Ever wondered how a fourth-generation citrus farmer turned his passion into the largest organic juice brand in the nation? Join us as we chat with Matt McLean, the visionary behind Uncle Matt's Organic. Mac takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings in the sweltering Florida groves to creating a thriving business empire. He opens up about his family's rich history in citrus farming, his competitive spirit, and the lessons learned from early hard labor and leadership. You'll also hear about his strategic partnerships with major retailers like Kroger and the significance of the Cincinnati market in consumer packaged goods.
Matt doesn’t just stop at business success; he's at the forefront of regenerative farming. This episode delves into the challenges and rewards of adopting organic methods, including cover cropping and composting. Matt provides a candid look at the economic principles behind sustainable farming and the resilience required to face obstacles like citrus greening disease. His strong belief in regenerative practices as a solution for global sustainability is both inspiring and insightful, promising listeners a deeper understanding of the future of agriculture.
Finally, explore the innovative side of Uncle Matt's Organic with a discussion on their unique product offerings like the Ultimate Immune and Ultimate Defense juices. By blending organic orange juice with health-boosting ingredients like elderberry, turmeric, and ginger, Matt has crafted beverages that not only taste great but also support overall health. Listen as he shares his philosophy on natural remedies and the importance of maintaining product excellence. This episode is a blend of entrepreneurial wisdom, industry insights, and innovative approaches to organic farming and product development that you won't want to miss.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
Ever wondered how a fourth-generation citrus farmer turned his passion into the largest organic juice brand in the nation? Join us as we chat with Matt McLean, the visionary behind Uncle Matt's Organic. Mac takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings in the sweltering Florida groves to creating a thriving business empire. He opens up about his family's rich history in citrus farming, his competitive spirit, and the lessons learned from early hard labor and leadership. You'll also hear about his strategic partnerships with major retailers like Kroger and the significance of the Cincinnati market in consumer packaged goods.
Matt doesn’t just stop at business success; he's at the forefront of regenerative farming. This episode delves into the challenges and rewards of adopting organic methods, including cover cropping and composting. Matt provides a candid look at the economic principles behind sustainable farming and the resilience required to face obstacles like citrus greening disease. His strong belief in regenerative practices as a solution for global sustainability is both inspiring and insightful, promising listeners a deeper understanding of the future of agriculture.
Finally, explore the innovative side of Uncle Matt's Organic with a discussion on their unique product offerings like the Ultimate Immune and Ultimate Defense juices. By blending organic orange juice with health-boosting ingredients like elderberry, turmeric, and ginger, Matt has crafted beverages that not only taste great but also support overall health. Listen as he shares his philosophy on natural remedies and the importance of maintaining product excellence. This episode is a blend of entrepreneurial wisdom, industry insights, and innovative approaches to organic farming and product development that you won't want to miss.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, my co-host. Let's get started, all right. Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Let's get started, all right. Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Guys, we have a special guest. Me and Kyle are both in the house, but Mac McLean how are you doing, matt? I'm doing awesome. Thank you, is it McLean McLean? Is that how?
Speaker 2:
you. You know, I say McLean. The crazy thing is, my mom says McLean, but I've always said McLean, you won't get it wrong either way.
Speaker 1:
Okay. Well, my name's a hard one to pronounce too, and people get it wrong all the time, so it's fine. But yeah, man, we're excited to have you. I mean, you guys are down in Florida killing it, man. I mean one of the largest, the largest organic juice brand in the country, grapefruit juice, orange juice.
Speaker 2:
You're in Kroger up here in Cincinnati. We can go buy your products off the shelf right now. Bunch of stores. You guys are nationwide. I mean, you were doing stuff across the world for a long time. What's your secret? Where'd you get your start? I'm a fourth-generation Florida citrus grower. It was in my blood. On the other side, I also have an entrepreneurial spirit. I love competition. I love being a self-starter. Those two things came together and I found my passion, luckily at an early stage in my life, 25 years ago, with the opportunity to start my own juice brand and do it organic, which is a thing I'm passionate about on farming organic. And so combine all that together and here we are today. I still feel like it's the first couple of years in business when I come into the office.
Speaker 1:
That's right. You got to keep that attitude right. You do, you do. It's all part of the hustle. Right, it is all part of the hustle. Well, that is awesome. I mean, what you've been able to accomplish is great and I've always wanted to talk to a guy like you who knows how to.
Speaker 1:
You know, take a CPG brand, because I mean, we're in the capital of CPG here in Cincinnati. Procter Gamble's based here, which largest consumer packaged goods company in the world. You've got Kroger here, which is the biggest grocery chain, and they're about to buy Albertsons, as long as the SEC doesn't get in the way and many other government agencies that like to block things like that. But that would put you on the West Coast, I guess. If you already got a deal with Kroger and yeah, it's going to be a big, big deal but we're in the CPG capital and people here rarely ever take advantage of the fact that you can walk down the street and ask Kroger if you could throw something in their stores, I guess. But how did you make that happen? What made you want to? I know you said you got an entrepreneurial spirit and everything else. What made you want to start this brand?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So first off, I have made tons of trips over my lifetime those 25 years to Kroger to go to Cincinnati downtown. It's an awesome experience. I've had many different buyers. They've been a really good customer of ours and helped us get to the next level. So thank you. For anybody from Kroger who may be listening to this, we live our partnership with Kroger and I even do make trips to Cincinnatiincinnati in the winter, coming from florida. So that's how much I love gotta get ready.
