Ever wondered how a fourth-generation citrus farmer turned his passion into the largest organic juice brand in the nation? Join us as we chat with Matt McLean, the visionary behind Uncle Matt's Organic. Mac takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings in the sweltering Florida groves to creating a thriving business empire. He opens up about his family's rich history in citrus farming, his competitive spirit, and the lessons learned from early hard labor and leadership. You'll also hear about his strategic partnerships with major retailers like Kroger and the significance of the Cincinnati market in consumer packaged goods.
Matt doesn’t just stop at business success; he's at the forefront of regenerative farming. This episode delves into the challenges and rewards of adopting organic methods, including cover cropping and composting. Matt provides a candid look at the economic principles behind sustainable farming and the resilience required to face obstacles like citrus greening disease. His strong belief in regenerative practices as a solution for global sustainability is both inspiring and insightful, promising listeners a deeper understanding of the future of agriculture.
Finally, explore the innovative side of Uncle Matt's Organic with a discussion on their unique product offerings like the Ultimate Immune and Ultimate Defense juices. By blending organic orange juice with health-boosting ingredients like elderberry, turmeric, and ginger, Matt has crafted beverages that not only taste great but also support overall health. Listen as he shares his philosophy on natural remedies and the importance of maintaining product excellence. This episode is a blend of entrepreneurial wisdom, industry insights, and innovative approaches to organic farming and product development that you won't want to miss.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Guys, we have a special guest.
Me and Kyle are both in thehouse, but Mac McLean how are
you doing, matt?
I'm doing awesome.
Thank you, is it McLean McLean?
Is that how?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
you.
You know, I say McLean.
The crazy thing is, my mom saysMcLean, but I've always said
McLean, you won't get it wrongeither way.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay.
Well, my name's a hard one topronounce too, and people get it
wrong all the time, so it'sfine.
But yeah, man, we're excited tohave you.
I mean, you guys are down inFlorida killing it, man.
I mean one of the largest, thelargest organic juice brand in
the country, grapefruit juice,orange juice.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You're in Kroger up here in Cincinnati.
We can go buy your products offthe shelf right now.
Bunch of stores.
You guys are nationwide.
I mean, you were doing stuffacross the world for a long time
.
What's your secret?
Where'd you get your start?
I'm a fourth-generation Floridacitrus grower.
It was in my blood.
On the other side, I also havean entrepreneurial spirit.
I love competition.
I love being a self-starter.
Those two things came togetherand I found my passion, luckily
(01:41):
at an early stage in my life, 25years ago, with the opportunity
to start my own juice brand anddo it organic, which is a thing
I'm passionate about on farmingorganic.
And so combine all thattogether and here we are today.
I still feel like it's thefirst couple of years in
business when I come into theoffice.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's right.
You got to keep that attituderight.
You do, you do.
It's all part of the hustle.
Right, it is all part of thehustle.
Well, that is awesome.
I mean, what you've been ableto accomplish is great and I've
always wanted to talk to a guylike you who knows how to.
You know, take a CPG brand,because I mean, we're in the
capital of CPG here inCincinnati.
Procter Gamble's based here,which largest consumer packaged
(02:18):
goods company in the world.
You've got Kroger here, whichis the biggest grocery chain,
and they're about to buyAlbertsons, as long as the SEC
doesn't get in the way and manyother government agencies that
like to block things like that.
But that would put you on theWest Coast, I guess.
If you already got a deal withKroger and yeah, it's going to
(02:39):
be a big, big deal but we're inthe CPG capital and people here
rarely ever take advantage ofthe fact that you can walk down
the street and ask Kroger if youcould throw something in their
stores, I guess.
But how did you make thathappen?
What made you want to?
I know you said you got anentrepreneurial spirit and
everything else.
What made you want to startthis brand?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah.
So first off, I have made tonsof trips over my lifetime those
25 years to Kroger to go toCincinnati downtown.
It's an awesome experience.
I've had many different buyers.
They've been a really goodcustomer of ours and helped us
get to the next level.
So thank you.
For anybody from Kroger who maybe listening to this, we live
(03:21):
our partnership with Kroger andI even do make trips to
Cincinnatiincinnati in thewinter, coming from florida.
So that's how much I love gottaget ready.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Don't bring any of that frost back with you.
We talked about that before theshow.
Just keep, we'll keep it uphere can't have cold weather
down here.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
but you know, for me it really was I.
I started, uh I grew up, in thecitrus industry.
You know my father, mygreat-grandfather, came down to
Florida.
He had a love for citrus.
He was a citrus farmer.
He also raised cattle, he didvegetables.
He even had turpentine and thecitrus piece is what flowed
through the rest of thegenerations my granddad.
(03:57):
He took a liking to that.
My father obviously loved it aswell, and when I grew up, I
grew up in the hot summersworking for my dad, helping him
in his groves and doing all thefun labor that goes with it.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Real work, real work.
That's what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Real.
I tell you what that work is.
That's real motivating work,real motivating work.
To go do something else withyour life.
Make sure you're going to studyhard and prosper, buddy,
because otherwise you're goingto be out here on you know, on
the hand crew pulling weeds.
You know planting trees, andwhile that's a noble job for
anybody that does it, it isdefinitely physically demanding,
(04:35):
especially in Florida in thesummer heat.
So, but it taught me a lot ofvaluable lessons how to just be,
you know, hardworking,perseverance.
I led a small crew of young menwith me on a day to day basis,
so you know, I look back onthose days and a lot of fond
memory around just business andthings that I learned about you
(04:59):
know how to take that next step.
And so it taught me when I wentto college.
I definitely was going to go tocollege to get out of that you
know atmosphere and I wanted tostudy business and finance and I
had visions of, you know,working on Wall Street and being
a banker and all those things.
And then, when I got out ofcollege, I had a couple of job
(05:19):
offers to be, you know, sellingbusiness forms or computer
software, and it just didn'tfeel right.
I'm like I don't think this iswhat I'm supposed to be doing.
I didn't really have a passionfor it.
And then, at the same time, myfather was a citrus consultant.
They had come back with a guyfrom Germany who owned some
citrus groves and he said, hey,I need help.
(05:41):
Man, I need help.
I want to take my fresh fruitand, more importantly, florida
juice.
I love Florida orange juice andI've got friends over in
Germany that are bottlers and ifyou can help me find you know
people I can buy good qualityjuice from and get it over to
Europe, I can sell it to thebottlers.
And so he and I formed a littlepartnership and I went around
(06:02):
at the ripe age of you know, 21,22, 23.
And I used the good name thatwe had between my granddad and
father to go to those juiceplants and say, hey, I need to
buy some organic orange juice orconventional orange juice,
conventional grapefruit juice,and I'm going to put it on a
boat and send it to Holland andthen we're going to truck it
down to Germany and the bottlers.
(06:23):
And that's what we did and wehad a really strong business for
five years.
We were doing a lot, a lot ofbusiness and had a lot of
success.
And then one of the customers inSouthern Bavaria, a little town
of Freinsheim, mr Noy, asked mefor organic.
He said hey, matt, I need tofind some organic, some biologic
grapefruit juice.
And I didn't know what that was.
(06:45):
I said, hey, you're a greatcustomer, I love you, mr Noy,
and I'm going to go figure thatpiece out for you.
It sounds interesting becausetypically trends start in Europe
and they move over to the US.
And if this is something newthat's on trend, I need to be
aware of it.
And so I came back to the US andI had the dual moment of facing
(07:08):
my grandfather and father andasking them can we even grow
organic?
What is organic farming?
And that even happened inFlorida.
And they just chuckled.
And my granddad in particular.
He was like I was alive beforepesticides were invented in the
40s and we farmed organicwithout anybody even telling us
it was organic.
We planted cover crops, we usedthings like fish emulsion and
(07:30):
compost and so we can do it.
And it gave me the realsatisfaction and the real
impetus and confidence that, hey, ok, if we can grow it, then I
think I can provide it.
And I also had the same time,the aha moment in business,
where you look at a market andyou go I think I may have
(07:51):
something here, because therewas no organic Tropicana.
There was no organic, simply.
So it made sense from at leastthe business opportunity, like,
hey, I really think if it'shappening in Europe, it could
potentially come to the US.
And there was other smallorganic cottage industries that
were popping up.
They were becoming reallyvaluable in the supermarket, and
(08:11):
so it gave me the confidence tosay, hey, this could happen, we
could become an organic juicecompany, but I had no idea how
to do it.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that'sa great story, I mean.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
And that's a great story, I mean, and that's funny
that it happened internationallyand you were ahead of the game
thanks to this customer of yours, and it's good.
That's why you listen tocustomers, right, because you
never know where that insight isgoing to come from that you
weren't expecting.
And then here you are, in20,000 stores now with this
organic brand.
(08:44):
And what separates you guysfrom a Tropicana or a Simply or
one of these guys that have theorganic claim?
I know there's a lot oflabeling stuff.
Yeah, what's the differencethere?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So I mean to simplify it organic farming is done more
the way Mother Nature intended,right.
So you're not going to have theharsh chemicals, the the
synthetic fertilizers uh, we usemore natural things.
So, uh, instead of using ureaand ammonium nitrate that you
would put on the soil, uh, we'lluse compost, we'll use stuff
like peanut meal, feather meal,and what happens there?
(09:19):
You're actually feeding thebugs, so you're feeding the, the
microbes in the soil that willeat that natural material and
they'll break it down and thenthey will synthesize that with
the roots into the tree.
So it's a slower form ofnitrogen where your synthetics
are much faster.
They're more you know, theyfeed the tree quicker and
(09:39):
they're more about, you know,growth and vigor, where organic
will be a slower growth and itwill be more symbiotic with the
tree and with the soil, soyou're not going to leach a lot
of it through down into theaquifer or waste it, which is
one.
