it's very hands-on.
We've got about 28 agronomists on staff and others who not only are working with farmers to teach regenerative organic principles and work on that, but also those that are auditing and making sure that farmers are adhering to the principles and stuff.
So when we set goals, I think a good example is going to 100% RPET, is we were the first in Thailand.
In fact, it was illegal to bottle anything and recycle plastic in Thailand.
And thankfully, we're exporting everything, and so we're able to convince them that we can start making this move.
But when you blow your own bottles, it gets really technical when you're using recycled plastic versus virgin plastic or slightly different properties.
And so we could only get to 30%, which felt like a little wah-wah.
That's super exciting, I think, for the team.
But for us, we ultimately said we have to press forward.
Let's make at least some incremental change.
It may be lost upon consumers.
They might say, well, you're still using virgin plastic, but we knew we were moving in the right direction.
Importantly, you also, as an organization, start getting experience, right?
So implementing the change, as well as dealing with the technical challenges and stuff like that.
So I think sometimes when the goal is audacious, it can be a bit paralyzing.
And I would break it into chunks.
I'm like, how do you start getting there?
What's an easy thing I can do that maybe doesn't feel as audacious as you want it to be?
But it gets you moving down the path.
And I think that's just an important thing for kind of any problem you're trying to solve or when you're trying to tackle these things.
They're big, they're difficult.
And so how do you get yourself going down that path?
And once you're down that path, it becomes much easier to drive progress.
Yeah, I would also just add, we first walk and then we talk.
So we don't always intend to communicate each of the baby steps along the way.
If you start from that perspective of what are we going to say about this?
It can be paralyzing.
So I think the RPT is a great example, as Ben said, like we got to 30%, we sort of stuck it on the back of our bottle, but we didn't really say anything else.
But it allows you to actually get where you're going without feeling like this is an impossible hill that I can't climb.
You know, I think some of the really compelling information that you all shared with me was how these changes that you've been making and are making have not only, of course, aligned with your brand strategy and your mission, but they've also supported profitability.
They've improved supply chain.
Can we pick out a few efforts that you've made to head towards sustainability and talk about how they wound up being really great business decisions as well?
Ben, I think you were talking about how there was a point when the coconuts that you were using, the actual coconut after the water had been extracted, where they were considered as waste.
Can you talk a little bit about those changes that you made and how they ended up supporting the bottom line?
I think the thing that I'm most proud of is just, when you're able to make positive impacts to environment and communities, and it actually unlocks a more profitable business, right?
And I would say so many, not all, but so many things you do that have positive environmental impacts and even community impacts oftentimes come with all sorts of savings.
So a good thing, and this was an observation when I first joined Harmless Harvest, is we were doing a lot of good things, but one thing that struck me was we were 99.5% coconut water, just four sizes of coconut water, and we're not selling really much anything else.
And so we were extracting, processing 40 million coconuts, taking the water out, and then taking the coconut husk and meat and everything to the landfill.
So we're paying to transport there and paying to put it in the landfill, which to me was not very harmless from an environmental standpoint, but it also was not very financially smart for a company that's not making any money.
And so one of the first challenges we had for the teams was from an innovation supply chain standpoint, we need to get to zero waste.
We have to use this entire coconut.
We buy one of the most expensive coconuts in the world, you got to use the entire coconut.
And so that's where Heather and her team, really from an innovation standpoint, started developing all these different types of products that led to now more than 20% of our sales are coming from things besides just those plain coconut water.
So when you can develop yogurts and drinkable yogurts and smoothies and coconut water with pulp and all these things where you start using the meat, it's just we don't have to buy more coconuts, we're just better utilizing that resource.
So you get not only the sales growth, you get the impacts from a bottom line standpoint, and from an environmental standpoint in greenhouse gas and all that, you're doing much better.
Using that whole coconut is about a third of our green, is about a third of the contributions to our greenhouse gas.
That and then the foliage falling from the trees and decomposing in the canals is another third.
So just better farm practices and using that entire coconut are two big steps in getting to greenhouse gas neutral and hopefully positive.
I have another question about the impacts of what you're doing.