Speaker 1:
Don't bring any of that frost back with you. We talked about that before the show. Just keep, we'll keep it up here can't have cold weather down here.
Speaker 2:
but you know, for me it really was I. I started, uh I grew up, in the citrus industry. You know my father, my great-grandfather, came down to Florida. He had a love for citrus. He was a citrus farmer. He also raised cattle, he did vegetables. He even had turpentine and the citrus piece is what flowed through the rest of the generations my granddad. He took a liking to that. My father obviously loved it as well, and when I grew up, I grew up in the hot summers working for my dad, helping him in his groves and doing all the fun labor that goes with it.
Speaker 1:
Real work, real work. That's what you were doing.
Speaker 2:
Real. I tell you what that work is. That's real motivating work, real motivating work. To go do something else with your life. Make sure you're going to study hard and prosper, buddy, because otherwise you're going to be out here on you know, on the hand crew pulling weeds. You know planting trees, and while that's a noble job for anybody that does it, it is definitely physically demanding, especially in Florida in the summer heat. So, but it taught me a lot of valuable lessons how to just be, you know, hardworking, perseverance.
Speaker 2:
I led a small crew of young men with me on a day to day basis, so you know, I look back on those days and a lot of fond memory around just business and things that I learned about you know how to take that next step. And so it taught me when I went to college. I definitely was going to go to college to get out of that you know atmosphere and I wanted to study business and finance and I had visions of, you know, working on Wall Street and being a banker and all those things. And then, when I got out of college, I had a couple of job offers to be, you know, selling business forms or computer software, and it just didn't feel right. I'm like I don't think this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't really have a passion for it.
Speaker 2:
And then, at the same time, my father was a citrus consultant. They had come back with a guy from Germany who owned some citrus groves and he said, hey, I need help. Man, I need help. I want to take my fresh fruit and, more importantly, florida juice. I love Florida orange juice and I've got friends over in Germany that are bottlers and if you can help me find you know people I can buy good quality juice from and get it over to Europe, I can sell it to the bottlers. And so he and I formed a little partnership and I went around at the ripe age of you know, 21, 22, 23. And I used the good name that we had between my granddad and father to go to those juice plants and say, hey, I need to buy some organic orange juice or conventional orange juice, conventional grapefruit juice, and I'm going to put it on a boat and send it to Holland and then we're going to truck it down to Germany and the bottlers. And that's what we did and we had a really strong business for five years. We were doing a lot, a lot of business and had a lot of success.
Speaker 2:
And then one of the customers in Southern Bavaria, a little town of Freinsheim, mr Noy, asked me for organic. He said hey, matt, I need to find some organic, some biologic grapefruit juice. And I didn't know what that was. I said, hey, you're a great customer, I love you, mr Noy, and I'm going to go figure that piece out for you. It sounds interesting because typically trends start in Europe and they move over to the US. And if this is something new that's on trend, I need to be aware of it.
Speaker 2:
And so I came back to the US and I had the dual moment of facing my grandfather and father and asking them can we even grow organic? What is organic farming? And that even happened in Florida. And they just chuckled. And my granddad in particular. He was like I was alive before pesticides were invented in the 40s and we farmed organic without anybody even telling us it was organic. We planted cover crops, we used things like fish emulsion and compost and so we can do it.
Speaker 2:
And it gave me the real satisfaction and the real impetus and confidence that, hey, ok, if we can grow it, then I think I can provide it. And I also had the same time, the aha moment in business, where you look at a market and you go I think I may have something here, because there was no organic Tropicana. There was no organic, simply. So it made sense from at least the business opportunity, like, hey, I really think if it's happening in Europe, it could potentially come to the US. And there was other small organic cottage industries that were popping up. They were becoming really valuable in the supermarket, and so it gave me the confidence to say, hey, this could happen, we could become an organic juice company, but I had no idea how to do it. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that's a great story, I mean.
Speaker 1:
And that's a great story, I mean, and that's funny that it happened internationally and you were ahead of the game thanks to this customer of yours, and it's good. That's why you listen to customers, right, because you never know where that insight is going to come from that you weren't expecting. And then here you are, in 20,000 stores now with this organic brand. And what separates you guys from a Tropicana or a Simply or one of these guys that have the organic claim? I know there's a lot of labeling stuff. Yeah, what's the difference there?