And then, from just thesynthetic chemicals we don't use
(09:59):
Roundup, the weed killer thatcauses cancer.
Glyphosate we don't use that.
We use mechanical hoe weedeaters.
Vinegar, burndown products, sowe don't use those.
Also, the pesticides we won'tuse the synthetic pesticides,
the neonicotinoids that can beharmful to bees and birds and
(10:21):
things like that, so we'll useit.
It's just basically a morenatural way of farming and
really going back to the way mygrandfather and
great-grandfather did it beforea lot of this technology came
about and the technology themodern conventional farming
technology today.
It's not a bad method.
It's obviously a very effectivemethod and it feeds a lot of
(10:42):
people, but it's mostly basedaround production, right?
It's really about trying to getmore production per acre, more
production per acre and, as anorganic farmer, we're looking
for more quality per acre, right?
So we're going to try and growmore nutrient dense food stuff
that you know.
In that orange juice you havemore vitamin C, more
antioxidants, more nutrients ina blueberry or an apple or that
(11:05):
piece of fruit or that vegetable, because it's growing slower,
it's releasing more naturalstuff in the soil that that
plant can take up into it.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Wow yeah, go ahead, Matt, Sorry man.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
It's an issue with me not being in there.
I step on your toes sometimes,my bad.
Hi Kyle, how are you doing Good?
How scalable do you thinkregenerative farming is?
Because I know that millions ofpeople listen to Rogan's
podcast and they had the guyfrom Georgia on talking about
his cattle farm.
(11:40):
Yeah, that seems less scalablethan a produce farm when it
comes to regenerative farming.
But I was just wondering whathow you saw this is.
Could this be a trend in thefuture where it's not just uh,
uh, not to say it's a nichemarket, but a niche market where
it can actually become likepredominant?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
yeah.
So I think the answer to thatis a resounding yes.
I mean, and that's what wefought for for 25 years is to
continue to convert more peopleto organic.
But we're still only about 5%of the market share, right?
If you wanted to say tomorrowand you said, hey, we needed to
be 100%, the market's not readyfor that, right, for that.
(12:24):
You're not going to have enoughcompost, you're not going to
have enough cottonseed meal orpeanut milk.
You're not going to have enoughof those supplies probably to
go out and convert acreage thatquick.
So, like anything, you need toramp up to it.
Also, do the farmers have theknowledge to be able to just
turn it organic one year?
You can't necessarily go downto your local land-grant
(12:48):
university and get a playbook onhow to farm organic.
So there's a learning curve, agood amount of learning curve
you've got to overcome or elseyou'll crash your production.
The trees won't get enoughnutrients.
But the regenerative farmingthere's a lot of parts that you
can take from a conventionalfarm and start using some of the
regenerative organic methodsand you could slowly start
(13:09):
transitioning pieces.
I mean, growing cover crops iseasy.
You grow some of your nitrogennaturally right in the middle of
the citrus grove right.
So you plant a cow pea, youplant a sun hemp, you plant
something like that right in themiddle of the row.
It grows up and then you tillit back in, you disc it in or
you knock it down, whatever youwant to do, and guess what that
(13:31):
does?
That provides natural nitrogenback into the soil, natural food
back into the soil.
It adds more water holdingcapacity.
So you're always trying to groworganic, natural organic matter
in the soil so it's more dense.
So I think there for me,long-term, that would be my goal
.
Um is to, you know, createregenerative organic farming, uh
(13:56):
, throughout the world, and Ithink you could.
you'll capture more carbon,you'll create more um, organic
matter in the soil, which willhelp with rainfall.
You'll help with nutrientsreleased to the plants, but it
won't be.
Oh, you couldn't just snap yourfingers and do it overnight.
So the people that criticizelike, oh, you would starve the
(14:16):
world, well yeah, if you did itovernight probably.
But if you have goals of, hey,let's start with cover cropping,
then let's start withcomposting, then let's start.
You know what are some of thethings that we can start taking
away and replacing conventionalwith or regenerative organic
methods.
I think that there's a chance.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
When I'm guessing.
At the University of Floridathey didn't teach you that
organic farming was the wave ofthe future, and in that
economics class you probablylearned about how to make things
faster, cheaper, charge more.
It's almost like you probablylearned the opposite of what
(14:58):
you're doing now in businessschool.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
It was pretty broad, but there was a good amount of
things I took away and couldapply.
Right and definitely supply anddemand and that plays out every
day in every business.
And also, you know, no profitgoes unchallenged in a free
market in America.
So you got to make sure that ifyou're producing something
that's a commodity, how do youmake sure that that commodity is
(15:24):
better than everybody else?
And you got to either grow itdifferent, right, high organic
you got to be able to produce itconsistently better than other
people.
So over the course of ourlifespan of 25 years we've
really focused on our supplybase and we were growers and so
we went out and we converted awhole lot of acreage to organic.
(15:45):
And my father and brother theywere the agronomist, I'm the
business guy and they were theagronomist and so they could go
in and help convert acreage andso we never ran out of supply
and we never ran out of goodquality supply where some of our
early competitors in the spacePavich and also horizon and even
organic valley they wound uprunning out of supply because
(16:07):
they were more just marketersand they weren't really at the
ground level.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So, yeah, you control what you're growing so you're
not like white labeled.
Yeah, exactly, oh, I was justgonna ask that like white
labeled growers, I mean how manyof these orange juice companies
out there, actually just kindof white label brands that buy
from some of your neighbors downthere in florida?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, so it has changed a lot.
Okay, so we went through ourown cycle where, up until 2015,
we controlled every singleorange that went into Uncle
Matt's, and then the littlecitrus greenie bug showed up and
this little disease showed upand it started affecting all of
(16:48):
our neighbors that wereconventional.
Then it started affecting us.
We were more resilient, butthen we succumbed to it just
like everybody else.
So our business model had toadjust and rapidly change, and
so we started working with ourconnections that we had in Texas
, we had connections inCalifornia, we had connections
in Mexico, and so today the vastmajority of our supply comes
(17:13):
from those three regions.
In Florida has been shut down toless than 100 acres.
For us, personally, organic.
That's all research anddevelopment, just trying to find
a cure for citrus greening.
So you want to talk about abusiness that is constantly
having to change.
That wasn't in our originalformula and model.
That's it so very humbling.
(17:35):
You have to, in business, beable to adapt, and if not, then
somebody else will, and so thatis our adaptation today.
If we eventually find the cure,which we hope to, we can
replant Florida and we can comeback and be, you know, 100
percent from Florida, which wewere up until 2015, proudly as a
fourth generation Floridacitrus grower.
(17:56):
But it has changed everybody.
So even Florida's Natural,which is a co-op of Florida
growers I think it was last year, maybe even the year prior they
had to start sourcing fromMexico and Brazil as well, and
so there's literally no 100%just Florida orange juice left
(18:16):
in the market, which is sad, butit is where we're at today with
the intro of citrus greendisease.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
I had no idea, Kyle.
Did you even know that was athing?
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Oh, you're on.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Kyle's on mute Kyle's on mute there.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, I'm sorry it wouldn't pop up so I could
unmute it.
My bad, no, I had no idea itwas a thing I.
I purposely stayed out ofshipping produce because it's a
nightmare, so I kind of stoppedpaying attention to what was
going on.
Is it affected anything else?
I know the watermelon crops.
I kind of stopped payingattention to what was going on.
Has it affected anything else?
(18:55):
I know the watermelon cropshaven't been too terrible.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
No, it's just citrus.
So this is a disease that onlyaffects citrus and it doesn't
affect humans at all.
So there's nothing.
If you're listening to thislike, oh my gosh, the orange
juice is infected.
No, it doesn't affect that atall.
What it does is a little pest,the Asian citrus psyllid.
(19:19):
It's like the mosquito thatspreads malaria.
It bites the leaf of the tree.
It's trying to find nutrients.
When it does, it transmits itfrom its gut into the leaf, it
goes down into the main arteryof the tree, the phloem and the
xylem.
It winds up.
The tree doesn't really eitheridentify it as a pathogen or it
overreacts to it and it causesthe tree to start blocking the
(19:39):
nutrient uptake and the waterflow in the tree.
And so you'll get some limbsthat start turning yellow it was
originally, you know,identified as yellow dragon
disease and then eventually thatthat limb will start dying and
that fruit will stay green hencethe term greening and it will
fall off premature.
And then eventually the treedies because it doesn't have
(20:03):
enough water or nutrientcapabilities.
And so you get off notes inyour juice because of all that
immature fruit that they'restill.
They'll pick, they'll try andgrade out, but sometimes it
looks very similar to a ripepiece of fruit and you can't
tell.
So it's very, very difficult.
Florida is the ground zero ofthis disease.
(20:26):
Because of our subtropicalclimate, the vector, the little
psyllid, loves to live here andthe disease loves to proliferate
.
And there's other regions thatwe're working in southern Texas,
east coast of Mexico, westcoast of Mexico and California.
They don't have near the sameharsh climate Parts of Mexico do
, and so they're showing some ofthe same greening symptoms.
(20:47):
But they get hot enough that webelieve that thermotherapy
naturally burns off the littlebacteria and it goes into a
cycle every year.
But Florida, while it getsreally hot, it's still humid and
you get rainfall, so it coolsit down most of the time.
So you know it stays thrivingin Florida.
And until you really find a wayto either control the vector
(21:10):
which conventionally you knowthey're trying a lot with
different, you know syntheticpesticides and it hasn't worked
or you try to clean out thebacteria in that phloem and that
phloem is really hard to getinto and have anything move up
and down throughout it.
