June 14, 2023 • 46 mins
Have you ever contemplated starting your own business? How does a small, specialized business compete with the major retailers? Listen to Mike Geller as he talks to Martha about leaving his corporate job to get into the grocery business. He learned about agriculture during a journey in Botswana and an apprenticeship at Stone Barns, and launched Mike’s Organic, an organic food market and delivery service in Connecticut. Martha and Mike talk about the challenges of getting sustainable, affordable, fresh food to your kitchen, and how to find the most delicious and flavorful produce.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I stood in this grocery store in Africa and I
thought to myself, you know why why is looked different here?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Mike Giller is the founder and CEO of Mike's Organic,
the Greenwich, Connecticut based organic food market and food delivery service.
Founded in two thousand and nine. Mike decided to start
up his business after feeling unfulfilled in his corporate job
working in advertising and event planning. He also ran a
music studio, which I did not know, Mike Geller, I
(00:32):
did not know you had a music studio.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Something new every time, Aretha.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Today, Mike has a thriving business which brings sustainable, healthy
food to customers in store and straight to their doorsteps.
Joining me at my farm to talk about sustainable, healthy
food and what it takes to build a food business
in a crowded and rapidly changing market is Mike Geller.
Welcome to my podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Mike, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Finally we are sitting down to talk.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I've known Mike for how many years, Netwig?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think like five years?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, and I always enjoy reading his smiling face. You're
always smiling too, which is something that I know is
very hard in business.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Sometimes, but you know your outlook is everything right, and
you try to get up, do a good job, be
happy and do your best with that.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, you are now embarking on a very big project,
the News store in Greenwich, Connecticut. I know your old store,
and we haven't really talked about the success of that
and the leading up to the new but talk about
building this new store and how big is it and
what kind of customer base do you have?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Sure, So, I've wanted to do this for a while,
and you know, I started my business in a nine
is as you mentioned, really as a home delivery service,
but I always wanted to be able to interface and
interact with customers. So we had the idea for a store,
and this location became available that was just the perfect
place to do it. It's, you know, at the corner
of the busiest intersection in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So describe the corner. What's the name of it because
people are going to go there.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Six hundred East Putnam Avenue and it's in the Costco
area of Greenwich, you know, this big parking lot, and
I wanted to create a real community place for the town,
you know, place people could connect with their food meet
the farmers, eat something delicious, and Greenwich really hasn't had
something like that for a while since a place called Heyday,
which was there. You may have been there in really
the eighties and the nineties. So we really wanted to
(02:27):
create this beautiful market that could bring people together with
their food, and that's what we've done. And we're sourcing all,
you know, predominantly from small local farmers artisans, but we
do everything you know, produce pasture meat, grass fed dairy, etc.
It's been a big lift, a big jump, and in businesses,
you know, sometimes you have to take those it's how
you move forward and do more and better things.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, I visited there just a couple of weeks ago
for the first time I had seen it under construction,
and the store itself, bright and cheery, with very nice
people working in the store, and rose and Rose and
rose and Rose and refrigerators full of very interesting products,
many products that are not available in the regular supermarket.
(03:11):
And I think that that's your appeal and your attraction,
that you are carrying stuff that nobody else carries, and
you can also explain why it's better or different than
what we can get elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Definitely, so you know, what's happened in our grocery industry
in the last one hundred years is that, you know,
we've kind of become a volume it's become a volume industry, right.
So you walk into a twenty five thousand square foot
store and there are two hundred and fifty kinds of
olive oil. That's cool in one way, but it also
is lacking the creation. You know, why are those products
on the shelves?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So for me, my life and doing this for fourteen years,
has all it's been all about sourcing. It's been finding
the best things and bringing them to people. So when
you walk into a store and you see a new product,
you know, you need a tour guide to some degree, right, So,
like we really try to do that for people too. Well.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I enjoyed my tour because because I really hadn't seen
some of those products before, and I do want to
know about them as So I think that's the education
part of it is very important in a store like yours.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Without question, you know, when you're going to bring something
different to people, there needs to be an explanation of
what it is. We give people cooking instructions, you know,
we tell people what's coming into season. You and I
were talking a little bit before we went on about
what's going on with fruit in the Northeast right now,
and communicating that information not just about the product, but
about the farmers, the people that grow the food. You know,
you know so well about agriculture, and I've lived it
(04:33):
for a long time, but not everyone knows, you know,
what goes into growing that tomato or growing that peach, right,
and telling that story is important. But really like getting
the best things under one roof, where you can go
do your whole grocery shop but find like an amazing
pecan butter from Nevada or an amazing locally made granola.
You know, that's what differentiates I think us and a
lot of these small independent groceries from those big chains
(04:55):
that we're very accustomed to go into it, and.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
They've always appealed to me. Small, small organic markets have
always appealed to me. We had the organic market in Westport, Connecticut.
It was right next to my yoga studios, so I
always would stop in there and see what they had
and try to support their business because when you buy
it a place like Mike's Organic, you actually are supporting
(05:18):
a tremendous sort of network of young, avid good gardeners everywhere.
I'm involved with the main organic farmers up in Maine,
and they are working so hard to spread the word
about this kind of food and the availability of this
kind of food, and to keep the ground alive where
(05:39):
they are actually farming. How big is the store.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
The store is about thirty five hundred square feet and
we have packed it. It's comfortable, it's spacious, but it
is packed with incredible products. We opened up on a
rainy Saturday in April and we had I think over
two thousand people come through during the day. It was bananas.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Is that the biggest day you ever?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That was the biggest day we ever had. We all
recovered and it was also our first day.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
We had trained obviously some of our cashiers and stalkers,
but it's like kind of going to the driving range
then playing on the golf course. Training is one thing,
in the games another. It went great. We had one
broken jar tomato sauce to check out, which was a
little bit hairy, but other than that, it was great.
And the response has been incredible. You know, I was
saying before you and I had a woman come in
(06:25):
today and she ate a strawberry, a local strawberry brought
a few today and she's from California, and she said,
you know, this tastes like it did when I was
a kid. And I hear that every week I've been
open since I started the business, I've heard either this
taste like I used to when I was a kid,
or this tastes like it used to back home. If
someone's from another country and there's a reason for that,
we can get into it. But there's a real reason
(06:46):
for that.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
All there is. And I have a small array of
cherry tomatoes, two kinds of strawberries, the first of the
cherries being cherries I love being cherries, and the apricots.
I haven't tasted the apricot yet. Are they delied?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
They're good? They get better, you know the thing that
and you know this, I'm sure too. The first picking
is never the best, and they get better and better
and better throughout the season.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
We're so conditioned to have everything every day of the
year in this country, right in terms of produce especially,
but there really is a season for things, and not
all of us know what it is. But like with
the apricots, mid June, you know, that's the time for them.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And cherries are these cherries from California.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
These cherries are from California. They're local ones. You know,
we've gotten hit pretty bad with the frost up here.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So okay, let's talk about that, because my Mike was
just describing that the stone fruit, which the cherries, the plums,
the peaches, the apricots, the nick dreams were very badly
damaged in the frost, the late frost that we had.
Even though the trees had blossomed beautifully and this is
all Hudson Valley and Northeast ye had blossomed beautifully. My
(07:54):
plum trees were incredible this year, and then we had
a frost after the fruit had formed and they will
fill off. Correct, there's not a plum in my plum trees.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It's it's happened to a bunch of farmers. And again
going back to it, right, like being able to tell
people that information is so important. I have an incredible farmer.
His name is Mark, and he's been doing this. He's
the fourth generation fruit farmer in the Hudson Valley. His
fruit is spectacular. I mean his peaches, the donut orches,
everything's called Grinder Farm. It's in Middle Hope, New York.
I was talking to him a few days ago. He said, Mike,
(08:26):
you know, we had a day in February that was
forty two. The next day was minus ten, and then
we had this lay frost and he had the fruit
actually was on the tree.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, that's what happened. That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
The fruitlets, the little baby fruitlets, and a blossom can withstand.
And that's one of the things is you know, with
laate frost, right, a blossom can withstand twenty seven to
twenty eight degrees for a night, but the fruit, which
he found out from Cornell can't. So literally all of
his fruit dropped off his trees. And if you're a
fruit farmer, that's it for the year. It is not
like tomatoes. There's no plants behind him.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And then they start to scratch their heads and wonder,
maybe a subdivision is beter than a fruit orchard. That's right,
And I've seen so many fruit orchards just go the
way of a development. A subdivision, it happens.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And his attitude was, you know, farmers are some of
the most resilient, positive people that you'll meet. I know
you've met a lot and I have two. And you know,
his attitude was just so incredibly. He sand you on Mike,
that's farming, he said, you know you have big years
the secondary cross. No, he's a fruit farmer. I mean
he has apples, you know, but even his apples were hurt,
(09:29):
which is my.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Minor I have. It started off so many apples this year.
I was so happy because last year was a bad year.
Yes for apples, and the same thing. They're a little
bit thinner than they were. But I'm keeping my fingers
crossed because apples are more resilient.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
They are, and they blossom a bit later. You know,
they're they're better adapted to the cold. But but yeah,
that it's it's not a great story, but it's it's
a good story to tell people about what's happening with
the farmers, and we always have that information.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, how did you start? When was your interest in
vegetables and fruits and locally produced stuff kindled? When did
that happen.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
As a child? You know, I'm half Italian, half Jewish.
I'm a pizza bagel and my grandma Ida lived in
the Bronx with my Grandpa Vinni. She had a little
vegetable garden out back, and I used to go there
and we would always be harvesting egg plant together, and
we'd be cooking together, all those things. And then as
a child, I just was always so fascinated by nature
and the outdoors. I grew up an outdoorsman and fishing
and gardening and all those things. And I just always
(10:29):
have loved food and especially how it's grown. I went
off to.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
School, and then where'd you go to school?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I went to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
And then I moved to Atlanta and started this hip
hop studio with a partner because I've always loved music
as well, and you know, from there it just did
all these different interesting things. I recorded Snoop when I
was down there, obviously, I know, you know Snoop really well.
And then I started doing these big celebrity events, you know,
with Shaquille O'Neal others, and I loved it and it
(10:57):
was interesting advertising a few others, but I just never
felt fulfilled, never loved it, you know, truly felt passionate,
and never thought I was doing anything good. So I
quit and I spent three and a half months living
in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana in Africa.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I've been there. It is one of the most beautiful
places on Earth.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I would agree.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And what did you do there?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I was building a photographic safari camp. I just wanted
to get away from the world for a while. I
was twenty eight years old and trying to figure out
my path, and I had this burning desire to something
with food, but didn't know what it was. So I
went out to build this camp and I lived out there.