Speaker 2:
So I mean to simplify it organic farming is done more the way Mother Nature intended, right. So you're not going to have the harsh chemicals, the the synthetic fertilizers uh, we use more natural things. So, uh, instead of using urea and ammonium nitrate that you would put on the soil, uh, we'll use compost, we'll use stuff like peanut meal, feather meal, and what happens there? You're actually feeding the bugs, so you're feeding the, the microbes in the soil that will eat that natural material and they'll break it down and then they will synthesize that with the roots into the tree. So it's a slower form of nitrogen where your synthetics are much faster. They're more you know, they feed the tree quicker and they're more about, you know, growth and vigor, where organic will be a slower growth and it will be more symbiotic with the tree and with the soil, so you're not going to leach a lot of it through down into the aquifer or waste it, which is one.
Speaker 2:
And then, from just the synthetic chemicals we don't use Roundup, the weed killer that causes cancer. Glyphosate we don't use that. We use mechanical hoe weed eaters. Vinegar, burndown products, so we don't use those. Also, the pesticides we won't use the synthetic pesticides, the neonicotinoids that can be harmful to bees and birds and things like that, so we'll use it.
Speaker 2:
It's just basically a more natural way of farming and really going back to the way my grandfather and great-grandfather did it before a lot of this technology came about and the technology the modern conventional farming technology today. It's not a bad method. It's obviously a very effective method and it feeds a lot of people, but it's mostly based around production, right? It's really about trying to get more production per acre, more production per acre and, as an organic farmer, we're looking for more quality per acre, right? So we're going to try and grow more nutrient dense food stuff that you know. In that orange juice you have more vitamin C, more antioxidants, more nutrients in a blueberry or an apple or that piece of fruit or that vegetable, because it's growing slower, it's releasing more natural stuff in the soil that that plant can take up into it.
Speaker 1:
Wow yeah, go ahead, Matt, Sorry man.
Speaker 3:
It's an issue with me not being in there. I step on your toes sometimes, my bad. Hi Kyle, how are you doing Good? How scalable do you think regenerative farming is? Because I know that millions of people listen to Rogan's podcast and they had the guy from Georgia on talking about his cattle farm. Yeah, that seems less scalable than a produce farm when it comes to regenerative farming. But I was just wondering what how you saw this is. Could this be a trend in the future where it's not just uh, uh, not to say it's a niche market, but a niche market where it can actually become like predominant?
Speaker 2:
yeah. So I think the answer to that is a resounding yes. I mean, and that's what we fought for for 25 years is to continue to convert more people to organic. But we're still only about 5% of the market share, right? If you wanted to say tomorrow and you said, hey, we needed to be 100%, the market's not ready for that, right, for that. You're not going to have enough compost, you're not going to have enough cottonseed meal or peanut milk. You're not going to have enough of those supplies probably to go out and convert acreage that quick. So, like anything, you need to ramp up to it.
Speaker 2:
Also, do the farmers have the knowledge to be able to just turn it organic one year? You can't necessarily go down to your local land-grant university and get a playbook on how to farm organic. So there's a learning curve, a good amount of learning curve you've got to overcome or else you'll crash your production. The trees won't get enough nutrients. But the regenerative farming there's a lot of parts that you can take from a conventional farm and start using some of the regenerative organic methods and you could slowly start transitioning pieces.
Speaker 2:
I mean, growing cover crops is easy. You grow some of your nitrogen naturally right in the middle of the citrus grove right. So you plant a cow pea, you plant a sun hemp, you plant something like that right in the middle of the row. It grows up and then you till it back in, you disc it in or you knock it down, whatever you want to do, and guess what that does? That provides natural nitrogen back into the soil, natural food back into the soil. It adds more water holding capacity. So you're always trying to grow organic, natural organic matter in the soil so it's more dense. So I think there for me, long-term, that would be my goal. Um is to, you know, create regenerative organic farming, uh, throughout the world, and I think you could.
Speaker 2:
you'll capture more carbon, you'll create more um, organic matter in the soil, which will help with rainfall. You'll help with nutrients released to the plants, but it won't be. Oh, you couldn't just snap your fingers and do it overnight. So the people that criticize like, oh, you would starve the world, well yeah, if you did it overnight probably. But if you have goals of, hey, let's start with cover cropping, then let's start with composting, then let's start. You know what are some of the things that we can start taking away and replacing conventional with or regenerative organic methods. I think that there's a chance.
Speaker 1:
When I'm guessing. At the University of Florida they didn't teach you that organic farming was the wave of the future, and in that economics class you probably learned about how to make things faster, cheaper, charge more. It's almost like you probably learned the opposite of what you're doing now in business school.
Speaker 2:
It was pretty broad, but there was a good amount of things I took away and could apply. Right and definitely supply and demand and that plays out every day in every business. And also, you know, no profit goes unchallenged in a free market in America. So you got to make sure that if you're producing something that's a commodity, how do you make sure that that commodity is better than everybody else? And you got to either grow it different, right, high organic you got to be able to produce it consistently better than other people.