Matu, can you talk a little bit about how the changes that Harmless Harvest has been making and maybe even how you've been working all along has impacted the lives of the farmers who are growing those coconuts?
Yeah, and maybe just before that, I think one of the important things we did also at some point after five, six years as well was to define what was our vision and mission and how sustainability was embedded into it.
That is something that really helps us drive decisions and prioritize.
And as we were taking actions and building the business, that was a constant reminder of what the important values that we had as a business.
So that's something that's not necessarily needed to define very precisely at the beginning, but as you go along with your journey, deciding on all that is very important to help every employee get a set of values to make choices.
Now for people around us, obviously, you have very direct benefits from organic and fair trade.
With fair trade, we have the Fair for Life Fund that has basically every time we buy a coconut, we put money on the side in the farm.
It's managed by a community of farmers that are elected, and we don't have a voting right there.
And then they decide what they want to do with the money.
We've invested more than a million dollars over the years in this fund, and we always focused on health and school education.
They are able to decide what projects are the right ones for the community, and that's been very important for us.
We've tried over the last few years to see how we could do more climate change protection and preparing both the new generation through the schools but also helping actual farmers to do better, understand better.
It was very important.
And so over the years, we started in 2015, and we've had more than 50,000 beneficiaries.
We also had some very specific, more timely projects when COVID hit and business was slowing down in Thailand.
We financially supported farmers.
We provided equipment, masks, et cetera, to help them at the time.
And so it was important to help them interact with the rest of the community.
So that's a lot of things we've been doing.
To me, the next big thing is with regenerative agriculture.
We've worked a lot with the pilots, farmers, for two and a half years to develop new practices, understand how this translates into a tropical country and how you transition from monocrop, coconut farm to multi-crop ecosystem and the impact that it has on people's livelihood, on their habits, on the way they work, on the resources they need, on the inputs they need.
And so it's a whole ecosystem, not only in the farm, but in the community that we have to build.
And so we just finished the pilot.
We've trained hundreds of farmers, both farmers of Harmless Harvest, but also farmers who are just coconut farmers.
They're not yet organic or fair trade.
They're not part of our program, but we feel it's our role to give that knowledge as much as possible to make sure everybody can benefit and start implementing.
We feel that's really how we can empower people and impact their livelihood is to make sure that people understand that organic and regenerative.
Organic is not only about the health or having a good product, safe product.
It's also making sure that they will be more resilient and prepared for the future.
I would like to move on to brand strategy.
Heather, I know that this is a topic that you have certainly a lot of thoughts about.
How do you communicate all of this work that you're doing to your consumers, and how are those consumers segmented?
So I'm sure you have your core consumers who know exactly what you're talking about.
And then you have the other folks who, like you said, they see the fare for life and they're happy about it, but they may not know exactly what it means.
The sustainability and just mission messaging in general is not typically our primary message.
Of course, we have a name, Harmless Harvest, so every time you say the brand name, there's something implied there.
But over the years, we've seen that people come to our brand for a lot of different reasons, but first and foremost, they love the product.
And so we talk a lot openly about what makes our product different, the pink in our coconut water.
We have a cult following with celebrities and athletes.
But then, of course, with the name Harmless, there's this implied goodness.
And so we have talked more recently about it because we have lots of tangible things to talk about, but we try to put it out in digestible formats so we don't flood all of our marketing messaging with our mission.
But we try to put enough out there so that those people who really want to go deeper can.
That's something we've worked a lot on as we've put out a mission report in the last couple of years.
There's plenty of information for those who it is core for and for those who it's not.
We try to put it out, like I said, those key things like regenerative, the recycle plastic and our zero waste initiative.
Is there any interesting information you have about who's responding to the sustainability measures that you're taking?
You know, I'd have to assume that Gen Z folks are looking for it and understanding it.
What are you seeing in terms of who's looking for what in terms of segmentation?
Yeah, no, that's a great one.
And for sure has been interesting to watch over the last few years, even the way people respond.
For example, when we put a post on social media, even five years ago, it was some of the least interactive content we had.
But I think as Gen Z has become such a consumer of our product and they are a massive part of our consumer base, it's become a lot more front and center and people are making purchase decisions based on how a company behaves.