And you know, I went to a grocery store in Mound, Botswana,
which had about one hundred thousand people, and all the
food looked better than here. You know, the eggs weren't
(11:39):
refrigerated because, as you know, when the hen lay is
an egg, she puts the bluem on it and it
won't spoil.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
The tomatoes were small and juicy, and all these things.
I stood in this grocery store in Africa and I
thought to myself, you know, why, why is it looked
different here? Then I went into the bush. During my
time there, I was charged by a leopard, almost bitten
by a cobra. In a play in the lost and engine,
and I fought a two thousand acre brush fire with
leafy branches. We literally put out a blazing fire with branch. Never,
(12:05):
I'll never forget. I'll never forget. The fire starts and
with the guys, and I'm picturing like a plane flying over,
you know, like for forest fires out west, and they
go and they have a machine and they're cutting branches
off the tree. And I was like, what the hell
you guys doing, like to put the fire out? And
we fought that fire for eleven hours. It was there.
I get. I never, I'll never one quick one. I'll
(12:26):
never forget. I was standing we made a fire break
to prevent the fire from gettinst the camp, and the
guy who was with me said, don't let the fire
across us. And it's about one hundred yards long, and
I'm standing on this fire break and the fire's coming
towards me and it's trying to cross you know this
sand I was running back and forth. It was one
hundred and fifty degrees. I'm running back. I thought I
(12:47):
was genuinely just gonna have art.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It's actually getting you're getting singed.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I burned all over. I was coughing up black. It
was absolutely crazy, but I did not let across and
it was just an incredible incident really put me on
the path to what I'm doing. What I'm doing now.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So where did you learn about real gardening? Did you
take a job anywhere else?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I did, so, you know, I grew up doing it,
as I mentioned. And then I went and I worked
at Stone Barns, really and I worked with the head farmer,
Jack Algier.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
What a wonderful, wonderful gardener. He is incredible, incredible, so knowledgeable.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
It was really it was really an eye opener for
me because I knew about farming. I knew about gardening
rather and a little bit about farming. But you know,
sustainable agriculture in the Northeast is something that's really evolved
a lot, especially over the last you know, twenty years,
let's say, and just being able to be there and
every single day learned something new and practically not just
reading about in a book, right being out there and seeing,
(13:41):
you know, you plant peas on Saint Patty's Day, like
I didn't know that when I started, Right, so you
start learning all these things. And I was pruning apple
trees and it really that was my moment where I
decided to start MIC's. I was sitting under an apple
tree I just pruned, and I said, you know, I
want to start a business that directly connects small, local
farmers and consumers. And that was I was really one
of the first people in America to start a farm
(14:02):
to home delivery service, which is what Mike's began as
and my time in Africa, my time in Stone Barns
were huge factors for me.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And doing that well, that is very good experience. And
the delivery service especially, I mean you sort of hit
it right because COVID came and you could delivered to
homes and so that really helped you a lot, and
you took advantage of it in the best possible way
we did.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
It was a wild time for sure, being an essential
business and all that. But you know, I probably had
like thirty five or forty farmers tell me they would
have lost their farm without Mike's Organic during that time.
You know, if you're raising chickens for Grammercy tavern in
the city, let's say, and they close overnight and they
don't know when they're going to open, you still have
your birds, right, right, So we stepped in and we
filled that void for so many small farmers. It was
(14:50):
one of the most gratifying parts of my time in business.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Tell us about the offerings that you actually create at
your own kitchen.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Definitely, So as part of this whole expansion of the business,
we bought a commercial kitchen. So we're making everything from
you know, passion fruit chia pudding to incredible you saw
the curry chicken salad when you came in, Beautiful sandwiches,
I mean organic, I plant palms on you know, wonderful soups.
It's really about working with the seasons and working with
(15:19):
the ingredients you have and being able to create something
delicious but that's also healthy. We're using grass fed beef,
pasture turkey, all those things. It's so much fun to
be able to create. And then we have a food
truck in the back, so we do dinner on Wednesdays
and we made like grass bed cheese steaks last week.
We're doing breakfast sandwiches on the weekends. We have a
dairy cow coming down for the kids to see. So
(15:39):
the prepared foods are great and also a neat item.
You know, people, not everyone cooks, and not everyone can
cook every night, so it's important to have that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So what's your best selling product from the news store.
What's the best selling product I'd like to know.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Okay, so bananas, No, I hate to say that. It
pains me so deeply to say that banana is probably
number one. And then so strawberries. Blueberries os well, but
on the skin less chicken breasts os well.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
We actually have this really cool animal cracker from Jackson
Hole called Persephone. They are delicious, like animal crackers adults.
Those sell incredibly well. And then I think as you
go through the seasons, right, like sweetcorn moves extremely well.
And then also the dairy, like we have this incredible
a two milk from Cooperstown called Family Farms Stead. The
milk sells incredibly well. We're bringing chocolate milk down from
(16:30):
a farm in Connecticut pretty soon, so I need I need.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
To find a really great milk because I'm making my
own yogurt now and the milk milk is not the
same every week from the same dairy. It's what the
cows are eating, how they feel, absolutely, and so I've
been noticing it, Like my last batch of yogurt was sour.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Wow. Interesting. Yeah, when the color of the milk changes
as the cows get out on the grass, right. It
becomes more yellow when they're on the grass because of
all those nutrients. And you can taste the grass. You
can taste the terrible in the milk. It's like you
can with wine. Right, So the milk changes throughout the season.
And it's also everything does though, Like every week it
feels like Christmas to me. You know, it's something new
(17:09):
comes in and you're tasting it for the first time,
and eating seasonally is not easy, right, and again we're
conditioned kind of not to do it now with grocery
the way it is, when you get back to it,
you know, it also makes it more special when you're
waiting for something as opposed to just having it every
day of.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The Yeah, Like I'm waiting for sour cherries.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Me too.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I love the Montmorency cherries and I love cherry pie,
and I love everything.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Cherry sour cherries are. Do you like the black or
the red, the red, the really tart ones? Yeah, yeah,
yeah for baking, those are exception so they're amazing. Sour
cherry pie might be my favorite pie.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
It is my favorite.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, it has to be.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So I'm waiting for those. I do have several trees
and they seem to have some fruit on them.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I'm waiting are the birds after those few? It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I have so many birds right now too because of
the climate change. So it's kind of intruing. But but
you are challenged so greatly now. The small, exclusive, expensive
grosser is challenged by the big, the Albertsons, the around here,
the cit.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
The Krogers, all of them.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Because they're all they're all competing with you and in
many different ways, including price. So how do you deal
with that?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
It's a great question. So, well, one thing is the differentiation,
right is trying to have different products. You know, if
you have the same exact product as a big box store,
then you know, the price becomes much more of an issue. Right,
It's I'll be honest with you. You know you can't compete
on price with them. You just can't.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Their margins and their volume is big, their margins are very.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
China are very small, right because they've become true volume businesses. Right,
the way you compete is on incredible product selection, fantastic
customer service, and creating a phenomenal experience when people come in. Right,
So you have a great product, you have great service,
and you have something that they can do there that
they can't do elsewhere. Right, we had a sheep sharing
last weekend at the store. The same farmer that used
to share your sheep in Westport, his daughter used to
(19:04):
share your sheep. So you know you have a sheep sharing.
We have a fresh mozzarella maker coming on Sunday to
make fresh mozzarella in the store. Right. We have the
dairy cow coming with her calves. Next weekend. We have
a pasta pop up. We're doing a lobster fest. You know,
all those things of really getting people back to experiencing
something through their food is what is what is important
(19:25):
in it. But for the big box stores, you know,
it's also killing the variety of what we have here
in this country. You know, in nineteen hundred there were
six thousand varieties of apples in the US. Right after
prohibition there were two thousand because people cut down apple
orchards they're making hard cider. And now you see the
same five or ten in every grocery store in America. Right,
But that you know, for us, we'll have fifty or
(19:46):
sixty kinds of apples in the fall so it's really
great customer service, awesome products set and then creating a
phenomenal experience for people.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And you, let's do a slater making day.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I want to do that with you. I'm going to
get you down there.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So let's talk about these strawberries. You have local strawberries,
which is it's June almost June, you're June, yeah, June. First,
we have local strawberries which are small and red, and
what variety are.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
The early glow?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And then you have the Harry's berries which come from California.
And I'm going to take a bite of the Harrys berry.
And now they've really taken over from Driscoll, haven't they.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
They have their you know, just like with apples. You know,
there are about six hundred varieties of strawberries.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Be sure they don't inject these I with sugar. I mean,
if they inject these with sugar, people.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
People can't believe the flavor. And there's a really good
reason for that. So, you know, typically we're growing one
or two varieties commercially in this country. Albion is one
of the main ones, and there's actually less sugar in
those strawberries because it gives them a longer shell life,
so he can get from California to Hear on a truck,
bounce around still look like a strawberry. The reason they're
(21:06):
white through the middle typically is because they're picked green
and either gassed or torched under a heat lamp to
turn them red. So you've got a green strawberry that
looks red that was bred to have less sugar.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Harry's berries, they grow two predominantly two types, seascape and Gaviota,
which are ever bearing, so ever bearing strawberries produced throughout
the whole season and loss of those, they're incredible. You
can get them, you know, for a much longer time.
Local strawberries two to three weeks, sometimes three.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
To four weeks or are these grown in the ground
or on benches?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
These are grown in the ground.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They are.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, we've been out that farm.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And it's a phenomenal family, you know, the Green family.
Harry was the grandfather. And it's also micro climate for them,
you know, it's the perfect conditions to grow strawberries in.
They like it. Not really higher than mid seventies during
the day.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I'd say that I would say they're three times sweeter
than the early glow.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
They are, and they have a very high price point,
you know, and that's when people come in the store.