Speaker 2:
So over the course of our lifespan of 25 years we've really focused on our supply base and we were growers and so we went out and we converted a whole lot of acreage to organic. And my father and brother they were the agronomist, I'm the business guy and they were the agronomist and so they could go in and help convert acreage and so we never ran out of supply and we never ran out of good quality supply where some of our early competitors in the space Pavich and also horizon and even organic valley they wound up running out of supply because they were more just marketers and they weren't really at the ground level.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, you control what you're growing so you're not like white labeled. Yeah, exactly, oh, I was just gonna ask that like white labeled growers, I mean how many of these orange juice companies out there, actually just kind of white label brands that buy from some of your neighbors down there in florida?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so it has changed a lot. Okay, so we went through our own cycle where, up until 2015, we controlled every single orange that went into Uncle Matt's, and then the little citrus greenie bug showed up and this little disease showed up and it started affecting all of our neighbors that were conventional. Then it started affecting us. We were more resilient, but then we succumbed to it just like everybody else. So our business model had to adjust and rapidly change, and so we started working with our connections that we had in Texas, we had connections in California, we had connections in Mexico, and so today the vast majority of our supply comes from those three regions.
Speaker 2:
In Florida has been shut down to less than 100 acres. For us, personally, organic. That's all research and development, just trying to find a cure for citrus greening. So you want to talk about a business that is constantly having to change. That wasn't in our original formula and model. That's it so very humbling. You have to, in business, be able to adapt, and if not, then somebody else will, and so that is our adaptation today. If we eventually find the cure, which we hope to, we can replant Florida and we can come back and be, you know, 100 percent from Florida, which we were up until 2015, proudly as a fourth generation Florida citrus grower. But it has changed everybody. So even Florida's Natural, which is a co-op of Florida growers I think it was last year, maybe even the year prior they had to start sourcing from Mexico and Brazil as well, and so there's literally no 100% just Florida orange juice left in the market, which is sad, but it is where we're at today with the intro of citrus green disease.
Speaker 1:
I had no idea, Kyle. Did you even know that was a thing?
Speaker 2:
Oh, you're on.
Speaker 1:
Kyle's on mute Kyle's on mute there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I'm sorry it wouldn't pop up so I could unmute it. My bad, no, I had no idea it was a thing I. I purposely stayed out of shipping produce because it's a nightmare, so I kind of stopped paying attention to what was going on. Is it affected anything else? I know the watermelon crops. I kind of stopped paying attention to what was going on. Has it affected anything else? I know the watermelon crops haven't been too terrible.
Speaker 2:
No, it's just citrus. So this is a disease that only affects citrus and it doesn't affect humans at all. So there's nothing. If you're listening to this like, oh my gosh, the orange juice is infected. No, it doesn't affect that at all. What it does is a little pest, the Asian citrus psyllid. It's like the mosquito that spreads malaria.
Speaker 2:
It bites the leaf of the tree. It's trying to find nutrients. When it does, it transmits it from its gut into the leaf, it goes down into the main artery of the tree, the phloem and the xylem. It winds up. The tree doesn't really either identify it as a pathogen or it overreacts to it and it causes the tree to start blocking the nutrient uptake and the water flow in the tree. And so you'll get some limbs that start turning yellow it was originally, you know, identified as yellow dragon disease and then eventually that that limb will start dying and that fruit will stay green hence the term greening and it will fall off premature. And then eventually the tree dies because it doesn't have enough water or nutrient capabilities. And so you get off notes in your juice because of all that immature fruit that they're still. They'll pick, they'll try and grade out, but sometimes it looks very similar to a ripe piece of fruit and you can't tell. So it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 2:
Florida is the ground zero of this disease. Because of our subtropical climate, the vector, the little psyllid, loves to live here and the disease loves to proliferate. And there's other regions that we're working in southern Texas, east coast of Mexico, west coast of Mexico and California. They don't have near the same harsh climate Parts of Mexico do, and so they're showing some of the same greening symptoms. But they get hot enough that we believe that thermotherapy naturally burns off the little bacteria and it goes into a cycle every year. But Florida, while it gets really hot, it's still humid and you get rainfall, so it cools it down most of the time. So you know it stays thriving in Florida.
Speaker 2:
And until you really find a way to either control the vector which conventionally you know they're trying a lot with different, you know synthetic pesticides and it hasn't worked or you try to clean out the bacteria in that phloem and that phloem is really hard to get into and have anything move up and down throughout it. And even if you do, the little vector can come back and reinfect it and reinfect it. So now, uh, we're, we're trying really hard as an industry but it's literally, uh, been cut in half and it's it'll be cut in half again and you know most of the growers are selling off for development, um and and other things. So a sad story happening right in front of us. As I'm the fourth generation going, this fifth generation is going to look a lot different from an ag standpoint and from a citrus standpoint in Florida unless a cure happens pretty soon. I tell everybody I believe in the power of prayer and please pray for a cure, because we need it and some wisdom.
Speaker 3:
Well, hopefully it's like Forrest Gump here at the end of the hurricane and all the other boats have been wrecked and hit the shore and yeah, you're in your version of the jenny and you're able to come out.
