hey there got a very different video for
you guys today in this one I met up with
Sandy cronic and she runs an organic
food distribution company for the last
15 years in Durham North Carolina and I
know a lot of the farms and including
myself we talk a lot about self
distribution so to CSA's farmers markets
restaurants things like that but you
know it's really interesting to hear the
other side of the wholesale side of it
and she's been around for a long time
and running an organic food distribution
company and so I really wanted to get
together with her and pick her brain a
little bit hear her story and hear about
her company also some different things
you might be considering if you're
thinking about going that direction with
your products so hope you enjoy
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sandi mixer having me today I want to
hear all about your company and you as a
person and your background so can you
tell start off by a little bit about the
company that you run absolutely really
happy to have you here Josh I'm here at
happy dirt we just rebranded from
Eastern Carolina organic so most people
still know us as eco or Eastern Carolina
organics we're here at our warehouse in
Durham North Carolina and we're
essentially a wholesale organic produce
distributor I own the company actually
with I own the company with 16 farmers
right now ownership is not required and
because I own it with the farmers were
not technically a co-op but we operate
really similarly to a cooperative
distribution program so we've got
customers or is this going to
restaurants like supermarkets what where
does your sales outlets sure when we
launched the company in 2004 we were
really focused on partnering with
customers that were immediately in this
Triangle area of North Carolina and that
really was restaurants and grocery
stores local and chain stores by now 15
years later we're still really proud and
happy to be partnered with many of those
same accounts here in the area we run
two trucks within the state of North
Carolina and up to Richmond and then we
put a lot of product on third-party
carriers that take our product all up
and down the East Coast so you can find
our products anywhere from a supermarket
in Manhattan to a home delivery company
in Atlanta and a lot of great
restaurants and fast casual chains as
well so this is one of the reasons I
want to come see you because most of the
content that I put
my channel is about some really small
farms and really direct-to-consumer kind
of stuff so what are some things that
you can share in terms of like how you
find farmers and how you work with them
awesome yeah I think it's really
interesting I think it's really
important to share that when I moved
down to this area I had come from Ohio
where I was working with Amish farmers
and doing something of a wholesale
buying and redistribution program for
them and as many people will know I'm
farmers don't drive and don't do email
and talk on the phone and so I had this
really great learning experience of
communicating well with farmers via the
mail and in person and so I knew that
the niche back in 2000 2001 the niche of
being able to buy from local farms was
brand new and really poppin but
especially among restaurants but it was
very clear to me when I moved to this
area that the urban areas around Durham
and Carrboro and Raleigh had great
farmers markets with amazing farmers
that would show up on Saturday morning
and sell the most incredible product and
most of those farms are from within 50
miles of the urban core and they're on
sometimes smaller acreage what I wanted
to make sure to do was support making
our food system more sustainable but not
trying to at all compete with those
incredible farmers that already had
their niche at the farmers markets and
CSA programs and working directly with
some grocery stores and restaurants and
so it became really clear that here in
North Carolina the untapped supply chain
opportunity was in larger farms that
were a little bit further away from that
urban area and would really love a new
outlet that was committed to supporting
them that really
to know them more because that's so
different from the traditional or
conventional food system if farmers
themselves don't know how important they
are in our society if they don't feel
like they're being very well taken care
of if they don't know that they have
dignified career then they're going to
continue to discourage their generation
their next generation from coming back
to the farm and then we're gonna be in
an even bigger mess so now I'm proud to
say that fifteen years later we've
actually we run the numbers every year
on the average age of the farms we work
with because it's just a great witness
test of are we really are we really
moving the needle in the very different
vision of what we have for what we
believe a good food system should look
like and the average age at the last
USDA census for an American farmers 58.3
and I'm really proud to say that over a
10-year window we went from 52 down to
46 and we keep getting more and more
young farmers every year and so it's
really exciting to know that not only
does that represent a whole degree of
sustainability and kind of food security
supply chain pipeline for us as a
business and for our customers and for
the communities that we feed but it's
also really important to know that we
are actually encouraging recruiting
maintaining the next generation of young
folks to start to farm or go back to the
farm because it's again a part of a very
dignified career path for them and they
feel really rewarded by knowing how
connected they are to customers and
that's essentially the role that happy
dirt plays I have so many questions
after what you just said but I'm going
to pick a few here so I know that in
sort of this really small scale of
Admiral's
you know we're talking maybe acre to a
most most of the farmers are correct
selling to customers and doing all their