And even if you do, the littlevector can come back and
reinfect it and reinfect it.
(21:31):
So now, uh, we're, we're tryingreally hard as an industry but
it's literally, uh, been cut inhalf and it's it'll be cut in
half again and you know most ofthe growers are selling off for
development, um and and otherthings.
So a sad story happening rightin front of us.
As I'm the fourth generationgoing, this fifth generation is
(21:53):
going to look a lot differentfrom an ag standpoint and from a
citrus standpoint in Floridaunless a cure happens pretty
soon.
I tell everybody I believe inthe power of prayer and please
pray for a cure, because we needit and some wisdom.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Well, hopefully it's like Forrest Gump here at the
end of the hurricane and all theother boats have been wrecked
and hit the shore and yeah,you're in your version of the
jenny and you're able to comeout.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I'm completely fine not being jenny and forrest.
I want everybody, I want allthe shrimp boats, man, I just
it's a it's a tight-knitcommunity and it's sad to see
generational families andfarmers that are getting out of
it, and it's just sad.
So we're okay at Uncle Matt'sbecause we're nimble enough to
(22:39):
be able to move to other growingregions and we have great
relationships with othermulti-generational families that
are pouring their heart andsoul into it.
And we're telling them, hey,this is what we're doing in
Florida, heart and soul into it.
And we're telling them, hey,this is what we're doing in
Florida, and this is ways to beas diligent as you can uh with
different practices that you cando through uh soil and also
(23:01):
through foliar sprays to try anduh fend off any of that disease
.
So you don't get to the pointthat Florida is so it's a crazy
story.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I hope it has a much better ending than what I just
painted for all of my friendsand growers.
Conventional Oregon.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I didn't know anything about this and I bet
the real estate developers arechomping at the bit to scoop up
those farms and before the showyou even mentioned that some of
that's kind of encroaching onyou guys a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Oh, a lot.
Yeah, if you came to our littletown of Claremont, it's more
than 30 minutes outside ofDisney World and just west of
Orlando.
You know, in the 80s, when itfroze in 1983, 85, and 89 out
here, it dramatically changedthe landscape forever.
The banks wouldn't reloan usmoney.
My father and grandfather hadamassed about 600 acres of
(23:54):
citrus that they ownedthemselves conventional citrus
and then Christmas Eve 1983, itliterally killed everything.
It got down to 17 degrees.
You could walk outside in themiddle of the night and it would
sound like shotgun blast goingoff periodically because the sap
in the tree was expanding somuch that it would bust the bark
(24:15):
and it would make just.
It sounded like a shotgun, likeow going off and it was pretty
nuts.
But you know, hey, theresiliency of a farmer every
year is our year.
Man and God love them.
I love that attitude.
It's always.
You know, this is the land andthis is what we're going to do,
and we're farmers and we're hereto stay.
And so a lot of them move south.
(24:37):
My grandfather moved southafter the freezes in the 80s.
He became a consultant.
My father became a globalconsultant.
He wasn't able to replant.
They didn't have crop insurancein the early 80s.
Yeah, sold off the land for allaverage about $1,000 an acre,
which today it's probably$50,000 to $100,000 an acre.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So a little different dynamic, but they survived.
My dad went to the Bahamas toget work.
He went to Costa Rica, he wentto Mexico.
He was beneficial and crucialfor a lot of those industries to
help them start their citrusindustry and then he stayed in
Florida and did consulting workhere, and when I came back and
(25:23):
did Uncle Matt's in 1999, weturned the last stuff he had
where we grew up.
He had a small farm and we tookthe backyard about three acres
of grapefruit and we turned itorganic, and so from there we
amassed more and more growerstill we got to the 1500 acres
and probably 35 differentgrowers that we had managed.
(25:45):
And then the greening hit andnow we're back the other way.
This is wild man.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I mean this is like.
I mean you started thisessentially from scratch.
I mean it wasn't like you hadall this stuff and you just kind
of rolled into this.
I mean you come from thishistory of farmers but it's been
up and down the whole time.
I mean you have to be resilient, you have to have grit.
I mean Uncle Matt's isessentially a startup.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, I mean it's really what it is right, yeah,
oh yeah, no, no, it started fromnothing.
You know, my grandfather saidit best If you love change, you
will love agriculture, becausethere's never two seasons the
same.
And he's right.
And so you know our main input.
We rely on Mother Nature toprovide us good, healthy crops
(26:30):
every year, and sometimes youget hit by a hurricane,
sometimes you get out of ahurricane, sometimes you got a
drought, sometimes you haveabundance.
And that's just the first partof the equation of how to run
our business successfully.
Then you got to get it in thebottle.
You got to get it harvested.
You got to get it in the bottle.
You got to get it shipped ontime with good carrier partners
like TQL.
You got to get out there andthen deliver it on the shelf and
(26:51):
then from there you got tomarket it.
You got to get out there andthen deliver it on the shelf and
then from there you got tomarket it.
Yeah, you got to make sure thata customer will pick it up and
you hope that they love it andhave a great experience and will
tell a friend and you know.
Then you got to have elbows toget competition out of there so
you can stay on the shelf, butit's great, I mean I, I mean
literally every day I can wakeup and it sounds like the theme
(27:11):
of Rocky going off of my head,cause I'm just, you know,
running up those steps, like youknow.
Come on, let's go, that's right.
We're going to, we're goingafter the big brands, you know
drop, and simply we want, youknow, this little challenger,
come on here we go.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
I love it.
I live by the super center herein Newport, so I will make sure
that if I don't see UncleMatt's eye level on the shelves,
I'll get rid of them.
Even if the price tags don'tmove, the products will move.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I can't endorse that, but if that's what you would
like to do, that will be, matt,if you need us to go down to
Kroger.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I live three minutes away.
I live right up the Vine Street.
If you need us to go down tokroger, I live right, I live
three minutes away.
I live right up the vine street.
If you need me to walk down tokroger, I walk down to kroger.
Knock on the door, I love it.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
They have been a great success story for us.
I'll tell you a quick storyabout kroger and how I first got
in there.
Um, dave slusher, a dear friendof mine.
He was part of a food brokerand food brokers represent a lot
of companies like myself andthey have great relationships
with the Kroger, with buyers,any supermarket buyer, and so
(28:23):
you will hire them to help youget appointments and get into
the store and get on the shelf.
And so if I'm just a little guyand I'm calling Kroger, hey
take an appointment, take anappointment.
They have a million of mecalling them every day.
But if you sign up with a foodbroker, a lot of times they have
a lot more clout.
And then that buyer knows okay,well, they're going to
(28:45):
understand how we need to fillout the paperwork, our minimum
order requirements, how toadvertise all of those things,
and you'll get a better chanceto get in front of the buyer and
have an actual appointment andsit down with them.
So Dave Slusher calls me.
This is like 2005.
And I mean I had harassed theKroger buyer, you know, nonstop
(29:07):
Like, hey, man, come on, I gotthis great product, you need it,
you need it, you need it.
And so Dave Slusher calls meand he said, hey, I'm know, dave
slusher and I've got this great, uh, food brokerage.
And I call on broker.
I said, hey, listen, hey, I'malready dealing with indirect.
I don't need a broker.
Man, I'm, I'm fine, I you know.
Thank you for calling me,though, dave.
But you know I'm this littleguy and I've I got the
(29:28):
challenger brand, I'm on the wayto the top, and you may be in
my way.
And so I kept trying to callKroger.
Never could get a call back andyou know, dave called me a
couple of weeks later.
He's very polite, veryprofessional.
He said, hey, you may want torethink this, and I said, well,
ok, well, tell me more.
He goes.
You know, your main competitorwas Horizon, right, and I said,
(29:49):
yeah, he goes.
Well, you know, then, horizonhas gone out of the orange juice
business.
I said, yeah, yeah, and it's agreat opportunity.
I think I want to.
You know the Kroger buyer willcall me back.
I can get in there.
He goes well.
So I work really close withKroger and I don't know if you
(30:09):
understand this, but I can helpyou get in with Kroger.
I know the buyer and they'relooking to redo the set.
And I said, oh okay, sorry,dave.
Yeah, thank you.
I was very misunderstanding ofthis relationship and I'm going
to have a big dose of humble pieand he just laughed.
He said no problem, buddy, Ireally like you and I know
you've got a great product andthat's why I'm calling you,
(30:30):
because I love your product, andI'll forget all about this.
You know, last couple of weeksof you telling me what I'm going
to be doing, so that's how yougot in.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Huh, that's how you got into.
So you would.
You would recommend anybodywith a CPG just call broker,
quit trying to do it yourself.
You're probably not going to.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Well, I mean some of those, some of the like publics.
You know you can, if you got,if they're in your backyard, you
may have a better chance.
But yes, if you want a quickerroute, you know, find a good
food broker that already knowswhat they're doing.
You're going to, you know, paythree to five percent, but it'll
be a good three, five percentbecause they're going to help
(31:06):
you navigate it.
Now, once you start reallyknowing and understanding the
game, you may say, well, maybe Idon't need to do that, but I
can tell you right now we havebrokers for most all of our
business and they do a very goodjob for us.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah well, kroger's a client of mine too.
We do a bunch of website workfor them.
But now you know Kyle, so ifyou have any shipping problems
you call Kyle and Kyle will godown the hallway at tql and
start kicking some butt.
That's right.
And kyle takes mma.
He's an mma guy, so he willkick butt.
He'll literally kick butt, likehe'll go down there and put
some on a choke hold for you ifyou need it.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
So you keep saying you keep, you keep saying that
you're gonna get.
I mean, if our audience evergets big, it's big.
You're gonna get my ass kicked.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
There's guys right now listening to our podcast
like I'm just waiting for theday.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I guess I can't stand his stupid slow voice.