Speaker 2:
I'm completely fine not being jenny and forrest. I want everybody, I want all the shrimp boats, man, I just it's a it's a tight-knit community and it's sad to see generational families and farmers that are getting out of it, and it's just sad. So we're okay at Uncle Matt's because we're nimble enough to be able to move to other growing regions and we have great relationships with other multi-generational families that are pouring their heart and soul into it. And we're telling them, hey, this is what we're doing in Florida, heart and soul into it. And we're telling them, hey, this is what we're doing in Florida, and this is ways to be as diligent as you can uh with different practices that you can do through uh soil and also through foliar sprays to try and uh fend off any of that disease. So you don't get to the point that Florida is so it's a crazy story.
Speaker 3:
Wow.
Speaker 2:
I hope it has a much better ending than what I just painted for all of my friends and growers. Conventional Oregon.
Speaker 1:
I didn't know anything about this and I bet the real estate developers are chomping at the bit to scoop up those farms and before the show you even mentioned that some of that's kind of encroaching on you guys a little bit.
Speaker 2:
Oh, a lot. Yeah, if you came to our little town of Claremont, it's more than 30 minutes outside of Disney World and just west of Orlando. You know, in the 80s, when it froze in 1983, 85, and 89 out here, it dramatically changed the landscape forever. The banks wouldn't reloan us money. My father and grandfather had amassed about 600 acres of citrus that they owned themselves conventional citrus and then Christmas Eve 1983, it literally killed everything. It got down to 17 degrees. You could walk outside in the middle of the night and it would sound like shotgun blast going off periodically because the sap in the tree was expanding so much that it would bust the bark and it would make just. It sounded like a shotgun, like ow going off and it was pretty nuts.
Speaker 2:
But you know, hey, the resiliency of a farmer every year is our year. Man and God love them. I love that attitude. It's always. You know, this is the land and this is what we're going to do, and we're farmers and we're here to stay. And so a lot of them move south. My grandfather moved south after the freezes in the 80s. He became a consultant. My father became a global consultant. He wasn't able to replant. They didn't have crop insurance in the early 80s. Yeah, sold off the land for all average about $1,000 an acre, which today it's probably $50,000 to $100,000 an acre.
Speaker 3:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
So a little different dynamic, but they survived. My dad went to the Bahamas to get work. He went to Costa Rica, he went to Mexico. He was beneficial and crucial for a lot of those industries to help them start their citrus industry and then he stayed in Florida and did consulting work here, and when I came back and did Uncle Matt's in 1999, we turned the last stuff he had where we grew up. He had a small farm and we took the backyard about three acres of grapefruit and we turned it organic, and so from there we amassed more and more growers till we got to the 1500 acres and probably 35 different growers that we had managed. And then the greening hit and now we're back the other way. This is wild man.
Speaker 1:
I mean this is like. I mean you started this essentially from scratch. I mean it wasn't like you had all this stuff and you just kind of rolled into this. I mean you come from this history of farmers but it's been up and down the whole time. I mean you have to be resilient, you have to have grit. I mean Uncle Matt's is essentially a startup.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean it's really what it is right, yeah, oh yeah, no, no, it started from nothing. You know, my grandfather said it best If you love change, you will love agriculture, because there's never two seasons the same. And he's right. And so you know our main input. We rely on Mother Nature to provide us good, healthy crops every year, and sometimes you get hit by a hurricane, sometimes you get out of a hurricane, sometimes you got a drought, sometimes you have abundance. And that's just the first part of the equation of how to run our business successfully.
Speaker 2:
Then you got to get it in the bottle. You got to get it harvested. You got to get it in the bottle. You got to get it shipped on time with good carrier partners like TQL. You got to get out there and then deliver it on the shelf and then from there you got to market it. You got to get out there and then deliver it on the shelf and then from there you got to market it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you got to make sure that a customer will pick it up and you hope that they love it and have a great experience and will tell a friend and you know. Then you got to have elbows to get competition out of there so you can stay on the shelf, but it's great, I mean I, I mean literally every day I can wake up and it sounds like the theme of Rocky going off of my head, cause I'm just, you know, running up those steps, like you know. Come on, let's go, that's right. We're going to, we're going after the big brands, you know drop, and simply we want, you know, this little challenger, come on here we go.
Speaker 3:
I love it. I live by the super center here in Newport, so I will make sure that if I don't see Uncle Matt's eye level on the shelves, I'll get rid of them. Even if the price tags don't move, the products will move.
Speaker 2:
I can't endorse that, but if that's what you would like to do, that will be, matt, if you need us to go down to Kroger.
Speaker 1:
I live three minutes away. I live right up the Vine Street. If you need us to go down to kroger, I live right, I live three minutes away. I live right up the vine street. If you need me to walk down to kroger, I walk down to kroger. Knock on the door, I love it.