How much is it a court of course, twenty dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Of the early glows seven ninety nine, big difference, huge,
But if you are making a strawberry shortcake for your
fancy dinner party, correct, you were going to want Harry's
berries because they are clean, they are absolutely beautiful as
they're jewel.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Well, you know we do this. I've said this to
people before. But you know, you go to a restaurant,
right and you don't think twice about paying eighteen dollars
for a cocktail, right, And when people come in the store.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Some cocktails are twenty four dollars now.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Twenty four, twenty five thirty, right, So it's crazy. But
we but when we see strawberries, the best strawberries potentially
we've ever had, we think twenty dollars is silly. And
by the way, they're both fine, but that's an alignment
of value, right and for us to me eating the
best strawberry you've probably ever had, that's actually good for you,
that'll last long than twenty minutes, and no pesticides, they're
(22:51):
grown certified or getting there, no pesticides.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Great, it's incredible because they're one of the fruits that
would absorb pesticides.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
So the top of the dirty dozen strawberries always are.
I know someone that went to a commercial I won't
say which farm, but a commercial strawberry farm, and he
was out there in the morning they're having breakfast and
there is his mist over the whole field. Is it, Oh,
you're watering the strawberries And they said, no, those are
all the chemicals were used, you know, So it really
is food is the surest medicine or the slowest poison, right,
(23:18):
And you know when we eat healthy, clean food and
you know this, Martha as well as anyone. You know,
that is what gives us the fuel and the energy
we need to sustain us. It's it's what's more important
than food, right, Like there are few things that are
more important. So anyways, Harris are sensational.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
The tomatoes where are they from? These? These are the
small cherry tomatoes. Is both the golden beautiful golden ones and.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
The sun golds and larger.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Ones, larger orange red.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
They're gorgeous, so tasty. So there's a really cool story
about them. So greenhouses they are there, but here's the
deal with them. They're from a place called long Wind
Farm up and Fromont working with them for a while.
They're grown in soil, they're certified organic, and they are
greenhouse grown, which, of course, right another month or so,
we're not gonna need greenhouse any greenhouse strawberry tomatoes. Rather,
(24:10):
they taste like august. They taste like summer. They are
so flavorful. They're one of the things when people come
in I always let them try things, and those are
one of the things I have them try because it
truly is an incredible tomato, and we'll have all the
local ones soon, but to get them a little bit
earlier from a great organic farm in Vermont is something
that we definitely want to support.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Who's your customer.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Customer is typically has been a mom between the ages
of probably thirty and sixty, let's say, who cares about
eating good food but also wants the convenience of getting
it in one place. And the prepared foods have been
really important for that as well. And I think it's
just someone who is food educated but also is looking
(24:52):
to make changes in their diet, wants to incorporate better
things into their life, and also prioritizes flavor. We have
the people that support local agriculture and that it's like
their priority, right, But that's not the majority of the customer.
It's people that want great food, that want to get
it in one place, and that also want to have
an experience and hear a story about it. We always say,
you know, we don't sell food, We tell stories, and
(25:12):
that really is the basis of what we do, is
telling the story of the farmer and the product.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Do you have an in house peaker yet?
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yes and no. So we have this amazing woman. Her
name is Ali. She was a pastry chef at eleven
Madison Park in the city. So she is baking for us.
It's mostly on the weekends right now, so come in.
We have the sheep sharing. She baked these adorable little
sheep cookies with amazing butter. They were butterfew and they
were outrageous. She bakes strawberry bar pies from Mother's Day
Harry's various cakes, So she does bake. We work with
(25:41):
some other great local bakeries Flower Water, Salt and Dairy,
n Wavehill and Norwalk and others for brad sourdough all that.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
On my way home from Pilates. This morning, I stopped
at Elementop. Have you been there?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I love that place. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And she's a sultan, single baker, Yeah, a woman. I
think she has three kids. The place was packed, people
are looking for and she's sour dough across so sour dough,
whole weed and they are very tasty. Everything she makes
now is very earthy and delicious, not too earthy, excellent,
(26:14):
excellent technique. So it's prices of skyrocket. It all comes
down the price again. I mean, I really feel for
people who tell me when I give them a bag
full of peas from my garden, and how how absolutely
grateful they are, because peas fresh peas in the in
the grocery store are they cost a fortune. And asparagus
(26:35):
from the garden taste so different from from most other asparagus,
the ones that are shipped from whose where Peru, and
the shipping takes its toll on the on the taste
of the of the vegetable they get. But it's very,
very expensive. What are we going to do about that?
This is a nationwide problem, it's a worldwide problem.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It's a big problem. It's it's a it's an especially
big problem here right, because of our food system. And
you know, one of the issues that you find is
number one, small organic farms and medium organic farms are
not subsidized by the government at all, right, so they're
receiving no subsidies, whereas these larger industrial farms, there are
many of them. I spent a lot of time in
(27:17):
the Midwest, and I've been to a lot of these
big you know, factories, yeah, factory farms or whether it's
just you know, ten thousand acres of GMO corn. A
lot of them are living on subsidies and they're not
making almost anything on the crop because the inputs are
so high. You need two million dollars five million dollars
combine to pick the corn, right, and all these chemicals,
et cetera. So, you know, on a national level, until
(27:39):
we start providing real assistance to smaller organic farms, those
prices can't come down, right, It's just it's not something
that can happen. We can get it as low as possible,
but it takes longer. You know, an average chicken from
a factory farm is a twenty eight day old bird.
From a chick to twenty eight days, that's how old
it is. Till it's a broiler, till it's a bird
you're eating, right, found, yeah, exactly. And then you have
(28:00):
you know, these farmers raising them on the grass where
it takes three or four months, so you're feeding the
chicken longer, you have more labor against it, you know.
So it's really it's a very complicated and difficult issue.
The best way we can change it is by supporting
more and more small local farmers. Right, the more support
we give them. Every time you buy something at a story,
you're voting, right, you're voting for a certain type of food.
(28:22):
And the more we vote for something that's locally grown
from a great farmer, et cetera, the more support they
have and the more they can get their prices down. Right.
But everything, by the way, just on ant, you know,
just because of inflation. Everything is expensive now, I mean,
even commodity food is expensive. We have tried as much
as possible to keep the prices as low as we can,
you know, we want to be affordable for people. But
(28:45):
you also do pay for what you get, and that's
part of life too, you know, like there's there's a
balance there. We do a ton of stuff with the community,
you know, we've worked with so many organizations to provide.
You know, perishable food is the hardest thing for people
to fine, especially people that are food insecure. Things in
cans or boxes are easier. So we've done a ton
of work with local charities to try and bring more
(29:07):
food to people that don't have access or the means.
Michael Colin created the first grocery store in nineteen thirty
in Queens and the entire principle which essentially the whole
grocery industry is found that on now is pilot high,
sell it low. That's what grocery has been, right, what
we've been talking about.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
But the waste enormous, enormous. I was at a local
grocery store the other morning. I wanted some fruit. I
found a few other good things, but then I saw
the shop one of the nice girls who works there
going through all the fruits taking out what she was
not saleable, and the big shopping carts full of barely
(29:48):
bad I mean it was still edible. I said, oh,
what are you going to do with that? And she said, oh, garbage.
And so what is the attrition rate of food in
a grocery? Fresh food in a grocery store.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So it depends depends on the store. Right, for us,
it's less than five percent. Now that five percent also
though includes So what we would do, Mike's right, like
a few things. One like we would we would have
a kitchen. We have a kitchen. Yeah, so that's number one, right, Like,
so when you have that kale that comes in perfect,
just picked, and then it's been there for a couple
of days, let's say, and it's still lovely but not
(30:22):
as beautiful as you want it, that becomes your kale
white being soup. Right, So number one and then number two.
You know, we work with a place called Food Rescue
and they come several times a week. If there are
things that are not really salable and they're not going
to go to the kitchen, we donate everything that's good.
But in the grocery industry, you know, the way there
are two types of waste from the big grocery industry.
One is before it even gets to the store. So
(30:44):
a green bean has to be a certain length with
and color to go to one of those stores. Right, Like,
if you look at people, you know, we're all different shapes,
different sizes, right, Like, that's what life is on your
plum tree out there, so they.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Have to go elsewhere, they have to throw them away.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
They have to allow of them get to scarred, right,
So you know, and that is this symptom of that
industry which is promoting uniformity as opposed to diversity, And that,
to me is one of the big problems with big grocery, right,
is like, go to that plum tree out there, You're
gonna see plums of all shapes and sizes. A couple
have little spots on them, some will be perfect, They're
all delicious. So that is the waste is a big
(31:21):
issue in grocery. It's I mean, you want to remember
that bread was like thirty percent or something. I mean,
like it's just astronoms. And then you have people in
this country that don't have access to great food.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
But from these big, big grocery stots, they do not
go to the homeless, and they don't go to shelters.
They throw them away.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
The vast majority goes. I remember, you know, when I
was a kid, we had like a pet goat and
I went to the grocery ands, like do you have
any carrots or apples that you can't sell anymore? I'll
buy them from you. So no, we're not allowed to
sell them if we have to throw them away, That's exactly,
and I mean to it defies every aspect of logic.
I know, you compost here, I compost, you know, I
mean big help to the environment for sure.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So so margins on your prepared foods are much better
than on grocery correct probably you know.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Prepared foods are one of those things where you're aiming
for a gross margin, you know, around forty five to
fifty percent, that's your gross margin, right, because then you've
all your other costs against it. You know, it ends
up being a much smaller net margin, which is what
we're talking about the big grocery source. Prepared foods can
usually be a bit better, you know, sometimes around sixty percent,
(32:27):
depends on what the product is. If you can use
things you're at risk of losing, right, then it's a
double win because a you're avoiding the waste and be
you're creating a delicious product that as something on the shelves.
So prepared foods are always a great driver, a margin driver,
and they're just such a huge area of need for people,
you know, especially with great clean organic ingredients in them,
which there's not a lot of that around, not at all.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So back to the beginning, how did you finance your expansion?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yes, so initially when I started the business, I financed
it my my grandfather passed away and he left me
twenty thousand dollars and that's how I started MIC's Organic
and I sell fund of the business. For eleven years.
In the beginning, I did everything delivered, picked up from
the farms, dealt with the customers, swept the floors. It
gives you such a great appreciation for what it takes
to be a small business owner. And then we went
(33:14):
through this expansion and I actually went out and I
did a fundraise, which was the first time I've ever
done something like that in my life. And I raised
it all from private investors to build out the retail location,
to buy the kitchen, to grow out the delivery business.
And it was an enormous education. It went well and
we were successful, but fundraising is a second full time job,
and I was doing that in addition running the business.