I can't stand how slow he talksand how dumb he is.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I want to beat the shit out of him.
Well, you don't want that.
Well, matt man, this is awesome.
Man, tell us a little bit more,though, about the actual
product.
We haven't even really talkedabout the product and what makes
it so special and different andthe different varieties and
things you have that people cango down to Kroger and pick up
(32:35):
and it's organic.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
When you pop open that bottle, the one thing that
we are fanatical about is beingconsistently great.
So we take great pride inmaking sure that that product no
matter what it's our orange orgrapefruit or lemonade we have
some functional blends that whenyou open that thing, it's
consistently great and it'sgoing to be organically,
naturally sweet, from MotherNature.
If you were to test us versusTropicana or simply, or
Florida's natural any of the bigbrands and you were to test our
(32:58):
natural sugar level you knowwhich is called bricks in the
industry B, r, I, x, um, if youhad a little bricks meter, you
would see that we're probablyabout 1% higher than them and
you would think, eh, that's notreally that big of a deal.
But your taste buds will tellyou the difference.
It's just, it's more flavorful,it's a little thicker on the
tongue, it's just delicious.
(33:20):
And I think that's why, as alittle tiny challenger brand, we
continue to grow and outpacethe category every year, because
our product just tastes greatand I'm the biggest critic.
I'm fanatical about beingconsistently great.
I hammer that into all of ouremployees.
That's my slogan.
No matter what job you're doingfor Uncle Matt's, you need to
(33:43):
take pride and be consistentlygreat, because our customers
demand it and if we don't giveit to them, one of our customers
will or one of our competitorswill.
So that's what we're all about.
We had a lot of fun with orangejuice as a great base because
you can add other functionalingredients to it and a lot of
the time you can hide some ofthe bitter attributes of some of
(34:05):
the other flavor profiles offunctional ingredients.
So we took elderberry, which isa very bitter berry but it's
known for cold and flu fightingproperties.
We added it to our orange juiceand so we have a, a product
called ultimate immune and it'sorange and elderberry and it's
got this beautiful kind ofpurple color similar to my shirt
, and we boosted it with vitaminc from acerola.
(34:27):
So we boosted it up to 300natural vitamin c.
We added some vitamin d andzinc, so those three things
combine.
You know high C, d and zinc,and then you got the properties
of OJ and the cold and fluproperties of elderberry.
It's a delicious product.
It looks beautiful, peoplereally love it.
That was one of our innovativeideas.
(34:49):
And then we also took turmeric.
Turmeric is a spice and it'sgot a really strong aftertaste
to it.
But we added pineapple andginger with turmeric the whole
root turmeric ground up in therewith a probiotic, and we added
that to orange juice and so wehave a really healthy product
(35:10):
called Ultimate Defense.
It helps with inflammation, ithelps with digestion and immune
support, all of those things.
But it's got a nice littlesweet note with a zing to it
from the turmeric and the ginger, and so if you kind of like a
little spice and kick, werecommend that one for people.
What?
Speaker 3 (35:27):
are you putting in with the turmeric so that people
can absorb it properly?
I always heard you had to putlike black pepper with it.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
We do so.
Kyle, you're fantastic.
You're like a sales guy for me.
So, yes, we actually have blackpepper in there to help bring
out the cucurbit and activatethe turmeric.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
There we go, man.
That's how I make my eggs.
My eggs are cinnamon, turmericand black pepper.
And my kids hate it.
Yeah, but I love with coconutand make it in coconut oil and I
love it.
My kids hate it because theylike the milk and cheese and all
that other garbage.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, but you got some good NCT fat coming from
the coconut oil.
You got the turmeric withinflammation.
You got some good NCT fatcoming from the coconut oil.
You got the turmeric withinflammation.
You got some good stuff there,Kyle.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Yeah, I think it tastes good.
I mean, if the cinnamon worksfor Adam's favorite Gold Star
Chili or Skyline, whatever craphe eats at Cincinnati Chili.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
You throw some geta in that omelet and them eggs
Kyle what are you doing?
Geta's good that chili, though,has got to go kyle's the only
guy matt kyle's the only guydoesn't like cincinnati chili.
I'm sure you know all about itskyline chili.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, it's chili man I grew up in college and that's
all we talk about skyline chili.
He was from cincinnati.
There you go see.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Look at all your connections to cincinnati.
It's.
I should have been.
I should have done thisinterview three years ago, when
the pandemic was happening,because I wouldn't have had to
go to CVS and buy all thatelderberry stuff.
I could have just been drinkingyour juice.
I wouldn't have had to do thezinc.
I had zinc, I had elderberry,essentially everything you named
vitamin C pills.
I was taking all that stuff.
(37:06):
It's like precautionary.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Absolutely, and so I'm a health and wellness junkie
.
I'm into a lot of supplements.
I Absolutely, and so I'm ahealth and wellness junkie.
I'm into a lot of supplements.
I don't like going to thedoctor, I like to have natural
cures, and so I design a lot ofour products around that.
Oh, wow, yeah, man, I'm theformulator, I'm the guy that's
living the lifestyle.
If you came to my house andopened up my pantry or my fridge
, you'd go well, gee, look atall the organic stuff.
(37:31):
Kind of joke, because sometimes, uh, kids will come over
friends of my kids and and thenthey'll go back home like there
wasn't anything really good toeat in that place oh no, it
wasn't all the normal junk.
Right, it wasn't all the normaltypical, you know snacks.
It was more organic and natural.
(37:51):
Uh, it's still very tasty.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Well, you're farming in Florida, so you've got to be
able to farm with your shirt off, right?
Isn't that the whole point ofliving down there?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
that's true.
You better put on some sunblock, though, because you'll fry
like a piece of bacon Matt'sready for the beach.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, it seems kind of unfair.
You have this company and youhave access to this stuff all
the time.
You just go down and.
But I was looking up on your,on your store locator and guys,
uncle matt'scom is the webaddress here, but I was looking
it up every one of the stores Ishop at the fresh time over in
newport kyle, it's there, it'sat the cory, uh, coryville
(38:27):
location, a kroger, he's got itat.
Uh, the meyer, uh, I mean it'sall, I mean it's everywhere.
You, I mean you're got one, two.
I mean I I stay here and countall these.
I mean there's practicallyevery store in in cincinnati
here, you got it at yeah, you'dbe surprised.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So if you go to our on our website, you go to the
store locator and put in yourzip code and it'll tell you
nationwide.
You know where where we're at.
But we do a pretty.
Our sales team has done apretty darn good job of getting
us in, and if you can't find itin your local supermarket, you
can always order it off ourwebsite.
It will be more expensive.
I'm going to warn you of that.
Don't send me a nasty gram.
(39:05):
It is what it is.
I can't control FedEx fees andhaving to keep it cold overnight
, but we will get it to you.
If you want to order it, wedarn sure will send it to you.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, oh, I love it.
I'm glad it's a fresh time.
I like fresh time a lot morethan I like whole foods.
It's like fresh time is like aminiature Whole Foods, but it's
also like I don't know, it'skind of like a blue collar Whole
Foods.
It's not the hoity-toity.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
He's collar whole foods is not the hoity-toity,
he's got it in whole foods toohe's got it in both places.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
He's got it there.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I just saw it on here yeah, he can't bash whole foods
, then no, yeah, yeah, no, he'sgot it.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
He's got it in all the stores we have literally uh
customers from uh walmart allthe way to whole foods.
We we have it, we sell it inall locations.
I want to make it available toall.
I want to make it ubiquitous.
I mean, at one point in ourlife we even had our single
service in Dollar General.
Wow, and it was amazing thecompliments we would get from
(40:04):
Dollar General.
And you wouldn't think thatthat was the demographic, but it
didn't matter.
They wanted organic, healthystuff, so we were really happy
to give it to them.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
So I feel like Matt is this?
I go and I see these thesefresh squeezed juices at these
like health food shops andeverything right.
They they're in the back,they're squeezing the juice,
they're making celery juices andall this other stuff.
I mean it is essentially whatyou guys have.
I mean, is that the same thing?
I mean, those things are crazyexpensive off the shelf guys
have.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I mean, is that the same thing?
I mean, those things are crazyexpensive off the shelf.
Yeah, so we're doing similarprocess to that, um, they are
not doing anything, anything toum pasteurize, and so we to get
longer shelf life and be able toship around, and we also do it
to eliminate any harmfulpathogens, so anything that you
know potentially could harm you.
Uh, we'll heat, pasteurize, butit's high temperature, very
(40:54):
short time, so we'll heat it upand then chill it right back
down and then we fill it coldand we ship it cold so it stays
as fresh as you can get it.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Wow, wow, that is amazing man.
You guys, you from essentiallyeverything that happened to your
family in this agriculture whatand not just you guys.
I mean you know there's thingsthat have happened with the
freezes, with the pathogens,with the all these situations
that have come up.
I mean to be able to like comeback from that.
(41:25):
I mean you got a degree fromthe university of Florida.
You could have went off and didsomething else, you didn't have
to be in agriculture.
But here you are, one of themost successful uh orange brands
, grapefruit brands in thecountry in in 20 000 stores and
and you're on our podcast.
It's amazing, I love it.
And you got cincinnaticonnections on top of that yeah,
(41:46):
big time cincinnati connections.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
I'm gonna have to come see you next time up in
cincinnati oh you definitely.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
We're gonna go get some conies and I'm gonna bring.
Kyle won't go in, he think hehates the smell, we'll go down
the street.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
I get there's a.
There's a restaurant on abuilding that I have, that I'm a
partner in.
We can eat there.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
That's more, that's better than you get old rooftop
and all that.
Now you still got to get thecrappy.