I mean, any marketer who's reading any industry news right now will know that.
So it has been an interesting evolution to see that happen.
I think that's an interesting point because if you look at past generations, the interest and the stated interest has pretty consistently been high, but getting higher.
The real difference we're seeing right now is that gap between interest and action has severely narrowed with the younger generations.
And they're making decisions, they're living their life and using their dollars to reward companies that are making good decisions and building a sustainable business.
For emerging brands and newer founders, what do you recommend that they do to make some of those small changes we talked about should they look into certain certifications?
Should they look at certain parts of their supply chain?
Where would you start out?
And I know that we're not isolating a particular food or beverage.
What's your advice for founders who want to do better?
I would go back to something I said earlier, and I would just restate that as just, you found a company on some basic principles, right?
And so start with that and understand, you probably had a product or service in mind, and it's not always founded as, you know, when you found it, maybe not as deeply on the environmental or social issues, although I think that is changing more so.
But stepping back and just understanding, you know, what is your impact environmentally into communities and things like that?
How could you make a more positive impact?
And really think about what's important to you as a team, but you as a founder, and what is important to the consumers that are going to buy your products or service?
And just think about how can you make a positive impact?
And I think you do need to think about that, of just making sure it is also...
Ideally, if you're trying to build a business that ultimately is going to grow and be profitable, that sweet spot of finding what is interesting and compelling, but also where you can really make an impact and also where you feel it, right?
You know what I mean?
It has to be something that you genuinely feel.
And I think spending some time doing that, and then just don't get paralyzed.
It is daunting.
When you really step back and you think about all the actions, all the other third-party supply, different suppliers and co-packers, and everything that you have to do and influence, it's daunting.
It does feel like a massive mountain.
And I think knowing kind of where you're trying to go, but then figuring out, okay, what is the first step in that path?
What are some first things I can start doing and where am I going?
And I think going back to something that Heather said is, be funny, don't say you're funny.
So really work to drive action and let that speak in the beginning.
And as you're getting more traction, then finding ways to share some of these benefits and stuff.
So I think it's just making sure that you story do before you story tell is pretty important in that as well.
Have you had any conflicts with board members or other stakeholders in the business when you know you want to make this move, let's say, to RPET plastic, but at the beginning, it's not going to pay off right at the outset.
It's going to take some time.
How do you convince those folks, or do you have a board who's fully on board because you're Harmless Harvest?
You know, I would say in general principle, everybody's aligned.
Now, the brass tacks of what are you going to do this year from a financial standpoint, and you're dealing with, you know, Matu mentioned, like, you know, before even COVID started, we were dealing with the worst drought in 40, 50 years.
So yields were way down.
It was brutal for farmers, for us.
And then you come into COVID, and that had, you know, some seismic impacts.
And, you know, all this while, you're, you know, one of our things was we're converting to 100% RPT, which is far more expensive.
And, you know, I did, you know, we got a little bit of pushback.
As you should, you should ask those financial questions.
Can you make it so that at the end of the day, there's no positive impact on environment or communities if we don't succeed financially as a company.
And our philosophy is, you know, mission is a, it's a long game, right?
And, you know, part of running a company is, you have to have some element in the here and now and deliver kind of, you know, where, but you have to be thinking long-term and what are the types of decisions that are going to drive long-term impact.
And then you just, and you have to decide what is important as a business.
We felt this was important as a business.
It goes back to, most consumers don't even know, but they would expect us to be making this kind of decision.
And we feel that it's the type of decision that we need to make, transitioning to all recycled material for our beverages.
And so we do it.
And we then find a way.
It meant we couldn't spend as much on marketing.
It meant that we had to cut in other areas, but we all held hands and felt it was the right thing to do.
We do have another question from Kaylee Donnewald.
Kaylee is curious about what percentage of your coconut meat byproducts you're currently using with your existing product line, and wants to know if there will be a continuation in R&D and innovation with new products coming down the pipeline that use coconut meat.
And the last part of that question is, how has the market been responding to these as compared to the coconut water?
Trying to extract all of our coconut meats.
And it started as a very natural way to better express our vision, which is we need to use all the coconut if we're going to have a good carbon impact.