(33:36):
It was a great experience, it really was. Construction is
another one, a really fun thing to go through. Everything
they tell you twice as long and twice as much
and you always laugh and say that's really funny, and then.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
To be true.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And I went through some really hard times, you know,
to get the place open. I really did. I read
this great story about Walt Disney, you know, when he
has had the idea for Disneyland. He was in his
mid thirties living out in California, obviously, and you know,
he couldn't afford to buy food. He was eating dog food,
and he went to the banks to try and get
a loan to open Disneyland. Have you heard the story before?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
No?
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Okay, if you had to guess how many times you
think Walt Disney was turned down for a loan from.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
The banks, oh, one hundred.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
That's a very good guest. Most people say for three hundred,
three hundred times. And you think to yourself, you know,
on the two hundred and ninety ninth time, you know,
how could he not have just quit? And it's what
it teaches you about being, especially when you have a
vision or a dream, right is persistence, perseverance, endurance that
is And you know this as well as anyone, I'm
sure like that's what itsy.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
They always talk about the five d's, you know, the
bad things and death, and dementia.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, yeah, disaster.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I always talk about the five pas, which are the
perseverance and persistence.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And the patients picaciity.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah, it's just it's incredible. But you do need that
in business.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
You need it in life. Yes, right, Yes, it truly is.
You know, life is a river and we're all on
it and you're moving with the current and sometimes it
gets bumpy and sometimes it's smooth, but you keep moving forward.
And then you have this beautiful store now that you
see and people see the beautiful store, right, but no
one ever sees what would into getting it open.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Well, your investors did. They should a lucky them because
they took a calculated chance. They do one, Mike Giller,
and they were going to see some very nice results.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yes, they will thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
I really really think that's great. So you wrote a
letter to customers each week when the pandemic began, and
this ran for more than one hundred weeks.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
You were in one of them.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I was, yes, So why did you do this?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
It started during COVID and you know we were open,
as I mentioned during you know, the entire shutdown all that,
and a woman came in to shop and she walked
in this or and you know, her eyes were kind
of darting around, and she'd are you going to have milk?
Are you going to have eggs? And she was really scared.
You know, this is March twelfth, right, So I went
home and I wrote a letter and I just said, hey,
you know, listen, we're to week about you know, around
(36:13):
ten thousand people on our newsletter, and I said, you know,
we're here for you. Whether it's for a bag of
rice or a good conversation, you know, we're all going
to get through this together, and we are here for you.
And the response was incredible. And then it just morphed
into this incredible chance to talk to people every week
about things completely outside the business, about my kids growing up,
or about farmers, or about you know when you were
(36:35):
on there about I think it was for National Women's Day.
And you know, it's so hard to connect with people
on an emotional level as a business owner, right, it's
so challenging. And the response we got the people people
would literally I'd see people in wherever in the street
and they would say, I cried, you know when I
read your letter. And we did them for over two years.
It was just it became such an integral part of
(36:57):
the business and for me personally, like we started putting
together a little book of them, something that really was
extraordinarily meaningful.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
And they will pay attention and they will come in
when the first local sour cherries. I will be down
in Greenwich right away.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
We'll be there for you.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Oh yes. So the words connection and transparency are very
important in your kind of business out come.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Because those things are almost entirely devoid in our industrial
food system.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
So you're lucky to know the country of where something
came from in a grocery store. Forget about the farmer,
what's on it, what's in it when it was picked. Right,
it's going back to what we're accustomed to when we
were younger. Or certainly if you go to the market,
let's say in France, right where you're talking to the
person that made the bread, right, and we've just lost
that in our food system. We're so divorced from food,
(37:52):
from how it's grown, all those things. So for us.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Don't have an idea what ruberb looks like.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Someone thought it was salary, right, I mean, like you
know or that the right you know or whatever you know,
it's illegal to publish a photo of the inside of
a commercial slaughterhouse in America. It's illegal because if people
saw what was happening on that level, right, like, maybe
they wouldn't want to eat meat. So for us, it's
really important to connect people to their food, not just
(38:21):
to their food, but to the people that grow the food.
And then the transparency of again, what's on it, what's
in it? When was this picked? You know? How do
I cook this? Right?
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Like?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Those are all things that we as consumers should be
entitled to and we just don't. You know, you go
into a grocery store, and I would argue that it's
one of the worst retail experiences in America is a
grocery store. There is typically you're walking in, not talking
to anyone, getting everything you can. It's like going to
the NV get everything you can quickly and trying to
(38:48):
get out. That's not how we should be shopping for fee.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Do you know how I shop in a grocery store? No,
tell me, Well, I like to go like at eleven
o'clock at night, and I go up and down every
single aisle and I look at all the prices and
I compare product to product. That's the way I shop.
We're lucky around here. We have one kind of local,
(39:12):
family owned business that's really kind of Everybody talks about
it how nice it is, and even the cheeses are nice.
But it's I compare. And then I read things like
in the New York Times they have the consumer reports
there that they have wirecutter. It's called Yesterday they had
(39:33):
olive oils, the olive oils that they talked about the
five or six of the best olive oils that they
have found out of two hundred they tested. I only
knew one, and one of them's in a kind of
a plastic squeeze bottle and that was their number one pick.
And I was shocked that that's their number one. But
they I'm going to get it and see what it tastes.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Like, Yeah, we sell that all.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Which one is that it's called grosa and that's right, Yeah,
you are a z so if you have it, then
it must and they said it's number one. Okay, well
let's stitch. You know where is it from?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Grosses from Spain and grassa means grease and Spanish, and yeah,
we it's it's phenomenal. There are two sizes, ones for cooking,
ones for kind of dust on.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
The soft bottle, because it's I think.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
It was just a brilliant marketing decision because a lot
of people, a lot of like, if you're a chef,
you're always transferring it to a squeeze bottle so you
can regulate how much oil are you using. Typically of
course you want it in glass, right, and they put
it in plastic. It is very very good oil, and
it is very convenient.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
I'm gonna buy some.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
I would have brought you some find on that I'm
sure like just olive oil in general.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yes, she's so confusing, and I just want to talk
about your events too, because you talk about having the
cow and the calf to come. Because people don't have
a clue what a milk cow looks like, do they?
And and how does how to get actually get milk
out of an udder? I try very hard to to
educate young people in all of that, because my grandchildren
(41:04):
love milking cows and cheap and goats. Hard hard to do,
but once you know how, you know where your milk's
coming from.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah, we were actually I was at that farm yesterday.
It's a farm called Shaggy coos in Easton, Connecticut. Amazing
female farmer named Brittany. She's so wonderful, and she has
these gorgeous Jersey and Holstein cows, and I milk the
cow yesterday.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Aren't they beautiful jerseys?
Speaker 1 (41:31):
The jerseys, the eyelash.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Beautiful Jersey cows are brown. Hole steins are black and white,
so that you can differentiate. But the Jerseys, whole stings
give more milk correct and one hole steam can give
up to eighty gallons of milk a day, unbelievable. And
then a Jersey cow gives less milk. I learned all
(41:54):
of this from a farmer up in Maine who had
her own dairy farm, and the only dairy farm unmountains
are Island. There used to be like eighty dairy farms
on Mount Dessert Island, and now there's none. If she
went out, she went out of business.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Dairy farming is a very very very hard, very.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Hard business, and cows make a mess, they do.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
I was milking cows yesterday and getting pushed around by one.
I wanted.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I wanted so much to have two really good rich
milk cows so that I could make cheese here. Sure,
and I have put it off and put it off
because the mess.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
They're they're hey, they're gigantic. You stand next to the
we're huge. They do make a big mess. They are
amazing animals though, And she actually has a for people
at home. You know, the hole sting that's like the
Ben and Jerry's cow, like if you think about what
a whole stee looks like. And then the Jerseys make
the A two milk, which has been this whole thing.
You know, the A two milk is actually easier for
(42:50):
your body to digest. It only comes pretty much from
Jersey cows. So yeah, this woman, Brittany's coming down on
June tenth to the store. She's bringing the mom named
Pearl and the two calves, and then we're going to
be drinking chocolate milk that is right from her cows.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Wow, what kind of chocolate does she use?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
She uses this gray cacow. I have to ask her
what the name? What the name was? Yeah, but it
was I mean it was like it was like drinking
our chocolate.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
But again, listeners, if you have kids, what a nice
opportunity to see where your milk comes from. I look
at that carton of milk on my counter or the bottle,
and I think, gosh, like even this morning I was
opening I had one that had a little bit of
milk left in it. And I make a cappuccino every morning,
but the just opened carton of milk makes a better
(43:37):
capuccino than the one that still has just a little
bit in the bottom of it. Yeah, it's just weird.
But I think once air hits it or something, is
that what happens.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It is, Yeah, the air gets to it. And the
other thing, you know, Brittany was telling us about was
just pasturization, right, Like you know, ultra pasteurized milk, which
is what you'll typically get at the grocery store, is
cooked to one hundred and eighty five or one hundred
and ninety degrees for an hour and a half, so
it's essentially boiled, right, it's just below boiling. Right, you've
taken everything out of it. It'll then last over two months, right.
(44:09):
So the way she's pasteurizing a lot of these small
farmers do, probably the woman and makes that's right. It
is just homogenizing exactly. And it's low temperature pasteurized one
hundred and forty degrees for thirty minutes, which makes it safe,
but all the amino acids, all theres are still intact.
And that's a totally believable, big difference in it.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
And you can't make good yogurt unless you have that
kind of.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
That is exactly right.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
So speaking of marketing, who handles that for you?
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, so you know a lot of it. I have
an incredible kind of social media and communications team to
wonderful people named Michelle and Laura, and you know, I
think it really comes down to trying to be earnest
and genuine with people, especially with food. Right, people spot
spot a lack of authenticity and food so quickly. So listen,
when you're a small business, right, you don't have a
(44:56):
marketing department, you know you don't have you know you
have to It's always about doing as much as you
can with what you have, right, and then as you grow,
ideally you bring on more and more people to help
you grow.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Where would you like to take your business?
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Really and truly, you know, I see a big opportunity
for something like what we're doing, and you know, I
think that I'd like to start off, you know with
Fairfield and Westchester County and opening more stores, growing our
home delivery business I really want to expand into the
consumer package good space with our products which can be
sold at a larger level, and just really and truly
(45:31):
continue to support as many small farms as possible to
help this local food movement grow and be an anchor
for it in this area. That's kind of one of
my main priorities.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
To learn more about Mike's Organic, visit Micsorganic dot com,
follow at Mike's Organic on Instagram, and if you happen
to be in Greenwich, Connecticut, visit a store at six
hundred East Putnam Avenue. You will not be disappointed and
you will eat a beautiful, beauty a full court.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Is this a court?