Come on like you.
You're.
You're fine, matt, you've beeneating healthy for so long you
can come here.
I always say we got the best,worst food in america.
It's like gold star is not badfor you.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Ribs chili if you look at the chili, it's not bad
for you not that type of chili.
It's like if you look at theactual like macros of it.
But it's just like youshouldn't have to go wash your
clothes after you go to arestaurant.
It makes your whole car smelllike you can't get that rid of
that smell?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
we'll go get.
Get him some ice cream too,kyle, we'll get him some.
Some graders, we'll get.
It's Oprah's favorite ice cream.
We'll go get you some of thatas well.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Oh, let's do it All right, I'm in, I'm in and I'm
buying too by the way.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Oh wow, there you go.
Just bring some juice with youwhen you come up.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
You got it, but uh, this and what's next?
What's next for the company?
So kind of crazy.
We're doing a little bit of apivot Now.
Our brand has been in therefrigerated juice set and we've
done lemonades and fruitpunches, but now in primarily
all juices.
So now we're going to pivot.
(43:05):
We're actually going to go intofresh brewed organic tea.
Oh so I was raised in the southwith black tea tea.
I was raised in the South withblack tea.
We love the half and halflemonade and tea and so we're
going to do a sweet and unsweetand a half and half organic
refrigerated, fresh brewed teaand that will launch here in
(43:25):
another month.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
And then I will do in a month and two days.
I will do a half and half withvodka.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Hey, if you need a bourbon connection, kyle can get
you the bourbon connection too,if you guys ever move into that
space at all.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Let me just tell you I do have, for another thing
that we're launching over thesummer is a ginger honey
lemonade, and for anybody thatis a big bourbon fan, it is a
perfect little mixer.
Bring a mixer for a nicebourbon.
I'll just give you that headsup.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
You just changed Kyle's life.
Well, now you guys can do acollaboration.
Kyle will do the intro and youguys do, like a juice, bourbon
collaboration.
How about that?
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Heck yeah, let's do it, kyle, we'll set it up, all
right, you're going to have toput it on like 1.5x, because
everybody else will just zone meout Well, matt man.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
we really appreciate it.
Good luck with everything.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I really appreciate you being on today and yeah,
you're an inspiration.
I appreciate that, man.
Thanks.
Likewise, you guys.
Keep up the good work for thepodcast.
Thanks for having me on andlook forward to seeing you in
Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(44:58):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Bye.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Guys, we have a special guest.
Me and Kyle are both in thehouse, but Mac McLean how are
you doing, matt?
I'm doing awesome.
Thank you, is it McLean McLean?
Is that how?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
you.
You know, I say McLean.
The crazy thing is, my mom saysMcLean, but I've always said
McLean, you won't get it wrongeither way.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay.
Well, my name's a hard one topronounce too, and people get it
wrong all the time, so it'sfine.
But yeah, man, we're excited tohave you.
I mean, you guys are down inFlorida killing it, man.
I mean one of the largest, thelargest organic juice brand in
the country, grapefruit juice,orange juice.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You're in Kroger up here in Cincinnati.
We can go buy your products offthe shelf right now.
Bunch of stores.
You guys are nationwide.
I mean, you were doing stuffacross the world for a long time
.
What's your secret?
Where'd you get your start?
I'm a fourth-generation Floridacitrus grower.
It was in my blood.
On the other side, I also havean entrepreneurial spirit.
I love competition.
I love being a self-starter.
Those two things came togetherand I found my passion, luckily
(01:41):
at an early stage in my life, 25years ago, with the opportunity
to start my own juice brand anddo it organic, which is a thing
I'm passionate about on farmingorganic.
And so combine all thattogether and here we are today.
I still feel like it's thefirst couple of years in
business when I come into theoffice.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's right.
You got to keep that attituderight.
You do, you do.
It's all part of the hustle.
Right, it is all part of thehustle.
Well, that is awesome.
I mean, what you've been ableto accomplish is great and I've
always wanted to talk to a guylike you who knows how to.
You know, take a CPG brand,because I mean, we're in the
capital of CPG here inCincinnati.
Procter Gamble's based here,which largest consumer packaged
(02:18):
goods company in the world.
You've got Kroger here, whichis the biggest grocery chain,
and they're about to buyAlbertsons, as long as the SEC
doesn't get in the way and manyother government agencies that
like to block things like that.
But that would put you on theWest Coast, I guess.
If you already got a deal withKroger and yeah, it's going to
(02:39):
be a big, big deal but we're inthe CPG capital and people here
rarely ever take advantage ofthe fact that you can walk down
the street and ask Kroger if youcould throw something in their
stores, I guess.
But how did you make thathappen?
What made you want to?
I know you said you got anentrepreneurial spirit and
everything else.
What made you want to startthis brand?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah.
So first off, I have made tonsof trips over my lifetime those
25 years to Kroger to go toCincinnati downtown.
It's an awesome experience.
I've had many different buyers.
They've been a really goodcustomer of ours and helped us
get to the next level.
So thank you.
For anybody from Kroger who maybe listening to this, we live
(03:21):
our partnership with Kroger andI even do make trips to
Cincinnatiincinnati in thewinter, coming from florida.
So that's how much I love gottaget ready.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Don't bring any of that frost back with you.
We talked about that before theshow.
Just keep, we'll keep it uphere can't have cold weather
down here.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
but you know, for me it really was I.
I started, uh I grew up, in thecitrus industry.
You know my father, mygreat-grandfather, came down to
Florida.
He had a love for citrus.
He was a citrus farmer.
He also raised cattle, he didvegetables.
He even had turpentine and thecitrus piece is what flowed
through the rest of thegenerations my granddad.
(03:57):
He took a liking to that.
My father obviously loved it aswell, and when I grew up, I
grew up in the hot summersworking for my dad, helping him
in his groves and doing all thefun labor that goes with it.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Real work, real work.
That's what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Real.
I tell you what that work is.
That's real motivating work,real motivating work.
To go do something else withyour life.
Make sure you're going to studyhard and prosper, buddy,
because otherwise you're goingto be out here on you know, on
the hand crew pulling weeds.
You know planting trees, andwhile that's a noble job for
anybody that does it, it isdefinitely physically demanding,
(04:35):
especially in Florida in thesummer heat.
So, but it taught me a lot ofvaluable lessons how to just be,
you know, hardworking,perseverance.
I led a small crew of young menwith me on a day to day basis,
so you know, I look back onthose days and a lot of fond
memory around just business andthings that I learned about you
(04:59):
know how to take that next step.
And so it taught me when I wentto college.
I definitely was going to go tocollege to get out of that you
know atmosphere and I wanted tostudy business and finance and I
had visions of, you know,working on Wall Street and being
a banker and all those things.
And then, when I got out ofcollege, I had a couple of job
(05:19):
offers to be, you know, sellingbusiness forms or computer
software, and it just didn'tfeel right.
I'm like I don't think this iswhat I'm supposed to be doing.
I didn't really have a passionfor it.
And then, at the same time, myfather was a citrus consultant.
They had come back with a guyfrom Germany who owned some
citrus groves and he said, hey,I need help.
(05:41):
Man, I need help.
I want to take my fresh fruitand, more importantly, florida
juice.
I love Florida orange juice andI've got friends over in
Germany that are bottlers and ifyou can help me find you know
people I can buy good qualityjuice from and get it over to
Europe, I can sell it to thebottlers.
And so he and I formed a littlepartnership and I went around
(06:02):
at the ripe age of you know, 21,22, 23.
And I used the good name thatwe had between my granddad and
father to go to those juiceplants and say, hey, I need to
buy some organic orange juice orconventional orange juice,
conventional grapefruit juice,and I'm going to put it on a
boat and send it to Holland andthen we're going to truck it
down to Germany and the bottlers.
(06:23):
And that's what we did and wehad a really strong business for
five years.
We were doing a lot, a lot ofbusiness and had a lot of
success.
And then one of the customers inSouthern Bavaria, a little town
of Freinsheim, mr Noy, asked mefor organic.
He said hey, matt, I need tofind some organic, some biologic
grapefruit juice.
And I didn't know what that was.
(06:45):
I said, hey, you're a greatcustomer, I love you, mr Noy,
and I'm going to go figure thatpiece out for you.
It sounds interesting becausetypically trends start in Europe
and they move over to the US.
And if this is something newthat's on trend, I need to be
aware of it.
And so I came back to the US andI had the dual moment of facing
(07:08):
my grandfather and father andasking them can we even grow
organic?
What is organic farming?
And that even happened inFlorida.
And they just chuckled.
And my granddad in particular.
He was like I was alive beforepesticides were invented in the
40s and we farmed organicwithout anybody even telling us
it was organic.
We planted cover crops, we usedthings like fish emulsion and
(07:30):
compost and so we can do it.
And it gave me the realsatisfaction and the real
impetus and confidence that, hey, ok, if we can grow it, then I
think I can provide it.
And I also had the same time,the aha moment in business,
where you look at a market andyou go I think I may have
(07:51):
something here, because therewas no organic Tropicana.
There was no organic, simply.
So it made sense from at leastthe business opportunity, like,
hey, I really think if it'shappening in Europe, it could
potentially come to the US.
And there was other smallorganic cottage industries that
were popping up.
They were becoming reallyvaluable in the supermarket, and
(08:11):
so it gave me the confidence tosay, hey, this could happen, we
could become an organic juicecompany, but I had no idea how
to do it.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that'sa great story, I mean.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
And that's a great story, I mean, and that's funny
that it happened internationallyand you were ahead of the game
thanks to this customer of yours, and it's good.
That's why you listen tocustomers, right, because you
never know where that insight isgoing to come from that you
weren't expecting.