Speaker 2:
They have been a great success story for us. I'll tell you a quick story about kroger and how I first got in there. Um, dave slusher, a dear friend of mine. He was part of a food broker and food brokers represent a lot of companies like myself and they have great relationships with the Kroger, with buyers, any supermarket buyer, and so you will hire them to help you get appointments and get into the store and get on the shelf. And so if I'm just a little guy and I'm calling Kroger, hey take an appointment, take an appointment.
Speaker 2:
They have a million of me calling them every day. But if you sign up with a food broker, a lot of times they have a lot more clout. And then that buyer knows okay, well, they're going to understand how we need to fill out the paperwork, our minimum order requirements, how to advertise all of those things, and you'll get a better chance to get in front of the buyer and have an actual appointment and sit down with them. So Dave Slusher calls me. This is like 2005. And I mean I had harassed the Kroger buyer, you know, nonstop Like, hey, man, come on, I got this great product, you need it, you need it, you need it. And so Dave Slusher calls me and he said, hey, I'm know, dave slusher and I've got this great, uh, food brokerage. And I call on broker. I said, hey, listen, hey, I'm already dealing with indirect. I don't need a broker. Man, I'm, I'm fine, I you know. Thank you for calling me, though, dave. But you know I'm this little guy and I've I got the challenger brand, I'm on the way to the top, and you may be in my way.
Speaker 2:
And so I kept trying to call Kroger. Never could get a call back and you know, dave called me a couple of weeks later. He's very polite, very professional. He said, hey, you may want to rethink this, and I said, well, ok, well, tell me more. He goes. You know, your main competitor was Horizon, right, and I said, yeah, he goes. Well, you know, then, horizon has gone out of the orange juice business. I said, yeah, yeah, and it's a great opportunity.
Speaker 2:
I think I want to. You know the Kroger buyer will call me back. I can get in there. He goes well. So I work really close with Kroger and I don't know if you understand this, but I can help you get in with Kroger. I know the buyer and they're looking to redo the set. And I said, oh okay, sorry, dave. Yeah, thank you. I was very misunderstanding of this relationship and I'm going to have a big dose of humble pie and he just laughed. He said no problem, buddy, I really like you and I know you've got a great product and that's why I'm calling you, because I love your product, and I'll forget all about this. You know, last couple of weeks of you telling me what I'm going to be doing, so that's how you got in.
Speaker 1:
Huh, that's how you got into. So you would. You would recommend anybody with a CPG just call broker, quit trying to do it yourself. You're probably not going to.
Speaker 2:
Well, I mean some of those, some of the like publics. You know you can, if you got, if they're in your backyard, you may have a better chance. But yes, if you want a quicker route, you know, find a good food broker that already knows what they're doing. You're going to, you know, pay three to five percent, but it'll be a good three, five percent because they're going to help you navigate it. Now, once you start really knowing and understanding the game, you may say, well, maybe I don't need to do that, but I can tell you right now we have brokers for most all of our business and they do a very good job for us.
Speaker 1:
Yeah well, kroger's a client of mine too. We do a bunch of website work for them. But now you know Kyle, so if you have any shipping problems you call Kyle and Kyle will go down the hallway at tql and start kicking some butt. That's right. And kyle takes mma. He's an mma guy, so he will kick butt. He'll literally kick butt, like he'll go down there and put some on a choke hold for you if you need it.
Speaker 3:
So you keep saying you keep, you keep saying that you're gonna get. I mean, if our audience ever gets big, it's big. You're gonna get my ass kicked.
Speaker 1:
There's guys right now listening to our podcast like I'm just waiting for the day.
Speaker 3:
I guess I can't stand his stupid slow voice. I can't stand how slow he talks and how dumb he is.
Speaker 1:
I want to beat the shit out of him. Well, you don't want that. Well, matt man, this is awesome. Man, tell us a little bit more, though, about the actual product. We haven't even really talked about the product and what makes it so special and different and the different varieties and things you have that people can go down to Kroger and pick up and it's organic.
Speaker 2:
When you pop open that bottle, the one thing that we are fanatical about is being consistently great. So we take great pride in making sure that that product no matter what it's our orange or grapefruit or lemonade we have some functional blends that when you open that thing, it's consistently great and it's going to be organically, naturally sweet, from Mother Nature. If you were to test us versus Tropicana or simply, or Florida's natural any of the big brands and you were to test our natural sugar level you know which is called bricks in the industry B, r, I, x, um, if you had a little bricks meter, you would see that we're probably about 1% higher than them and you would think, eh, that's not really that big of a deal. But your taste buds will tell you the difference. It's just, it's more flavorful, it's a little thicker on the tongue, it's just delicious. And I think that's why, as a little tiny challenger brand, we continue to grow and outpace the category every year, because our product just tastes great and I'm the biggest critic. I'm fanatical about being consistently great. I hammer that into all of our employees. That's my slogan. No matter what job you're doing for Uncle Matt's, you need to take pride and be consistently great, because our customers demand it and if we don't give it to them, one of our customers will or one of our competitors will. So that's what we're all about.