Speaker 2 (46:02):
A court of Harry's berries? I have eaten half of
won during this podcast. Thank you so much for visiting
and very very good luck with your amazing enterprise.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Thank you for having me, Martha. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Thank you,
I stood in this grocery store in Africa and I
thought to myself, you know why why is looked different here?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Mike Giller is the founder and CEO of Mike's Organic,
the Greenwich, Connecticut based organic food market and food delivery service.
Founded in two thousand and nine. Mike decided to start
up his business after feeling unfulfilled in his corporate job
working in advertising and event planning. He also ran a
music studio, which I did not know, Mike Geller, I
(00:32):
did not know you had a music studio.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Something new every time, Aretha.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Today, Mike has a thriving business which brings sustainable, healthy
food to customers in store and straight to their doorsteps.
Joining me at my farm to talk about sustainable, healthy
food and what it takes to build a food business
in a crowded and rapidly changing market is Mike Geller.
Welcome to my podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Mike, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Finally we are sitting down to talk.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I've known Mike for how many years, Netwig?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think like five years?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, and I always enjoy reading his smiling face. You're
always smiling too, which is something that I know is
very hard in business.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Sometimes, but you know your outlook is everything right, and
you try to get up, do a good job, be
happy and do your best with that.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, you are now embarking on a very big project,
the News store in Greenwich, Connecticut. I know your old store,
and we haven't really talked about the success of that
and the leading up to the new but talk about
building this new store and how big is it and
what kind of customer base do you have?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Sure, So, I've wanted to do this for a while,
and you know, I started my business in a nine
is as you mentioned, really as a home delivery service,
but I always wanted to be able to interface and
interact with customers. So we had the idea for a store,
and this location became available that was just the perfect
place to do it. It's, you know, at the corner
of the busiest intersection in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So describe the corner. What's the name of it because
people are going to go there.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Six hundred East Putnam Avenue and it's in the Costco
area of Greenwich, you know, this big parking lot, and
I wanted to create a real community place for the town,
you know, place people could connect with their food meet
the farmers, eat something delicious, and Greenwich really hasn't had
something like that for a while since a place called Heyday,
which was there. You may have been there in really
the eighties and the nineties. So we really wanted to
(02:27):
create this beautiful market that could bring people together with
their food, and that's what we've done. And we're sourcing all,
you know, predominantly from small local farmers artisans, but we
do everything you know, produce pasture meat, grass fed dairy, etc.
It's been a big lift, a big jump, and in businesses,
you know, sometimes you have to take those it's how
you move forward and do more and better things.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, I visited there just a couple of weeks ago
for the first time I had seen it under construction,
and the store itself, bright and cheery, with very nice
people working in the store, and rose and Rose and
rose and Rose and refrigerators full of very interesting products,
many products that are not available in the regular supermarket.
(03:11):
And I think that that's your appeal and your attraction,
that you are carrying stuff that nobody else carries, and
you can also explain why it's better or different than
what we can get elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Definitely, so you know, what's happened in our grocery industry
in the last one hundred years is that, you know,
we've kind of become a volume it's become a volume industry, right.
So you walk into a twenty five thousand square foot
store and there are two hundred and fifty kinds of
olive oil. That's cool in one way, but it also
is lacking the creation. You know, why are those products
on the shelves?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So for me, my life and doing this for fourteen years,
has all it's been all about sourcing. It's been finding
the best things and bringing them to people. So when
you walk into a store and you see a new product,
you know, you need a tour guide to some degree, right, So,
like we really try to do that for people too. Well.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I enjoyed my tour because because I really hadn't seen
some of those products before, and I do want to
know about them as So I think that's the education
part of it is very important in a store like yours.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Without question, you know, when you're going to bring something
different to people, there needs to be an explanation of
what it is. We give people cooking instructions, you know,
we tell people what's coming into season. You and I
were talking a little bit before we went on about
what's going on with fruit in the Northeast right now,
and communicating that information not just about the product, but
about the farmers, the people that grow the food. You know,
you know so well about agriculture, and I've lived it
(04:33):
for a long time, but not everyone knows, you know,
what goes into growing that tomato or growing that peach, right,
and telling that story is important. But really like getting
the best things under one roof, where you can go
do your whole grocery shop but find like an amazing
pecan butter from Nevada or an amazing locally made granola.
You know, that's what differentiates I think us and a
lot of these small independent groceries from those big chains
(04:55):
that we're very accustomed to go into it, and.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
They've always appealed to me. Small, small organic markets have
always appealed to me. We had the organic market in Westport, Connecticut.
It was right next to my yoga studios, so I
always would stop in there and see what they had
and try to support their business because when you buy
it a place like Mike's Organic, you actually are supporting
(05:18):
a tremendous sort of network of young, avid good gardeners everywhere.
I'm involved with the main organic farmers up in Maine,
and they are working so hard to spread the word
about this kind of food and the availability of this
kind of food, and to keep the ground alive where
(05:39):
they are actually farming. How big is the store.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
The store is about thirty five hundred square feet and
we have packed it. It's comfortable, it's spacious, but it
is packed with incredible products. We opened up on a
rainy Saturday in April and we had I think over
two thousand people come through during the day. It was bananas.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Is that the biggest day you ever?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That was the biggest day we ever had. We all
recovered and it was also our first day.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
We had trained obviously some of our cashiers and stalkers,
but it's like kind of going to the driving range
then playing on the golf course. Training is one thing,
in the games another. It went great. We had one
broken jar tomato sauce to check out, which was a
little bit hairy, but other than that, it was great.
And the response has been incredible. You know, I was
saying before you and I had a woman come in
(06:25):
today and she ate a strawberry, a local strawberry brought
a few today and she's from California, and she said,
you know, this tastes like it did when I was
a kid. And I hear that every week I've been
open since I started the business, I've heard either this
taste like I used to when I was a kid,
or this tastes like it used to back home. If
someone's from another country and there's a reason for that,
we can get into it. But there's a real reason
(06:46):
for that.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
All there is. And I have a small array of
cherry tomatoes, two kinds of strawberries, the first of the
cherries being cherries I love being cherries, and the apricots.
I haven't tasted the apricot yet. Are they delied?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
They're good? They get better, you know the thing that
and you know this, I'm sure too. The first picking
is never the best, and they get better and better
and better throughout the season.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
We're so conditioned to have everything every day of the
year in this country, right in terms of produce especially,
but there really is a season for things, and not
all of us know what it is. But like with
the apricots, mid June, you know, that's the time for them.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And cherries are these cherries from California.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
These cherries are from California. They're local ones. You know,
we've gotten hit pretty bad with the frost up here.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So okay, let's talk about that, because my Mike was
just describing that the stone fruit, which the cherries, the plums,
the peaches, the apricots, the nick dreams were very badly
damaged in the frost, the late frost that we had.
Even though the trees had blossomed beautifully and this is
all Hudson Valley and Northeast ye had blossomed beautifully. My
(07:54):
plum trees were incredible this year, and then we had
a frost after the fruit had formed and they will
fill off. Correct, there's not a plum in my plum trees.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
It's it's happened to a bunch of farmers. And again
going back to it, right, like being able to tell
people that information is so important. I have an incredible farmer.
His name is Mark, and he's been doing this. He's
the fourth generation fruit farmer in the Hudson Valley. His
fruit is spectacular. I mean his peaches, the donut orches,
everything's called Grinder Farm. It's in Middle Hope, New York.
I was talking to him a few days ago. He said, Mike,
(08:26):
you know, we had a day in February that was
forty two. The next day was minus ten, and then
we had this lay frost and he had the fruit
actually was on the tree.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, that's what happened. That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
The fruitlets, the little baby fruitlets, and a blossom can withstand.
And that's one of the things is you know, with
laate frost, right, a blossom can withstand twenty seven to
twenty eight degrees for a night, but the fruit, which
he found out from Cornell can't. So literally all of
his fruit dropped off his trees. And if you're a
fruit farmer, that's it for the year. It is not
like tomatoes. There's no plants behind him.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And then they start to scratch their heads and wonder,
maybe a subdivision is beter than a fruit orchard. That's right,
And I've seen so many fruit orchards just go the
way of a development. A subdivision, it happens.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And his attitude was, you know, farmers are some of
the most resilient, positive people that you'll meet. I know
you've met a lot and I have two. And you know,
his attitude was just so incredibly. He sand you on Mike,
that's farming, he said, you know you have big years
the secondary cross. No, he's a fruit farmer. I mean
he has apples, you know, but even his apples were hurt,
(09:29):
which is my.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Minor I have. It started off so many apples this year.
I was so happy because last year was a bad year.
Yes for apples, and the same thing. They're a little
bit thinner than they were. But I'm keeping my fingers
crossed because apples are more resilient.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
They are, and they blossom a bit later. You know,
they're they're better adapted to the cold. But but yeah,
that it's it's not a great story, but it's it's
a good story to tell people about what's happening with
the farmers, and we always have that information.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, how did you start? When was your interest in
vegetables and fruits and locally produced stuff kindled? When did
that happen.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
As a child? You know, I'm half Italian, half Jewish.
I'm a pizza bagel and my grandma Ida lived in
the Bronx with my Grandpa Vinni. She had a little
vegetable garden out back, and I used to go there
and we would always be harvesting egg plant together, and
we'd be cooking together, all those things. And then as
a child, I just was always so fascinated by nature
and the outdoors. I grew up an outdoorsman and fishing
and gardening and all those things. And I just always
(10:29):
have loved food and especially how it's grown. I went
off to.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
School, and then where'd you go to school?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I went to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
And then I moved to Atlanta and started this hip
hop studio with a partner because I've always loved music
as well, and you know, from there it just did
all these different interesting things. I recorded Snoop when I
was down there, obviously, I know, you know Snoop really well.
And then I started doing these big celebrity events, you know,
with Shaquille O'Neal others, and I loved it and it
(10:57):
was interesting advertising a few others, but I just never
felt fulfilled, never loved it, you know, truly felt passionate,
and never thought I was doing anything good. So I
quit and I spent three and a half months living
in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana in Africa.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I've been there. It is one of the most beautiful
places on Earth.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I would agree.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And what did you do there?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I was building a photographic safari camp. I just wanted
to get away from the world for a while. I
was twenty eight years old and trying to figure out
my path, and I had this burning desire to something
with food, but didn't know what it was. So I
went out to build this camp and I lived out there.