And then here you are, in20,000 stores now with this
organic brand.
(08:44):
And what separates you guysfrom a Tropicana or a Simply or
one of these guys that have theorganic claim?
I know there's a lot oflabeling stuff.
Yeah, what's the differencethere?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So I mean to simplify it organic farming is done more
the way Mother Nature intended,right.
So you're not going to have theharsh chemicals, the the
synthetic fertilizers uh, we usemore natural things.
So, uh, instead of using ureaand ammonium nitrate that you
would put on the soil, uh, we'lluse compost, we'll use stuff
like peanut meal, feather meal,and what happens there?
(09:19):
You're actually feeding thebugs, so you're feeding the, the
microbes in the soil that willeat that natural material and
they'll break it down and thenthey will synthesize that with
the roots into the tree.
So it's a slower form ofnitrogen where your synthetics
are much faster.
They're more you know, theyfeed the tree quicker and
(09:39):
they're more about, you know,growth and vigor, where organic
will be a slower growth and itwill be more symbiotic with the
tree and with the soil, soyou're not going to leach a lot
of it through down into theaquifer or waste it, which is
one.
And then, from just thesynthetic chemicals we don't use
(09:59):
Roundup, the weed killer thatcauses cancer.
Glyphosate we don't use that.
We use mechanical hoe weedeaters.
Vinegar, burndown products, sowe don't use those.
Also, the pesticides we won'tuse the synthetic pesticides,
the neonicotinoids that can beharmful to bees and birds and
(10:21):
things like that, so we'll useit.
It's just basically a morenatural way of farming and
really going back to the way mygrandfather and
great-grandfather did it beforea lot of this technology came
about and the technology themodern conventional farming
technology today.
It's not a bad method.
It's obviously a very effectivemethod and it feeds a lot of
(10:42):
people, but it's mostly basedaround production, right?
It's really about trying to getmore production per acre, more
production per acre and, as anorganic farmer, we're looking
for more quality per acre, right?
So we're going to try and growmore nutrient dense food stuff
that you know.
In that orange juice you havemore vitamin C, more
antioxidants, more nutrients ina blueberry or an apple or that
(11:05):
piece of fruit or that vegetable, because it's growing slower,
it's releasing more naturalstuff in the soil that that
plant can take up into it.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Wow yeah, go ahead, Matt, Sorry man.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
It's an issue with me not being in there.
I step on your toes sometimes,my bad.
Hi Kyle, how are you doing Good?
How scalable do you thinkregenerative farming is?
Because I know that millions ofpeople listen to Rogan's
podcast and they had the guyfrom Georgia on talking about
his cattle farm.
(11:40):
Yeah, that seems less scalablethan a produce farm when it
comes to regenerative farming.
But I was just wondering whathow you saw this is.
Could this be a trend in thefuture where it's not just uh,
uh, not to say it's a nichemarket, but a niche market where
it can actually become likepredominant?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
yeah.
So I think the answer to thatis a resounding yes.
I mean, and that's what wefought for for 25 years is to
continue to convert more peopleto organic.
But we're still only about 5%of the market share, right?
If you wanted to say tomorrowand you said, hey, we needed to
be 100%, the market's not readyfor that, right, for that.
(12:24):
You're not going to have enoughcompost, you're not going to
have enough cottonseed meal orpeanut milk.
You're not going to have enoughof those supplies probably to
go out and convert acreage thatquick.
So, like anything, you need toramp up to it.
Also, do the farmers have theknowledge to be able to just
turn it organic one year?
You can't necessarily go downto your local land-grant
(12:48):
university and get a playbook onhow to farm organic.
So there's a learning curve, agood amount of learning curve
you've got to overcome or elseyou'll crash your production.
The trees won't get enoughnutrients.
But the regenerative farmingthere's a lot of parts that you
can take from a conventionalfarm and start using some of the
regenerative organic methodsand you could slowly start
(13:09):
transitioning pieces.
I mean, growing cover crops iseasy.
You grow some of your nitrogennaturally right in the middle of
the citrus grove right.
So you plant a cow pea, youplant a sun hemp, you plant
something like that right in themiddle of the row.
It grows up and then you tillit back in, you disc it in or
you knock it down, whatever youwant to do, and guess what that
(13:31):
does?
That provides natural nitrogenback into the soil, natural food
back into the soil.
It adds more water holdingcapacity.
So you're always trying to groworganic, natural organic matter
in the soil so it's more dense.
So I think there for me,long-term, that would be my goal
.
Um is to, you know, createregenerative organic farming, uh
(13:56):
, throughout the world, and Ithink you could.
you'll capture more carbon,you'll create more um, organic
matter in the soil, which willhelp with rainfall.
You'll help with nutrientsreleased to the plants, but it
won't be.
Oh, you couldn't just snap yourfingers and do it overnight.
So the people that criticizelike, oh, you would starve the
(14:16):
world, well yeah, if you did itovernight probably.
But if you have goals of, hey,let's start with cover cropping,
then let's start withcomposting, then let's start.
You know what are some of thethings that we can start taking
away and replacing conventionalwith or regenerative organic
methods.
I think that there's a chance.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
When I'm guessing.
At the University of Floridathey didn't teach you that
organic farming was the wave ofthe future, and in that
economics class you probablylearned about how to make things
faster, cheaper, charge more.
It's almost like you probablylearned the opposite of what
(14:58):
you're doing now in businessschool.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
It was pretty broad, but there was a good amount of
things I took away and couldapply.
Right and definitely supply anddemand and that plays out every
day in every business.
And also, you know, no profitgoes unchallenged in a free
market in America.
So you got to make sure that ifyou're producing something
that's a commodity, how do youmake sure that that commodity is
(15:24):
better than everybody else?
And you got to either grow itdifferent, right, high organic
you got to be able to produce itconsistently better than other
people.
So over the course of ourlifespan of 25 years we've
really focused on our supplybase and we were growers and so
we went out and we converted awhole lot of acreage to organic.
(15:45):
And my father and brother theywere the agronomist, I'm the
business guy and they were theagronomist and so they could go
in and help convert acreage andso we never ran out of supply
and we never ran out of goodquality supply where some of our
early competitors in the spacePavich and also horizon and even
organic valley they wound uprunning out of supply because
(16:07):
they were more just marketersand they weren't really at the
ground level.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So, yeah, you control what you're growing so you're
not like white labeled.
Yeah, exactly, oh, I was justgonna ask that like white
labeled growers, I mean how manyof these orange juice companies
out there, actually just kindof white label brands that buy
from some of your neighbors downthere in florida?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, so it has changed a lot.
Okay, so we went through ourown cycle where, up until 2015,
we controlled every singleorange that went into Uncle
Matt's, and then the littlecitrus greenie bug showed up and
this little disease showed upand it started affecting all of
(16:48):
our neighbors that wereconventional.
Then it started affecting us.
We were more resilient, butthen we succumbed to it just
like everybody else.
So our business model had toadjust and rapidly change, and
so we started working with ourconnections that we had in Texas
, we had connections inCalifornia, we had connections
in Mexico, and so today the vastmajority of our supply comes
(17:13):
from those three regions.
In Florida has been shut down toless than 100 acres.
For us, personally, organic.
That's all research anddevelopment, just trying to find
a cure for citrus greening.
So you want to talk about abusiness that is constantly
having to change.
That wasn't in our originalformula and model.
That's it so very humbling.
(17:35):
You have to, in business, beable to adapt, and if not, then
somebody else will, and so thatis our adaptation today.
If we eventually find the cure,which we hope to, we can
replant Florida and we can comeback and be, you know, 100
percent from Florida, which wewere up until 2015, proudly as a
fourth generation Floridacitrus grower.
(17:56):
But it has changed everybody.
So even Florida's Natural,which is a co-op of Florida
growers I think it was last year, maybe even the year prior they
had to start sourcing fromMexico and Brazil as well, and
so there's literally no 100%just Florida orange juice left
(18:16):
in the market, which is sad, butit is where we're at today with
the intro of citrus greendisease.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
I had no idea, Kyle.
Did you even know that was athing?
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Oh, you're on.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Kyle's on mute Kyle's on mute there.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, I'm sorry it wouldn't pop up so I could
unmute it.
My bad, no, I had no idea itwas a thing I.
I purposely stayed out ofshipping produce because it's a
nightmare, so I kind of stoppedpaying attention to what was
going on.
Is it affected anything else?
I know the watermelon crops.
I kind of stopped payingattention to what was going on.
Has it affected anything else?
(18:55):
I know the watermelon cropshaven't been too terrible.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
No, it's just citrus.
So this is a disease that onlyaffects citrus and it doesn't
affect humans at all.
So there's nothing.
If you're listening to thislike, oh my gosh, the orange
juice is infected.
No, it doesn't affect that atall.
What it does is a little pest,the Asian citrus psyllid.
(19:19):
It's like the mosquito thatspreads malaria.
It bites the leaf of the tree.
It's trying to find nutrients.
When it does, it transmits itfrom its gut into the leaf, it
goes down into the main arteryof the tree, the phloem and the
xylem.
It winds up.
The tree doesn't really eitheridentify it as a pathogen or it
overreacts to it and it causesthe tree to start blocking the
(19:39):
nutrient uptake and the waterflow in the tree.
And so you'll get some limbsthat start turning yellow it was
originally, you know,identified as yellow dragon
disease and then eventually thatthat limb will start dying and
that fruit will stay green hencethe term greening and it will
fall off premature.
And then eventually the treedies because it doesn't have
(20:03):
enough water or nutrientcapabilities.
And so you get off notes inyour juice because of all that
immature fruit that they'restill.
They'll pick, they'll try andgrade out, but sometimes it
looks very similar to a ripepiece of fruit and you can't
tell.