Speaker 2:
We had a lot of fun with orange juice as a great base because you can add other functional ingredients to it and a lot of the time you can hide some of the bitter attributes of some of the other flavor profiles of functional ingredients. So we took elderberry, which is a very bitter berry but it's known for cold and flu fighting properties. We added it to our orange juice and so we have a, a product called ultimate immune and it's orange and elderberry and it's got this beautiful kind of purple color similar to my shirt, and we boosted it with vitamin c from acerola. So we boosted it up to 300 natural vitamin c. We added some vitamin d and zinc, so those three things combine. You know high C, d and zinc, and then you got the properties of OJ and the cold and flu properties of elderberry. It's a delicious product. It looks beautiful, people really love it. That was one of our innovative ideas.
Speaker 2:
And then we also took turmeric. Turmeric is a spice and it's got a really strong aftertaste to it. But we added pineapple and ginger with turmeric the whole root turmeric ground up in there with a probiotic, and we added that to orange juice and so we have a really healthy product called Ultimate Defense. It helps with inflammation, it helps with digestion and immune support, all of those things. But it's got a nice little sweet note with a zing to it from the turmeric and the ginger, and so if you kind of like a little spice and kick, we recommend that one for people. What?
Speaker 3:
are you putting in with the turmeric so that people can absorb it properly? I always heard you had to put like black pepper with it.
Speaker 2:
We do so. Kyle, you're fantastic. You're like a sales guy for me. So, yes, we actually have black pepper in there to help bring out the cucurbit and activate the turmeric.
Speaker 3:
There we go, man. That's how I make my eggs. My eggs are cinnamon, turmeric and black pepper. And my kids hate it. Yeah, but I love with coconut and make it in coconut oil and I love it. My kids hate it because they like the milk and cheese and all that other garbage.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but you got some good NCT fat coming from the coconut oil. You got the turmeric with inflammation. You got some good NCT fat coming from the coconut oil. You got the turmeric with inflammation. You got some good stuff there, Kyle.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I think it tastes good. I mean, if the cinnamon works for Adam's favorite Gold Star Chili or Skyline, whatever crap he eats at Cincinnati Chili.
Speaker 1:
You throw some geta in that omelet and them eggs Kyle what are you doing? Geta's good that chili, though, has got to go kyle's the only guy matt kyle's the only guy doesn't like cincinnati chili. I'm sure you know all about it skyline chili.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's chili man I grew up in college and that's all we talk about skyline chili. He was from cincinnati. There you go see.
Speaker 1:
Look at all your connections to cincinnati. It's. I should have been. I should have done this interview three years ago, when the pandemic was happening, because I wouldn't have had to go to CVS and buy all that elderberry stuff. I could have just been drinking your juice. I wouldn't have had to do the zinc. I had zinc, I had elderberry, essentially everything you named vitamin C pills. I was taking all that stuff. It's like precautionary.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, and so I'm a health and wellness junkie. I'm into a lot of supplements. I Absolutely, and so I'm a health and wellness junkie. I'm into a lot of supplements. I don't like going to the doctor, I like to have natural cures, and so I design a lot of our products around that. Oh, wow, yeah, man, I'm the formulator, I'm the guy that's living the lifestyle. If you came to my house and opened up my pantry or my fridge, you'd go well, gee, look at all the organic stuff. Kind of joke, because sometimes, uh, kids will come over friends of my kids and and then they'll go back home like there wasn't anything really good to eat in that place oh no, it wasn't all the normal junk.
Speaker 2:
Right, it wasn't all the normal typical, you know snacks. It was more organic and natural. Uh, it's still very tasty.
Speaker 3:
Well, you're farming in Florida, so you've got to be able to farm with your shirt off, right? Isn't that the whole point of living down there? Yeah?
Speaker 2:
that's true. You better put on some sunblock, though, because you'll fry like a piece of bacon Matt's ready for the beach.
Speaker 1:
Well, it seems kind of unfair. You have this company and you have access to this stuff all the time. You just go down and. But I was looking up on your, on your store locator and guys, uncle matt'scom is the web address here, but I was looking it up every one of the stores I shop at the fresh time over in newport kyle, it's there, it's at the cory, uh, coryville location, a kroger, he's got it at. Uh, the meyer, uh, I mean it's all, I mean it's everywhere. You, I mean you're got one, two. I mean I I stay here and count all these. I mean there's practically every store in in cincinnati here, you got it at yeah, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 2:
So if you go to our on our website, you go to the store locator and put in your zip code and it'll tell you nationwide. You know where where we're at. But we do a pretty. Our sales team has done a pretty darn good job of getting us in, and if you can't find it in your local supermarket, you can always order it off our website. It will be more expensive. I'm going to warn you of that. Don't send me a nasty gram. It is what it is. I can't control FedEx fees and having to keep it cold overnight, but we will get it to you. If you want to order it, we darn sure will send it to you.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, oh, I love it. I'm glad it's a fresh time. I like fresh time a lot more than I like whole foods. It's like fresh time is like a miniature Whole Foods, but it's also like I don't know, it's kind of like a blue collar Whole Foods. It's not the hoity-toity.