own marketing and you know trying to
find customers but I know that there's a
lot of farms that are especially locally
that farmers I met better
alright bigger scale to me it used to be
in tobacco like you mentioned and don't
want to do all that side of it and so
you soon can come in and sort of connect
those people with the customers
essentially yeah I mean I think it's
important to note that we have no
minimum size requirement or maximum size
requirement for a farm for us it's
really vetting integrity communication
quality and is wholesaling a good fit
for you I think a lot of farms that are
close to an urban area that have access
to a farmers market or to other direct
market channels or wholesale smaller
farms tend to be killer and marketing
their own product they tend to be really
open to feedback they tend to be really
interested in talking about the new
varieties that they're seeing in the
seed catalog and getting information
from the chef's that they work with
about what they should put into the next
year so that's a really honorable food
system for anyone to participate in as a
diner or a shopper or whatever but we do
have a lot of farms that are actually
really close to us like down the road
and I think for those farms they love
going to the markets on Saturday or they
love having their you know other direct
market channels but they also really
love knowing that they're gonna be able
to count on like 5k or $10,000 a year
from these wholesalers that are right
off the road and while they're driving
in anyhow to this brewery or some other
customer they're able to drop some
product off for us coming from a small
farm the reason why and my world is that
small person to be successful
financially is that they do have that
direct marketing right because they get
a higher price for copper unit whatever
and so for me I've always been hesitant
to try to connect the wholesalers
because I sort of need that difference
in there so do you think that it's
beneficial for small farms to sort of
have that diverse strategy in sales like
you go after your farmers market your
restaurants and then if there's an extra
and it makes sense me to reach out to
wholesalers have a good strategy yeah I
think diversity is key in every sense of
the word from microbiology up to
marketing schemes for sure I don't think
that calling you know with overages or
leftovers from a market or something is
at all what's going to work well with
any wholesale channel whether it's
direct to a chef or to a wholesaling
aggregator but but having a conversation
of hey you know I'm growing on this much
I want to expand by a half an acre you
know here's the list of the things I do
really really really well
which of these could be a good fit and I
don't want to make any huge promises you
know there's no contracts for us that
get signed but it's important for us to
be able to fit farmers expectations into
our plans so that we can show up for you
and be able to reflect back here's the
price we kind of thought we were gonna
maybe be able to get for you here's the
cases or the volume that we thought we
were gonna be able to move for you and
did we meet our goals so someone who's
serious about sustainable food how do
you get into all this like where did
your background meet to engineer yeah so
I randomly became a vegetarian when I
was 10 on my own devices and so I had a
young age my mom was like sounds good
help yourself to cooking like fuel you
know and actually they were brilliant
and took me to one appointment with a
nutritionist so it was really helpful
for me to have this index card on the
fridge of the exact minimum requirements
of protein I needed every day and so I
kind of had like good marching orders of
how to take care of myself which was a
huge blessing because it really I think
in many ways started to see
the path of kind of a Virgo
businesswoman in terms of the ability to
make a list make priorities and go after
what you think you can accomplish in
life and so I loved to cook from a young
age of course not with me
and I became really passionate about
vegetables I just I could tell that
there was something really important
about vegetable quality and I as a born
environmentalist I definitely was very
interested in more toxic-free living and
so organic wasn't necessarily something
I saw in New York where I grew up but I
was definitely already skewed in that
direction
when I moved to Ohio I started working
with Amish farmers and helped organize
getting product from local farmers
mostly Amish in that area into the
college dining halls that I worked with
and in many cases it was really just a
design solution how do we get the list
of local food in front of the food
buyers and the chefs before their
deadline for ordering off of the mass
market system it was a very gentle way
to be able to stoke all of my optimistic
dreams of saying oh you know people want
this why can't we have this this is a
free market system people want to supply
it people want to buy it the only
missing link is that missing link I want
to be that missing link so when we moved
so when I moved down to North Carolina I
wanted to figure out how to continue to
play a role in just building up more
regionally adaptive sustainable organic
local food systems because I know that
the ability to purchase and consume
things that fit within my value system
we're just important to me in terms of
how I want to live the clear concept was
that an organic and local food system
requires infrastructure if it's ever
going to make a dent in a wholesale
environment and as much as I love
farmers markets and they're a massive
and important way to support small farms
and support the loyal customer
who are the frontlines of all of these
movements the problem is is that it's
not necessarily going to be able to make
a dent in mass American culture and so
what we should also try to do is supply
more good food options from more humans