And you know, I went to a grocery store in Mound, Botswana,
which had about one hundred thousand people, and all the
food looked better than here. You know, the eggs weren't
(11:39):
refrigerated because, as you know, when the hen lay is
an egg, she puts the bluem on it and it
won't spoil.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
The tomatoes were small and juicy, and all these things.
I stood in this grocery store in Africa and I
thought to myself, you know, why, why is it looked
different here? Then I went into the bush. During my
time there, I was charged by a leopard, almost bitten
by a cobra. In a play in the lost and engine,
and I fought a two thousand acre brush fire with
leafy branches. We literally put out a blazing fire with branch. Never,
(12:05):
I'll never forget. I'll never forget. The fire starts and
with the guys, and I'm picturing like a plane flying over,
you know, like for forest fires out west, and they
go and they have a machine and they're cutting branches
off the tree. And I was like, what the hell
you guys doing, like to put the fire out? And
we fought that fire for eleven hours. It was there.
I get. I never, I'll never one quick one. I'll
(12:26):
never forget. I was standing we made a fire break
to prevent the fire from gettinst the camp, and the
guy who was with me said, don't let the fire
across us. And it's about one hundred yards long, and
I'm standing on this fire break and the fire's coming
towards me and it's trying to cross you know this
sand I was running back and forth. It was one
hundred and fifty degrees. I'm running back. I thought I
(12:47):
was genuinely just gonna have art.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It's actually getting you're getting singed.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I burned all over. I was coughing up black. It
was absolutely crazy, but I did not let across and
it was just an incredible incident really put me on
the path to what I'm doing. What I'm doing now.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So where did you learn about real gardening? Did you
take a job anywhere else?
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I did, so, you know, I grew up doing it,
as I mentioned. And then I went and I worked
at Stone Barns, really and I worked with the head farmer,
Jack Algier.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
What a wonderful, wonderful gardener. He is incredible, incredible, so knowledgeable.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
It was really it was really an eye opener for
me because I knew about farming. I knew about gardening
rather and a little bit about farming. But you know,
sustainable agriculture in the Northeast is something that's really evolved
a lot, especially over the last you know, twenty years,
let's say, and just being able to be there and
every single day learned something new and practically not just
reading about in a book, right being out there and seeing,
(13:41):
you know, you plant peas on Saint Patty's Day, like
I didn't know that when I started, Right, so you
start learning all these things. And I was pruning apple
trees and it really that was my moment where I
decided to start MIC's. I was sitting under an apple
tree I just pruned, and I said, you know, I
want to start a business that directly connects small, local
farmers and consumers. And that was I was really one
of the first people in America to start a farm
(14:02):
to home delivery service, which is what Mike's began as
and my time in Africa, my time in Stone Barns
were huge factors for me.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And doing that well, that is very good experience. And
the delivery service especially, I mean you sort of hit
it right because COVID came and you could delivered to
homes and so that really helped you a lot, and
you took advantage of it in the best possible way
we did.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
It was a wild time for sure, being an essential
business and all that. But you know, I probably had
like thirty five or forty farmers tell me they would
have lost their farm without Mike's Organic during that time.
You know, if you're raising chickens for Grammercy tavern in
the city, let's say, and they close overnight and they
don't know when they're going to open, you still have
your birds, right, right, So we stepped in and we
filled that void for so many small farmers. It was
(14:50):
one of the most gratifying parts of my time in business.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Tell us about the offerings that you actually create at
your own kitchen.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Definitely, So as part of this whole expansion of the business,
we bought a commercial kitchen. So we're making everything from
you know, passion fruit chia pudding to incredible you saw
the curry chicken salad when you came in, Beautiful sandwiches,
I mean organic, I plant palms on you know, wonderful soups.
It's really about working with the seasons and working with
(15:19):
the ingredients you have and being able to create something
delicious but that's also healthy. We're using grass fed beef,
pasture turkey, all those things. It's so much fun to
be able to create. And then we have a food
truck in the back, so we do dinner on Wednesdays
and we made like grass bed cheese steaks last week.
We're doing breakfast sandwiches on the weekends. We have a
dairy cow coming down for the kids to see. So
(15:39):
the prepared foods are great and also a neat item.
You know, people, not everyone cooks, and not everyone can
cook every night, so it's important to have that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So what's your best selling product from the news store.
What's the best selling product I'd like to know.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Okay, so bananas, No, I hate to say that. It
pains me so deeply to say that banana is probably
number one. And then so strawberries. Blueberries os well, but
on the skin less chicken breasts os well.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
We actually have this really cool animal cracker from Jackson
Hole called Persephone. They are delicious, like animal crackers adults.
Those sell incredibly well. And then I think as you
go through the seasons, right, like sweetcorn moves extremely well.
And then also the dairy, like we have this incredible
a two milk from Cooperstown called Family Farms Stead. The
milk sells incredibly well. We're bringing chocolate milk down from
(16:30):
a farm in Connecticut pretty soon, so I need I need.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
To find a really great milk because I'm making my
own yogurt now and the milk milk is not the
same every week from the same dairy. It's what the
cows are eating, how they feel, absolutely, and so I've
been noticing it, Like my last batch of yogurt was sour.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Wow. Interesting. Yeah, when the color of the milk changes
as the cows get out on the grass, right. It
becomes more yellow when they're on the grass because of
all those nutrients. And you can taste the grass. You
can taste the terrible in the milk. It's like you
can with wine. Right, So the milk changes throughout the season.
And it's also everything does though, Like every week it
feels like Christmas to me. You know, it's something new
(17:09):
comes in and you're tasting it for the first time,
and eating seasonally is not easy, right, and again we're
conditioned kind of not to do it now with grocery
the way it is, when you get back to it,
you know, it also makes it more special when you're
waiting for something as opposed to just having it every
day of.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The Yeah, Like I'm waiting for sour cherries.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Me too.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I love the Montmorency cherries and I love cherry pie,
and I love everything.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Cherry sour cherries are. Do you like the black or
the red, the red, the really tart ones? Yeah, yeah,
yeah for baking, those are exception so they're amazing. Sour
cherry pie might be my favorite pie.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
It is my favorite.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, it has to be.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So I'm waiting for those. I do have several trees
and they seem to have some fruit on them.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I'm waiting are the birds after those few? It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
I have so many birds right now too because of
the climate change. So it's kind of intruing. But but
you are challenged so greatly now. The small, exclusive, expensive
grosser is challenged by the big, the Albertsons, the around here,
the cit.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
The Krogers, all of them.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Because they're all they're all competing with you and in
many different ways, including price. So how do you deal
with that?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
It's a great question. So, well, one thing is the differentiation,
right is trying to have different products. You know, if
you have the same exact product as a big box store,
then you know, the price becomes much more of an issue. Right,
It's I'll be honest with you. You know you can't compete
on price with them. You just can't.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Their margins and their volume is big, their margins are very.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
China are very small, right because they've become true volume businesses. Right,
the way you compete is on incredible product selection, fantastic
customer service, and creating a phenomenal experience when people come in. Right,
So you have a great product, you have great service,
and you have something that they can do there that
they can't do elsewhere. Right, we had a sheep sharing
last weekend at the store. The same farmer that used
to share your sheep in Westport, his daughter used to
(19:04):
share your sheep. So you know you have a sheep sharing.
We have a fresh mozzarella maker coming on Sunday to
make fresh mozzarella in the store. Right. We have the
dairy cow coming with her calves. Next weekend. We have
a pasta pop up. We're doing a lobster fest. You know,
all those things of really getting people back to experiencing
something through their food is what is what is important
(19:25):
in it. But for the big box stores, you know,
it's also killing the variety of what we have here
in this country. You know, in nineteen hundred there were
six thousand varieties of apples in the US. Right after
prohibition there were two thousand because people cut down apple
orchards they're making hard cider. And now you see the
same five or ten in every grocery store in America. Right,
But that you know, for us, we'll have fifty or
(19:46):
sixty kinds of apples in the fall so it's really
great customer service, awesome products set and then creating a
phenomenal experience for people.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And you, let's do a slater making day.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I want to do that with you. I'm going to
get you down there.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So let's talk about these strawberries. You have local strawberries,
which is it's June almost June, you're June, yeah, June. First,
we have local strawberries which are small and red, and
what variety are.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
The early glow?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And then you have the Harry's berries which come from California.
And I'm going to take a bite of the Harrys berry.
And now they've really taken over from Driscoll, haven't they.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
They have their you know, just like with apples. You know,
there are about six hundred varieties of strawberries.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Be sure they don't inject these I with sugar. I mean,
if they inject these with sugar, people.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
People can't believe the flavor. And there's a really good
reason for that. So, you know, typically we're growing one
or two varieties commercially in this country. Albion is one
of the main ones, and there's actually less sugar in
those strawberries because it gives them a longer shell life,
so he can get from California to Hear on a truck,
bounce around still look like a strawberry. The reason they're
(21:06):
white through the middle typically is because they're picked green
and either gassed or torched under a heat lamp to
turn them red. So you've got a green strawberry that
looks red that was bred to have less sugar.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Harry's berries, they grow two predominantly two types, seascape and Gaviota,
which are ever bearing, so ever bearing strawberries produced throughout
the whole season and loss of those, they're incredible. You
can get them, you know, for a much longer time.
Local strawberries two to three weeks, sometimes three.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
To four weeks or are these grown in the ground
or on benches?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
These are grown in the ground.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They are.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, we've been out that farm.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And it's a phenomenal family, you know, the Green family.
Harry was the grandfather. And it's also micro climate for them,
you know, it's the perfect conditions to grow strawberries in.
They like it. Not really higher than mid seventies during
the day.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I'd say that I would say they're three times sweeter
than the early glow.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
They are, and they have a very high price point,
you know, and that's when people come in the store.
How much is it a court of course, twenty dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Of the early glows seven ninety nine, big difference, huge,
But if you are making a strawberry shortcake for your
fancy dinner party, correct, you were going to want Harry's
berries because they are clean, they are absolutely beautiful as
they're jewel.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Well, you know we do this. I've said this to
people before. But you know, you go to a restaurant,
right and you don't think twice about paying eighteen dollars
for a cocktail, right, And when people come in the store.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Some cocktails are twenty four dollars now.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Twenty four, twenty five thirty, right, So it's crazy. But
we but when we see strawberries, the best strawberries potentially
we've ever had, we think twenty dollars is silly. And
by the way, they're both fine, but that's an alignment
of value, right and for us to me eating the
best strawberry you've probably ever had, that's actually good for you,
that'll last long than twenty minutes, and no pesticides, they're
(22:51):
grown certified or getting there, no pesticides.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Great, it's incredible because they're one of the fruits that
would absorb pesticides.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
So the top of the dirty dozen strawberries always are.