Speaker 1:
He's collar whole foods is not the hoity-toity, he's got it in whole foods too he's got it in both places.
Speaker 3:
He's got it there.
Speaker 1:
I just saw it on here yeah, he can't bash whole foods, then no, yeah, yeah, no, he's got it.
Speaker 2:
He's got it in all the stores we have literally uh customers from uh walmart all the way to whole foods. We we have it, we sell it in all locations. I want to make it available to all. I want to make it ubiquitous. I mean, at one point in our life we even had our single service in Dollar General. Wow, and it was amazing the compliments we would get from Dollar General. And you wouldn't think that that was the demographic, but it didn't matter. They wanted organic, healthy stuff, so we were really happy to give it to them.
Speaker 1:
So I feel like Matt is this? I go and I see these these fresh squeezed juices at these like health food shops and everything right. They they're in the back, they're squeezing the juice, they're making celery juices and all this other stuff. I mean it is essentially what you guys have. I mean, is that the same thing? I mean, those things are crazy expensive off the shelf guys have.
Speaker 2:
I mean, is that the same thing? I mean, those things are crazy expensive off the shelf. Yeah, so we're doing similar process to that, um, they are not doing anything, anything to um pasteurize, and so we to get longer shelf life and be able to ship around, and we also do it to eliminate any harmful pathogens, so anything that you know potentially could harm you. Uh, we'll heat, pasteurize, but it's high temperature, very short time, so we'll heat it up and then chill it right back down and then we fill it cold and we ship it cold so it stays as fresh as you can get it.
Speaker 1:
Wow, wow, that is amazing man. You guys, you from essentially everything that happened to your family in this agriculture what and not just you guys. I mean you know there's things that have happened with the freezes, with the pathogens, with the all these situations that have come up. I mean to be able to like come back from that. I mean you got a degree from the university of Florida. You could have went off and did something else, you didn't have to be in agriculture. But here you are, one of the most successful uh orange brands, grapefruit brands in the country in in 20 000 stores and and you're on our podcast. It's amazing, I love it. And you got cincinnati connections on top of that yeah, big time cincinnati connections.
Speaker 2:
I'm gonna have to come see you next time up in cincinnati oh you definitely.
Speaker 1:
We're gonna go get some conies and I'm gonna bring. Kyle won't go in, he think he hates the smell, we'll go down the street.
Speaker 3:
I get there's a. There's a restaurant on a building that I have, that I'm a partner in. We can eat there. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:
That's more, that's better than you get old rooftop and all that. Now you still got to get the crappy. Come on like you. You're. You're fine, matt, you've been eating healthy for so long you can come here. I always say we got the best, worst food in america. It's like gold star is not bad for you.
Speaker 3:
Ribs chili if you look at the chili, it's not bad for you not that type of chili. It's like if you look at the actual like macros of it. But it's just like you shouldn't have to go wash your clothes after you go to a restaurant. It makes your whole car smell like you can't get that rid of that smell?
Speaker 1:
we'll go get. Get him some ice cream too, kyle, we'll get him some. Some graders, we'll get. It's Oprah's favorite ice cream. We'll go get you some of that as well.
Speaker 2:
Oh, let's do it All right, I'm in, I'm in and I'm buying too by the way.
Speaker 1:
Oh wow, there you go. Just bring some juice with you when you come up.
Speaker 2:
You got it, but uh, this and what's next? What's next for the company? So kind of crazy. We're doing a little bit of a pivot Now. Our brand has been in the refrigerated juice set and we've done lemonades and fruit punches, but now in primarily all juices. So now we're going to pivot. We're actually going to go into fresh brewed organic tea. Oh so I was raised in the south with black tea tea. I was raised in the South with black tea. We love the half and half lemonade and tea and so we're going to do a sweet and unsweet and a half and half organic refrigerated, fresh brewed tea and that will launch here in another month.
Speaker 3:
And then I will do in a month and two days. I will do a half and half with vodka.
Speaker 1:
Hey, if you need a bourbon connection, kyle can get you the bourbon connection too, if you guys ever move into that space at all.
Speaker 2:
Let me just tell you I do have, for another thing that we're launching over the summer is a ginger honey lemonade, and for anybody that is a big bourbon fan, it is a perfect little mixer. Bring a mixer for a nice bourbon. I'll just give you that heads up.
Speaker 1:
You just changed Kyle's life. Well, now you guys can do a collaboration. Kyle will do the intro and you guys do, like a juice, bourbon collaboration. How about that? Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:
Heck yeah, let's do it, kyle, we'll set it up, all right, you're going to have to put it on like 1.5x, because everybody else will just zone me out Well, matt man.
Speaker 1:
we really appreciate it. Good luck with everything.
Speaker 2:
I really appreciate you being on today and yeah, you're an inspiration. I appreciate that, man. Thanks. Likewise, you guys. Keep up the good work for the podcast. Thanks for having me on and look forward to seeing you in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests, now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.