And we need to, as we're buying, as Ben explained, we're buying the most expensive coconut in the world.
So let's get all the possible value from it.
And so we started to develop a range of products that was first, there was many years attempts to do, many years ago attempts to do a spoonable yogurt, then drinkable yogurt, then back to the spoonable.
There's been a few iterations, launches, relaunches, until we nailed it with the right formula, the right product.
And then the Smoothie platform is also allowing us to use a lot of our coconut meat.
But you can absolutely never, like our business was 100% coconut water and then nothing.
And now we're 80-20, but you have to grow another business while your main business is growing at its own pace.
So you can't have the perfect balance.
And so the job I'm doing also now on the business development side is to find a new life for all the coconut meat we're extracting and that we are not using yet.
And then we feel there is a huge potential in the plant-based dairy alternative.
And that's what we're focusing on at the moment a lot.
And the next step for us will be, what do we do with the husk?
Husk is a fiber, so yes, it goes to landfills, but no, it's an organic matter and it's going to decompose.
Can we find a new use case that would keep the carbon sequestered and create value and become, I don't know, furniture, construction material, anything that would not just be...
The easy solution is to burn it, to replace, to make energy.
That's one solution, but that's emitting carbon again.
So once again, part of our mission as Harmless Harvest is to be carbon neutral.
How do we get there?
We need to find a new life for the husk that will allow us to keep the carbon sequestered.
It goes without saying, the more brand love and the more product love you have, the more impact you can make.
And what's been really so much fun about the innovation that we've launched is that we've really arrived in plant-based dairy and in smoothie, and we're successful and we have people who love our product.
And so the goal there is to get that same sort of cult following that we have on the coconut water side so we can get more and make more and more of an impact.
And yes, the R&D team is busy looking at all the ways that we can use the parts of the coconut.
It turns out that the meat is a great base for all sorts of things, and there's a lot more that you can do with coconut water besides extract it and have the product that we have.
So definitely more to come.
And are you finding that the consumers who are purchasing the newer products, are those your loyal coconut water customers?
Are you seeing that you're tapping into a new demographic?
Yeah, great question.
It's a mix, for sure.
We have our loyal consumers seek us out in all categories where we are, but definitely the consumer of plant-based yogurt skews a little bit older, so we're bringing in new consumers that way.
We're also, because we're so great tasting and have a great texture that's like dairy, we bring in consumers that might otherwise say, like, I'm not really a coconut person.
They come in through this very user-friendly product that we have.
And then on the smoothie side, yes, I think we've been working on our marketing for that, and definitely the target includes our loyal fan, but also anyone who's drinking a smoothie, a higher sugar smoothie, you know, is looking for a better alternative, and they're coming to our product because we don't add any sugar.
And it tastes great.
Very important.
And just to build on, like, a little bit more to get a couple of specific numbers for Kaylee, we use it that way if we have to, but we're trying to find better value and better environmental ways to use that coconut.
I'm just curious.
So in terms of biofuel, has the infrastructure been built out in order to be able to extract the fuel from the husks?
And how big is that market?
It is a painful market for us, I will admit.
So right now what we do is it's chopped up, dries out on the cement type thing, and then it goes to local businesses, and it just replaces other more petroleum-based, so using their boilers or whatever to run their factories.
So there is some of that, and there is definitely a market.
One of the things we did invest in early on, just because we have so many coconut husks, is a pellet maker.
So you can actually make their plant-based pellets that you can make.
So around the world, there's a market for this, and we spent all this money to do it, and then the market crashed.
And so we're sitting on lots of assets, probably one of the bigger mistakes I have made.
And so if anybody's looking for pellet machines and choppers and dryers, we certainly have an excess of them in Thailand that we can sell to you at a good price.
You heard it here, folks.
Next up, we'll have a live auction for the Coconut Husk pellets.
But for right now, I would like to thank our guests so much for joining us.
Ben Mand, Heather Cutter, Matu Shamant, thank you so much for joining us.
Is LinkedIn the best way for our viewers to get in touch if they have any questions for you?
Absolutely.
Great.
Well, thank you all so much for joining us.
This has been such a pleasure.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call Podcast.
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