So it's very, very difficult.
Florida is the ground zero ofthis disease.
(20:26):
Because of our subtropicalclimate, the vector, the little
psyllid, loves to live here andthe disease loves to proliferate
.
And there's other regions thatwe're working in southern Texas,
east coast of Mexico, westcoast of Mexico and California.
They don't have near the sameharsh climate Parts of Mexico do
, and so they're showing some ofthe same greening symptoms.
(20:47):
But they get hot enough that webelieve that thermotherapy
naturally burns off the littlebacteria and it goes into a
cycle every year.
But Florida, while it getsreally hot, it's still humid and
you get rainfall, so it coolsit down most of the time.
So you know it stays thrivingin Florida.
And until you really find a wayto either control the vector
(21:10):
which conventionally you knowthey're trying a lot with
different, you know syntheticpesticides and it hasn't worked
or you try to clean out thebacteria in that phloem and that
phloem is really hard to getinto and have anything move up
and down throughout it.
And even if you do, the littlevector can come back and
reinfect it and reinfect it.
(21:31):
So now, uh, we're, we're tryingreally hard as an industry but
it's literally, uh, been cut inhalf and it's it'll be cut in
half again and you know most ofthe growers are selling off for
development, um and and otherthings.
So a sad story happening rightin front of us.
As I'm the fourth generationgoing, this fifth generation is
(21:53):
going to look a lot differentfrom an ag standpoint and from a
citrus standpoint in Floridaunless a cure happens pretty
soon.
I tell everybody I believe inthe power of prayer and please
pray for a cure, because we needit and some wisdom.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Well, hopefully it's like Forrest Gump here at the
end of the hurricane and all theother boats have been wrecked
and hit the shore and yeah,you're in your version of the
jenny and you're able to comeout.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I'm completely fine not being jenny and forrest.
I want everybody, I want allthe shrimp boats, man, I just
it's a it's a tight-knitcommunity and it's sad to see
generational families andfarmers that are getting out of
it, and it's just sad.
So we're okay at Uncle Matt'sbecause we're nimble enough to
(22:39):
be able to move to other growingregions and we have great
relationships with othermulti-generational families that
are pouring their heart andsoul into it.
And we're telling them, hey,this is what we're doing in
Florida, heart and soul into it.
And we're telling them, hey,this is what we're doing in
Florida, and this is ways to beas diligent as you can uh with
different practices that you cando through uh soil and also
(23:01):
through foliar sprays to try anduh fend off any of that disease
.
So you don't get to the pointthat Florida is so it's a crazy
story.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I hope it has a much better ending than what I just
painted for all of my friendsand growers.
Conventional Oregon.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I didn't know anything about this and I bet
the real estate developers arechomping at the bit to scoop up
those farms and before the showyou even mentioned that some of
that's kind of encroaching onyou guys a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Oh, a lot.
Yeah, if you came to our littletown of Claremont, it's more
than 30 minutes outside ofDisney World and just west of
Orlando.
You know, in the 80s, when itfroze in 1983, 85, and 89 out
here, it dramatically changedthe landscape forever.
The banks wouldn't reloan usmoney.
My father and grandfather hadamassed about 600 acres of
(23:54):
citrus that they ownedthemselves conventional citrus
and then Christmas Eve 1983, itliterally killed everything.
It got down to 17 degrees.
You could walk outside in themiddle of the night and it would
sound like shotgun blast goingoff periodically because the sap
in the tree was expanding somuch that it would bust the bark
(24:15):
and it would make just.
It sounded like a shotgun, likeow going off and it was pretty
nuts.
But you know, hey, theresiliency of a farmer every
year is our year.
Man and God love them.
I love that attitude.
It's always.
You know, this is the land andthis is what we're going to do,
and we're farmers and we're hereto stay.
And so a lot of them move south.
(24:37):
My grandfather moved southafter the freezes in the 80s.
He became a consultant.
My father became a globalconsultant.
He wasn't able to replant.
They didn't have crop insurancein the early 80s.
Yeah, sold off the land for allaverage about $1,000 an acre,
which today it's probably$50,000 to $100,000 an acre.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So a little different dynamic, but they survived.
My dad went to the Bahamas toget work.
He went to Costa Rica, he wentto Mexico.
He was beneficial and crucialfor a lot of those industries to
help them start their citrusindustry and then he stayed in
Florida and did consulting workhere, and when I came back and
(25:23):
did Uncle Matt's in 1999, weturned the last stuff he had
where we grew up.
He had a small farm and we tookthe backyard about three acres
of grapefruit and we turned itorganic, and so from there we
amassed more and more growerstill we got to the 1500 acres
and probably 35 differentgrowers that we had managed.
(25:45):
And then the greening hit andnow we're back the other way.
This is wild man.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I mean this is like.
I mean you started thisessentially from scratch.
I mean it wasn't like you hadall this stuff and you just kind
of rolled into this.
I mean you come from thishistory of farmers but it's been
up and down the whole time.
I mean you have to be resilient, you have to have grit.
I mean Uncle Matt's isessentially a startup.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, I mean it's really what it is right, yeah,
oh yeah, no, no, it started fromnothing.
You know, my grandfather saidit best If you love change, you
will love agriculture, becausethere's never two seasons the
same.
And he's right.
And so you know our main input.
We rely on Mother Nature toprovide us good, healthy crops
(26:30):
every year, and sometimes youget hit by a hurricane,
sometimes you get out of ahurricane, sometimes you got a
drought, sometimes you haveabundance.
And that's just the first partof the equation of how to run
our business successfully.
Then you got to get it in thebottle.
You got to get it harvested.
You got to get it in the bottle.
You got to get it shipped ontime with good carrier partners
like TQL.
You got to get out there andthen deliver it on the shelf and
(26:51):
then from there you got tomarket it.
You got to get out there andthen deliver it on the shelf and
then from there you got tomarket it.
Yeah, you got to make sure thata customer will pick it up and
you hope that they love it andhave a great experience and will
tell a friend and you know.
Then you got to have elbows toget competition out of there so
you can stay on the shelf, butit's great, I mean I, I mean
literally every day I can wakeup and it sounds like the theme
(27:11):
of Rocky going off of my head,cause I'm just, you know,
running up those steps, like youknow.
Come on, let's go, that's right.
We're going to, we're goingafter the big brands, you know
drop, and simply we want, youknow, this little challenger,
come on here we go.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
I love it.
I live by the super center herein Newport, so I will make sure
that if I don't see UncleMatt's eye level on the shelves,
I'll get rid of them.
Even if the price tags don'tmove, the products will move.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I can't endorse that, but if that's what you would
like to do, that will be, matt,if you need us to go down to
Kroger.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I live three minutes away.
I live right up the Vine Street.
If you need us to go down tokroger, I live right, I live
three minutes away.
I live right up the vine street.
If you need me to walk down tokroger, I walk down to kroger.
Knock on the door, I love it.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
They have been a great success story for us.
I'll tell you a quick storyabout kroger and how I first got
in there.
Um, dave slusher, a dear friendof mine.
He was part of a food brokerand food brokers represent a lot
of companies like myself andthey have great relationships
with the Kroger, with buyers,any supermarket buyer, and so
(28:23):
you will hire them to help youget appointments and get into
the store and get on the shelf.
And so if I'm just a little guyand I'm calling Kroger, hey
take an appointment, take anappointment.
They have a million of mecalling them every day.
But if you sign up with a foodbroker, a lot of times they have
a lot more clout.
And then that buyer knows okay,well, they're going to
(28:45):
understand how we need to fillout the paperwork, our minimum
order requirements, how toadvertise all of those things,
and you'll get a better chanceto get in front of the buyer and
have an actual appointment andsit down with them.
So Dave Slusher calls me.
This is like 2005.
And I mean I had harassed theKroger buyer, you know, nonstop
(29:07):
Like, hey, man, come on, I gotthis great product, you need it,
you need it, you need it.
And so Dave Slusher calls meand he said, hey, I'm know, dave
slusher and I've got this great, uh, food brokerage.
And I call on broker.
I said, hey, listen, hey, I'malready dealing with indirect.
I don't need a broker.
Man, I'm, I'm fine, I you know.
Thank you for calling me,though, dave.
But you know I'm this littleguy and I've I got the
(29:28):
challenger brand, I'm on the wayto the top, and you may be in
my way.
And so I kept trying to callKroger.
Never could get a call back andyou know, dave called me a
couple of weeks later.
He's very polite, veryprofessional.
He said, hey, you may want torethink this, and I said, well,
ok, well, tell me more.
He goes.
You know, your main competitorwas Horizon, right, and I said,
(29:49):
yeah, he goes.
Well, you know, then, horizonhas gone out of the orange juice
business.
I said, yeah, yeah, and it's agreat opportunity.
I think I want to.
You know the Kroger buyer willcall me back.
I can get in there.
He goes well.
So I work really close withKroger and I don't know if you
(30:09):
understand this, but I can helpyou get in with Kroger.
I know the buyer and they'relooking to redo the set.
And I said, oh okay, sorry,dave.
Yeah, thank you.
I was very misunderstanding ofthis relationship and I'm going
to have a big dose of humble pieand he just laughed.
He said no problem, buddy, Ireally like you and I know
you've got a great product andthat's why I'm calling you,
(30:30):
because I love your product, andI'll forget all about this.
You know, last couple of weeksof you telling me what I'm going
to be doing, so that's how yougot in.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Huh, that's how you got into.
So you would.
You would recommend anybodywith a CPG just call broker,
quit trying to do it yourself.
You're probably not going to.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Well, I mean some of those, some of the like publics.
You know you can, if you got,if they're in your backyard, you
may have a better chance.