I know someone that went to a commercial I won't
say which farm, but a commercial strawberry farm, and he
was out there in the morning they're having breakfast and
there is his mist over the whole field. Is it, Oh,
you're watering the strawberries And they said, no, those are
all the chemicals were used, you know, So it really
is food is the surest medicine or the slowest poison, right,
(23:18):
And you know when we eat healthy, clean food and
you know this, Martha as well as anyone. You know,
that is what gives us the fuel and the energy
we need to sustain us. It's it's what's more important
than food, right, Like there are few things that are
more important. So anyways, Harris are sensational.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
The tomatoes where are they from? These? These are the
small cherry tomatoes. Is both the golden beautiful golden ones and.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
The sun golds and larger.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Ones, larger orange red.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
They're gorgeous, so tasty. So there's a really cool story
about them. So greenhouses they are there, but here's the
deal with them. They're from a place called long Wind
Farm up and Fromont working with them for a while.
They're grown in soil, they're certified organic, and they are
greenhouse grown, which, of course, right another month or so,
we're not gonna need greenhouse any greenhouse strawberry tomatoes. Rather,
(24:10):
they taste like august. They taste like summer. They are
so flavorful. They're one of the things when people come
in I always let them try things, and those are
one of the things I have them try because it
truly is an incredible tomato, and we'll have all the
local ones soon, but to get them a little bit
earlier from a great organic farm in Vermont is something
that we definitely want to support.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Who's your customer.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Customer is typically has been a mom between the ages
of probably thirty and sixty, let's say, who cares about
eating good food but also wants the convenience of getting
it in one place. And the prepared foods have been
really important for that as well. And I think it's
just someone who is food educated but also is looking
(24:52):
to make changes in their diet, wants to incorporate better
things into their life, and also prioritizes flavor. We have
the people that support local agriculture and that it's like
their priority, right, But that's not the majority of the customer.
It's people that want great food, that want to get
it in one place, and that also want to have
an experience and hear a story about it. We always say,
you know, we don't sell food, We tell stories, and
(25:12):
that really is the basis of what we do, is
telling the story of the farmer and the product.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Do you have an in house peaker yet?
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yes and no. So we have this amazing woman. Her
name is Ali. She was a pastry chef at eleven
Madison Park in the city. So she is baking for us.
It's mostly on the weekends right now, so come in.
We have the sheep sharing. She baked these adorable little
sheep cookies with amazing butter. They were butterfew and they
were outrageous. She bakes strawberry bar pies from Mother's Day
Harry's various cakes, So she does bake. We work with
(25:41):
some other great local bakeries Flower Water, Salt and Dairy,
n Wavehill and Norwalk and others for brad sourdough all that.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
On my way home from Pilates. This morning, I stopped
at Elementop. Have you been there?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I love that place. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And she's a sultan, single baker, Yeah, a woman. I
think she has three kids. The place was packed, people
are looking for and she's sour dough across so sour dough,
whole weed and they are very tasty. Everything she makes
now is very earthy and delicious, not too earthy, excellent,
(26:14):
excellent technique. So it's prices of skyrocket. It all comes
down the price again. I mean, I really feel for
people who tell me when I give them a bag
full of peas from my garden, and how how absolutely
grateful they are, because peas fresh peas in the in
the grocery store are they cost a fortune. And asparagus
(26:35):
from the garden taste so different from from most other asparagus,
the ones that are shipped from whose where Peru, and
the shipping takes its toll on the on the taste
of the of the vegetable they get. But it's very,
very expensive. What are we going to do about that?
This is a nationwide problem, it's a worldwide problem.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It's a big problem. It's it's a it's an especially
big problem here right, because of our food system. And
you know, one of the issues that you find is
number one, small organic farms and medium organic farms are
not subsidized by the government at all, right, so they're
receiving no subsidies, whereas these larger industrial farms, there are
many of them. I spent a lot of time in
(27:17):
the Midwest, and I've been to a lot of these
big you know, factories, yeah, factory farms or whether it's
just you know, ten thousand acres of GMO corn. A
lot of them are living on subsidies and they're not
making almost anything on the crop because the inputs are
so high. You need two million dollars five million dollars
combine to pick the corn, right, and all these chemicals,
et cetera. So, you know, on a national level, until
(27:39):
we start providing real assistance to smaller organic farms, those
prices can't come down, right, It's just it's not something
that can happen. We can get it as low as possible,
but it takes longer. You know, an average chicken from
a factory farm is a twenty eight day old bird.
From a chick to twenty eight days, that's how old
it is. Till it's a broiler, till it's a bird
you're eating, right, found, yeah, exactly. And then you have
(28:00):
you know, these farmers raising them on the grass where
it takes three or four months, so you're feeding the
chicken longer, you have more labor against it, you know.
So it's really it's a very complicated and difficult issue.
The best way we can change it is by supporting
more and more small local farmers. Right, the more support
we give them. Every time you buy something at a story,
you're voting, right, you're voting for a certain type of food.
(28:22):
And the more we vote for something that's locally grown
from a great farmer, et cetera, the more support they
have and the more they can get their prices down. Right.
But everything, by the way, just on ant, you know,
just because of inflation. Everything is expensive now, I mean,
even commodity food is expensive. We have tried as much
as possible to keep the prices as low as we can,
you know, we want to be affordable for people. But
(28:45):
you also do pay for what you get, and that's
part of life too, you know, like there's there's a
balance there. We do a ton of stuff with the community,
you know, we've worked with so many organizations to provide.
You know, perishable food is the hardest thing for people
to fine, especially people that are food insecure. Things in
cans or boxes are easier. So we've done a ton
of work with local charities to try and bring more
(29:07):
food to people that don't have access or the means.
Michael Colin created the first grocery store in nineteen thirty
in Queens and the entire principle which essentially the whole
grocery industry is found that on now is pilot high,
sell it low. That's what grocery has been, right, what
we've been talking about.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
But the waste enormous, enormous. I was at a local
grocery store the other morning. I wanted some fruit. I
found a few other good things, but then I saw
the shop one of the nice girls who works there
going through all the fruits taking out what she was
not saleable, and the big shopping carts full of barely
(29:48):
bad I mean it was still edible. I said, oh,
what are you going to do with that? And she said, oh, garbage.
And so what is the attrition rate of food in
a grocery? Fresh food in a grocery store.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
So it depends depends on the store. Right, for us,
it's less than five percent. Now that five percent also
though includes So what we would do, Mike's right, like
a few things. One like we would we would have
a kitchen. We have a kitchen. Yeah, so that's number one, right, Like,
so when you have that kale that comes in perfect,
just picked, and then it's been there for a couple
of days, let's say, and it's still lovely but not
(30:22):
as beautiful as you want it, that becomes your kale
white being soup. Right, So number one and then number two.
You know, we work with a place called Food Rescue
and they come several times a week. If there are
things that are not really salable and they're not going
to go to the kitchen, we donate everything that's good.
But in the grocery industry, you know, the way there
are two types of waste from the big grocery industry.
One is before it even gets to the store. So
(30:44):
a green bean has to be a certain length with
and color to go to one of those stores. Right, Like,
if you look at people, you know, we're all different shapes,
different sizes, right, Like, that's what life is on your
plum tree out there, so they.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Have to go elsewhere, they have to throw them away.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
They have to allow of them get to scarred, right,
So you know, and that is this symptom of that
industry which is promoting uniformity as opposed to diversity, And that,
to me is one of the big problems with big grocery, right,
is like, go to that plum tree out there, You're
gonna see plums of all shapes and sizes. A couple
have little spots on them, some will be perfect, They're
all delicious. So that is the waste is a big
(31:21):
issue in grocery. It's I mean, you want to remember
that bread was like thirty percent or something. I mean,
like it's just astronoms. And then you have people in
this country that don't have access to great food.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
But from these big, big grocery stots, they do not
go to the homeless, and they don't go to shelters.
They throw them away.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
The vast majority goes. I remember, you know, when I
was a kid, we had like a pet goat and
I went to the grocery ands, like do you have
any carrots or apples that you can't sell anymore? I'll
buy them from you. So no, we're not allowed to
sell them if we have to throw them away, That's exactly,
and I mean to it defies every aspect of logic.
I know, you compost here, I compost, you know, I
mean big help to the environment for sure.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So so margins on your prepared foods are much better
than on grocery correct probably you know.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Prepared foods are one of those things where you're aiming
for a gross margin, you know, around forty five to
fifty percent, that's your gross margin, right, because then you've
all your other costs against it. You know, it ends
up being a much smaller net margin, which is what
we're talking about the big grocery source. Prepared foods can
usually be a bit better, you know, sometimes around sixty percent,
(32:27):
depends on what the product is. If you can use
things you're at risk of losing, right, then it's a
double win because a you're avoiding the waste and be
you're creating a delicious product that as something on the shelves.
So prepared foods are always a great driver, a margin driver,
and they're just such a huge area of need for people,
you know, especially with great clean organic ingredients in them,
which there's not a lot of that around, not at all.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So back to the beginning, how did you finance your expansion?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yes, so initially when I started the business, I financed
it my my grandfather passed away and he left me
twenty thousand dollars and that's how I started MIC's Organic
and I sell fund of the business. For eleven years.
In the beginning, I did everything delivered, picked up from
the farms, dealt with the customers, swept the floors. It
gives you such a great appreciation for what it takes
to be a small business owner. And then we went
(33:14):
through this expansion and I actually went out and I
did a fundraise, which was the first time I've ever
done something like that in my life. And I raised
it all from private investors to build out the retail location,
to buy the kitchen, to grow out the delivery business.
And it was an enormous education. It went well and
we were successful, but fundraising is a second full time job,
and I was doing that in addition running the business.
(33:36):
It was a great experience, it really was. Construction is
another one, a really fun thing to go through. Everything
they tell you twice as long and twice as much
and you always laugh and say that's really funny, and then.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
To be true.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And I went through some really hard times, you know,
to get the place open. I really did. I read
this great story about Walt Disney, you know, when he
has had the idea for Disneyland. He was in his
mid thirties living out in California, obviously, and you know,
he couldn't afford to buy food. He was eating dog food,
and he went to the banks to try and get
a loan to open Disneyland. Have you heard the story before?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
No?