more family farms more more people who
want a connection to their shoppers and
their customers more farmers that are
down the road and sending their kids to
the same school system or co-invest in
the same state tax budget that we could
put that in a supermarket environment so
that more people can see the label feel
that connection and taste the vitality
that comes with local food I think
that's always a strong argument that
people have about you know sustainable
agriculture is that it's such a small
percentage of the overall food system
and so one of these the one that come to
talk to you is because what you do is to
try to increase that volume increase
that percentage of sales yeah that's
super important your connections
directly with the farmers and helping
them out as much as possible mm-hmm yeah
I think one thing that's worth noting is
that what's been very interesting in the
last couple years is our customers have
come to us and said we're buying
non-local food anyways we're buying
conventional food anyways but what you
do in establishing amazing relationships
with suppliers with producers with
farmers is something that nobody else
does well so how can we can't get more
of this product from you and so that set
us out on this path of well how does
this kind of new potential procurement
strategy also fit into our huge goals of
larger resiliency greater innovation
we're certified B Corporation so we're
constantly thinking about how to
continue to grow and evolve along a path
of triple bottom-line values and
resiliency and so I think it's worth
noting because when we talk about the
ability to take something amazing from a
local food system or the ability to know
your farmer that's right down the road
our transition from Eastern
carol-anne organics into happy dirt is
actually really telling the story of how
we want to be able to play the role of
making sure that the product is coming
from great people who care but opening
up to a larger food system because again
people are gonna buy that stuff anyways
and so if we can help create the
connection in terms of where the product
is coming from it's still coming from a
great person it might not be within the
same geographic boundaries or production
boundaries that we were married to
before but that transparency in terms of
communication and freedom of choice is
really the most important part yes I
just want to show the viewers here a
little bit around your company here just
show scale and sort of operation because
it's pretty impressive so take a look
yeah all right JT so we're standing in
like the in and out of this place right
you got a couple big bays here so all
the pro space that comes in out of here
for the most part yeah absolutely we
built these two dots when we bought the
warehouse in 2012 and we tend to have
trucks on both docks most of the week
all right cool let's go transom your
coolers awesome
this one is Catwoman one more
yeah so depending on this time of the
year it's at 55 so we have to potatoes
peppers eggplant tomatoes all right so I
see a lot of it here but this is there's
a constant flux in here this will fill
up an empty
yeah so we basically have three primary
cycles each week of lists going out
orders coming in products coming in from
the farms and so today's that have you
and a big pack day and so a lot of
product is coming in right now and then
we'll be getting packed up through this
effort
tomorrow morning we'll do the same
when you without living numbers
in any one of those three weekly cycles
were easily this time of year doing
about 30 to 50 pallets coming and going
in a two day period Wow okay cool yeah
holder sure okay so we're in a folder
cooler now
so this we keep at 36 degrees and so
lettuces greens cabbages broccoli
herbs so is that me going out
everything comes and goes out in cases
and we are working with bins too so some
stuff comes in by the bin and goes out
to a customer by the bin bin is a pallet
position that's like yay high and it
could have 1,200 pounds of sweet
potatoes in it or 700 pounds of
cucumbers in it so people pretty crazy
yeah like field grade it's going
straight from the field into the video
all right well thanks so much for
showing me around today I feel like we
could talk for hours and hopefully maybe
you can do some follow-up videos like
there's a lot of stuff you get up to the
conversation here but I just what do
they wanted to bring your angle into the
conversation here because it's sort of
the middle piece and a lot of this and
work you're doing is incredible so how
could people check out what you're into
our what you're up to and you know if
farmers looking to connect or you know
customers and things like that
absolutely well Josh thanks so much for
coming it's been really fun to chat with
you anyone can visit our website at
happy dirt comm and we're always looking
for more farmers to work with so I
definitely want to encourage anyone to
reach out and for shoppers and the
supermarket's you can look for our name
this is kind of an example of what our
bunch tags would look like around red
kale and rainbow chard so really bright
colors just kind of spilling the good
gossip on happy dirt and how amazing
farmers are so so your support and so
where does some supermarkets least
locally knit we work with all the coops
Weaver Street Market the Durham food
co-op Whole Foods Market Wegmans and
lots of amazing restaurants and home
delivery companies as well alright
thanks Andy
thank you it would be smart if I had
this at my
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shut up you want to start that over
yeah okay you know what to think of like
here are the needs does that matter
yeah so funny looks it's a very wide
it's a glass yeah yeah this cameras huge
yeah that's why you see like people are
scared to get close to the camera I'm
like no I mean I could yeah what I
figured like something like that's good
cool
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