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Okay, if you had to guess how many times you
think Walt Disney was turned down for a loan from.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
The banks, oh, one hundred.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
That's a very good guest. Most people say for three hundred,
three hundred times. And you think to yourself, you know,
on the two hundred and ninety ninth time, you know,
how could he not have just quit? And it's what
it teaches you about being, especially when you have a
vision or a dream, right is persistence, perseverance, endurance that
is And you know this as well as anyone, I'm
sure like that's what itsy.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
They always talk about the five d's, you know, the
bad things and death, and dementia.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, yeah, disaster.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I always talk about the five pas, which are the
perseverance and persistence.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And the patients picaciity.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah, it's just it's incredible. But you do need that
in business.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
You need it in life. Yes, right, Yes, it truly is.
You know, life is a river and we're all on
it and you're moving with the current and sometimes it
gets bumpy and sometimes it's smooth, but you keep moving forward.
And then you have this beautiful store now that you
see and people see the beautiful store, right, but no
one ever sees what would into getting it open.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Well, your investors did. They should a lucky them because
they took a calculated chance. They do one, Mike Giller,
and they were going to see some very nice results.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yes, they will thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
I really really think that's great. So you wrote a
letter to customers each week when the pandemic began, and
this ran for more than one hundred weeks.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
You were in one of them.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I was, yes, So why did you do this?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
It started during COVID and you know we were open,
as I mentioned during you know, the entire shutdown all that,
and a woman came in to shop and she walked
in this or and you know, her eyes were kind
of darting around, and she'd are you going to have milk?
Are you going to have eggs? And she was really scared.
You know, this is March twelfth, right, So I went
home and I wrote a letter and I just said, hey,
you know, listen, we're to week about you know, around
(36:13):
ten thousand people on our newsletter, and I said, you know,
we're here for you. Whether it's for a bag of
rice or a good conversation, you know, we're all going
to get through this together, and we are here for you.
And the response was incredible. And then it just morphed
into this incredible chance to talk to people every week
about things completely outside the business, about my kids growing up,
or about farmers, or about you know when you were
(36:35):
on there about I think it was for National Women's Day.
And you know, it's so hard to connect with people
on an emotional level as a business owner, right, it's
so challenging. And the response we got the people people
would literally I'd see people in wherever in the street
and they would say, I cried, you know when I
read your letter. And we did them for over two years.
It was just it became such an integral part of
(36:57):
the business and for me personally, like we started putting
together a little book of them, something that really was
extraordinarily meaningful.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
And they will pay attention and they will come in
when the first local sour cherries. I will be down
in Greenwich right away.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
We'll be there for you.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Oh yes. So the words connection and transparency are very
important in your kind of business out come.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Because those things are almost entirely devoid in our industrial
food system.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
So you're lucky to know the country of where something
came from in a grocery store. Forget about the farmer,
what's on it, what's in it when it was picked. Right,
it's going back to what we're accustomed to when we
were younger. Or certainly if you go to the market,
let's say in France, right where you're talking to the
person that made the bread, right, and we've just lost
that in our food system. We're so divorced from food,
(37:52):
from how it's grown, all those things. So for us.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Don't have an idea what ruberb looks like.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Someone thought it was salary, right, I mean, like you
know or that the right you know or whatever you know,
it's illegal to publish a photo of the inside of
a commercial slaughterhouse in America. It's illegal because if people
saw what was happening on that level, right, like, maybe
they wouldn't want to eat meat. So for us, it's
really important to connect people to their food, not just
(38:21):
to their food, but to the people that grow the food.
And then the transparency of again, what's on it, what's
in it? When was this picked? You know? How do
I cook this? Right?
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Like?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Those are all things that we as consumers should be
entitled to and we just don't. You know, you go
into a grocery store, and I would argue that it's
one of the worst retail experiences in America is a
grocery store. There is typically you're walking in, not talking
to anyone, getting everything you can. It's like going to
the NV get everything you can quickly and trying to
(38:48):
get out. That's not how we should be shopping for fee.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Do you know how I shop in a grocery store? No,
tell me, Well, I like to go like at eleven
o'clock at night, and I go up and down every
single aisle and I look at all the prices and
I compare product to product. That's the way I shop.
We're lucky around here. We have one kind of local,
(39:12):
family owned business that's really kind of Everybody talks about
it how nice it is, and even the cheeses are nice.
But it's I compare. And then I read things like
in the New York Times they have the consumer reports
there that they have wirecutter. It's called Yesterday they had
(39:33):
olive oils, the olive oils that they talked about the
five or six of the best olive oils that they
have found out of two hundred they tested. I only
knew one, and one of them's in a kind of
a plastic squeeze bottle and that was their number one pick.
And I was shocked that that's their number one. But
they I'm going to get it and see what it tastes.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Like, Yeah, we sell that all.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Which one is that it's called grosa and that's right, Yeah,
you are a z so if you have it, then
it must and they said it's number one. Okay, well
let's stitch. You know where is it from?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Grosses from Spain and grassa means grease and Spanish, and yeah,
we it's it's phenomenal. There are two sizes, ones for cooking,
ones for kind of dust on.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
The soft bottle, because it's I think.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
It was just a brilliant marketing decision because a lot
of people, a lot of like, if you're a chef,
you're always transferring it to a squeeze bottle so you
can regulate how much oil are you using. Typically of
course you want it in glass, right, and they put
it in plastic. It is very very good oil, and
it is very convenient.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
I'm gonna buy some.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
I would have brought you some find on that I'm
sure like just olive oil in general.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yes, she's so confusing, and I just want to talk
about your events too, because you talk about having the
cow and the calf to come. Because people don't have
a clue what a milk cow looks like, do they?
And and how does how to get actually get milk
out of an udder? I try very hard to to
educate young people in all of that, because my grandchildren
(41:04):
love milking cows and cheap and goats. Hard hard to do,
but once you know how, you know where your milk's
coming from.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah, we were actually I was at that farm yesterday.
It's a farm called Shaggy coos in Easton, Connecticut. Amazing
female farmer named Brittany. She's so wonderful, and she has
these gorgeous Jersey and Holstein cows, and I milk the
cow yesterday.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Aren't they beautiful jerseys?
Speaker 1 (41:31):
The jerseys, the eyelash.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Beautiful Jersey cows are brown. Hole steins are black and white,
so that you can differentiate. But the Jerseys, whole stings
give more milk correct and one hole steam can give
up to eighty gallons of milk a day, unbelievable. And
then a Jersey cow gives less milk. I learned all
(41:54):
of this from a farmer up in Maine who had
her own dairy farm, and the only dairy farm unmountains
are Island. There used to be like eighty dairy farms
on Mount Dessert Island, and now there's none. If she
went out, she went out of business.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Dairy farming is a very very very hard, very.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Hard business, and cows make a mess, they do.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
I was milking cows yesterday and getting pushed around by one.
I wanted.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I wanted so much to have two really good rich
milk cows so that I could make cheese here. Sure,
and I have put it off and put it off
because the mess.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
They're they're hey, they're gigantic. You stand next to the
we're huge. They do make a big mess. They are
amazing animals though, And she actually has a for people
at home. You know, the hole sting that's like the
Ben and Jerry's cow, like if you think about what
a whole stee looks like. And then the Jerseys make
the A two milk, which has been this whole thing.
You know, the A two milk is actually easier for
(42:50):
your body to digest. It only comes pretty much from
Jersey cows. So yeah, this woman, Brittany's coming down on
June tenth to the store. She's bringing the mom named
Pearl and the two calves, and then we're going to
be drinking chocolate milk that is right from her cows.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Wow, what kind of chocolate does she use?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
She uses this gray cacow. I have to ask her
what the name? What the name was? Yeah, but it
was I mean it was like it was like drinking
our chocolate.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
But again, listeners, if you have kids, what a nice
opportunity to see where your milk comes from. I look
at that carton of milk on my counter or the bottle,
and I think, gosh, like even this morning I was
opening I had one that had a little bit of
milk left in it. And I make a cappuccino every morning,
but the just opened carton of milk makes a better
(43:37):
capuccino than the one that still has just a little
bit in the bottom of it. Yeah, it's just weird.
But I think once air hits it or something, is
that what happens.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It is, Yeah, the air gets to it. And the
other thing, you know, Brittany was telling us about was
just pasturization, right, Like you know, ultra pasteurized milk, which
is what you'll typically get at the grocery store, is
cooked to one hundred and eighty five or one hundred
and ninety degrees for an hour and a half, so
it's essentially boiled, right, it's just below boiling. Right, you've
taken everything out of it. It'll then last over two months, right.
(44:09):
So the way she's pasteurizing a lot of these small
farmers do, probably the woman and makes that's right. It
is just homogenizing exactly. And it's low temperature pasteurized one
hundred and forty degrees for thirty minutes, which makes it safe,
but all the amino acids, all theres are still intact.
And that's a totally believable, big difference in it.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
And you can't make good yogurt unless you have that
kind of.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
That is exactly right.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
So speaking of marketing, who handles that for you?
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, so you know a lot of it. I have
an incredible kind of social media and communications team to
wonderful people named Michelle and Laura, and you know, I
think it really comes down to trying to be earnest
and genuine with people, especially with food. Right, people spot
spot a lack of authenticity and food so quickly. So listen,
when you're a small business, right, you don't have a
(44:56):
marketing department, you know you don't have you know you
have to It's always about doing as much as you
can with what you have, right, and then as you grow,
ideally you bring on more and more people to help
you grow.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Where would you like to take your business?
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Really and truly, you know, I see a big opportunity
for something like what we're doing, and you know, I
think that I'd like to start off, you know with
Fairfield and Westchester County and opening more stores, growing our
home delivery business I really want to expand into the
consumer package good space with our products which can be
sold at a larger level, and just really and truly
(45:31):
continue to support as many small farms as possible to
help this local food movement grow and be an anchor
for it in this area. That's kind of one of
my main priorities.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
To learn more about Mike's Organic, visit Micsorganic dot com,
follow at Mike's Organic on Instagram, and if you happen
to be in Greenwich, Connecticut, visit a store at six
hundred East Putnam Avenue. You will not be disappointed and
you will eat a beautiful, beauty a full court.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Is this a court?
Speaker 2 (46:02):
A court of Harry's berries? I have eaten half of
won during this podcast. Thank you so much for visiting
and very very good luck with your amazing enterprise.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Thank you for having me, Martha. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Thank you,
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