But yes, if you want a quickerroute, you know, find a good
food broker that already knowswhat they're doing.
You're going to, you know, paythree to five percent, but it'll
be a good three, five percentbecause they're going to help
(31:06):
you navigate it.
Now, once you start reallyknowing and understanding the
game, you may say, well, maybe Idon't need to do that, but I
can tell you right now we havebrokers for most all of our
business and they do a very goodjob for us.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah well, kroger's a client of mine too.
We do a bunch of website workfor them.
But now you know Kyle, so ifyou have any shipping problems
you call Kyle and Kyle will godown the hallway at tql and
start kicking some butt.
That's right.
And kyle takes mma.
He's an mma guy, so he willkick butt.
He'll literally kick butt, likehe'll go down there and put
some on a choke hold for you ifyou need it.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
So you keep saying you keep, you keep saying that
you're gonna get.
I mean, if our audience evergets big, it's big.
You're gonna get my ass kicked.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
There's guys right now listening to our podcast
like I'm just waiting for theday.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I guess I can't stand his stupid slow voice.
I can't stand how slow he talksand how dumb he is.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I want to beat the shit out of him.
Well, you don't want that.
Well, matt man, this is awesome.
Man, tell us a little bit more,though, about the actual
product.
We haven't even really talkedabout the product and what makes
it so special and different andthe different varieties and
things you have that people cango down to Kroger and pick up
(32:35):
and it's organic.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
When you pop open that bottle, the one thing that
we are fanatical about is beingconsistently great.
So we take great pride inmaking sure that that product no
matter what it's our orange orgrapefruit or lemonade we have
some functional blends that whenyou open that thing, it's
consistently great and it'sgoing to be organically,
naturally sweet, from MotherNature.
If you were to test us versusTropicana or simply, or
Florida's natural any of the bigbrands and you were to test our
(32:58):
natural sugar level you knowwhich is called bricks in the
industry B, r, I, x, um, if youhad a little bricks meter, you
would see that we're probablyabout 1% higher than them and
you would think, eh, that's notreally that big of a deal.
But your taste buds will tellyou the difference.
It's just, it's more flavorful,it's a little thicker on the
tongue, it's just delicious.
(33:20):
And I think that's why, as alittle tiny challenger brand, we
continue to grow and outpacethe category every year, because
our product just tastes greatand I'm the biggest critic.
I'm fanatical about beingconsistently great.
I hammer that into all of ouremployees.
That's my slogan.
No matter what job you're doingfor Uncle Matt's, you need to
(33:43):
take pride and be consistentlygreat, because our customers
demand it and if we don't giveit to them, one of our customers
will or one of our competitorswill.
So that's what we're all about.
We had a lot of fun with orangejuice as a great base because
you can add other functionalingredients to it and a lot of
the time you can hide some ofthe bitter attributes of some of
(34:05):
the other flavor profiles offunctional ingredients.
So we took elderberry, which isa very bitter berry but it's
known for cold and flu fightingproperties.
We added it to our orange juiceand so we have a, a product
called ultimate immune and it'sorange and elderberry and it's
got this beautiful kind ofpurple color similar to my shirt
, and we boosted it with vitaminc from acerola.
(34:27):
So we boosted it up to 300natural vitamin c.
We added some vitamin d andzinc, so those three things
combine.
You know high C, d and zinc,and then you got the properties
of OJ and the cold and fluproperties of elderberry.
It's a delicious product.
It looks beautiful, peoplereally love it.
That was one of our innovativeideas.
(34:49):
And then we also took turmeric.
Turmeric is a spice and it'sgot a really strong aftertaste
to it.
But we added pineapple andginger with turmeric the whole
root turmeric ground up in therewith a probiotic, and we added
that to orange juice and so wehave a really healthy product
(35:10):
called Ultimate Defense.
It helps with inflammation, ithelps with digestion and immune
support, all of those things.
But it's got a nice littlesweet note with a zing to it
from the turmeric and the ginger, and so if you kind of like a
little spice and kick, werecommend that one for people.
What?
Speaker 3 (35:27):
are you putting in with the turmeric so that people
can absorb it properly?
I always heard you had to putlike black pepper with it.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
We do so.
Kyle, you're fantastic.
You're like a sales guy for me.
So, yes, we actually have blackpepper in there to help bring
out the cucurbit and activatethe turmeric.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
There we go, man.
That's how I make my eggs.
My eggs are cinnamon, turmericand black pepper.
And my kids hate it.
Yeah, but I love with coconutand make it in coconut oil and I
love it.
My kids hate it because theylike the milk and cheese and all
that other garbage.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, but you got some good NCT fat coming from
the coconut oil.
You got the turmeric withinflammation.
You got some good NCT fatcoming from the coconut oil.
You got the turmeric withinflammation.
You got some good stuff there,Kyle.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Yeah, I think it tastes good.
I mean, if the cinnamon worksfor Adam's favorite Gold Star
Chili or Skyline, whatever craphe eats at Cincinnati Chili.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
You throw some geta in that omelet and them eggs
Kyle what are you doing?
Geta's good that chili, though,has got to go kyle's the only
guy matt kyle's the only guydoesn't like cincinnati chili.
I'm sure you know all about itskyline chili.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, it's chili man I grew up in college and that's
all we talk about skyline chili.
He was from cincinnati.
There you go see.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Look at all your connections to cincinnati.
It's.
I should have been.
I should have done thisinterview three years ago, when
the pandemic was happening,because I wouldn't have had to
go to CVS and buy all thatelderberry stuff.
I could have just been drinkingyour juice.
I wouldn't have had to do thezinc.
I had zinc, I had elderberry,essentially everything you named
vitamin C pills.
I was taking all that stuff.
(37:06):
It's like precautionary.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Absolutely, and so I'm a health and wellness junkie
.
I'm into a lot of supplements.
I Absolutely, and so I'm ahealth and wellness junkie.
I'm into a lot of supplements.
I don't like going to thedoctor, I like to have natural
cures, and so I design a lot ofour products around that.
Oh, wow, yeah, man, I'm theformulator, I'm the guy that's
living the lifestyle.
If you came to my house andopened up my pantry or my fridge
, you'd go well, gee, look atall the organic stuff.
(37:31):
Kind of joke, because sometimes, uh, kids will come over
friends of my kids and and thenthey'll go back home like there
wasn't anything really good toeat in that place oh no, it
wasn't all the normal junk.
Right, it wasn't all the normaltypical, you know snacks.
It was more organic and natural.
(37:51):
Uh, it's still very tasty.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Well, you're farming in Florida, so you've got to be
able to farm with your shirt off, right?
Isn't that the whole point ofliving down there?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
that's true.
You better put on some sunblock, though, because you'll fry
like a piece of bacon Matt'sready for the beach.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, it seems kind of unfair.
You have this company and youhave access to this stuff all
the time.
You just go down and.
But I was looking up on your,on your store locator and guys,
uncle matt'scom is the webaddress here, but I was looking
it up every one of the stores Ishop at the fresh time over in
newport kyle, it's there, it'sat the cory, uh, coryville
(38:27):
location, a kroger, he's got itat.
Uh, the meyer, uh, I mean it'sall, I mean it's everywhere.
You, I mean you're got one, two.
I mean I I stay here and countall these.
I mean there's practicallyevery store in in cincinnati
here, you got it at yeah, you'dbe surprised.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So if you go to our on our website, you go to the
store locator and put in yourzip code and it'll tell you
nationwide.
You know where where we're at.
But we do a pretty.
Our sales team has done apretty darn good job of getting
us in, and if you can't find itin your local supermarket, you
can always order it off ourwebsite.
It will be more expensive.
I'm going to warn you of that.
Don't send me a nasty gram.
(39:05):
It is what it is.
I can't control FedEx fees andhaving to keep it cold overnight
, but we will get it to you.
If you want to order it, wedarn sure will send it to you.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, oh, I love it.
I'm glad it's a fresh time.
I like fresh time a lot morethan I like whole foods.
It's like fresh time is like aminiature Whole Foods, but it's
also like I don't know, it'skind of like a blue collar Whole
Foods.
It's not the hoity-toity.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
He's collar whole foods is not the hoity-toity,
he's got it in whole foods toohe's got it in both places.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
He's got it there.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
I just saw it on here yeah, he can't bash whole foods
, then no, yeah, yeah, no, he'sgot it.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
He's got it in all the stores we have literally uh
customers from uh walmart allthe way to whole foods.
We we have it, we sell it inall locations.
I want to make it available toall.
I want to make it ubiquitous.
I mean, at one point in ourlife we even had our single
service in Dollar General.
Wow, and it was amazing thecompliments we would get from
(40:04):
Dollar General.
And you wouldn't think thatthat was the demographic, but it
didn't matter.
They wanted organic, healthystuff, so we were really happy
to give it to them.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
So I feel like Matt is this?
I go and I see these thesefresh squeezed juices at these
like health food shops andeverything right.
They they're in the back,they're squeezing the juice,
they're making celery juices andall this other stuff.
I mean it is essentially whatyou guys have.
I mean, is that the same thing?
I mean, those things are crazyexpensive off the shelf guys
have.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I mean, is that the same thing?
I mean, those things are crazyexpensive off the shelf.
Yeah, so we're doing similarprocess to that, um, they are
not doing anything, anything toum pasteurize, and so we to get
longer shelf life and be able toship around, and we also do it
to eliminate any harmfulpathogens, so anything that you
know potentially could harm you.
Uh, we'll heat, pasteurize, butit's high temperature, very
(40:54):
short time, so we'll heat it upand then chill it right back
down and then we fill it coldand we ship it cold so it stays
as fresh as you can get it.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Wow, wow, that is amazing man.
You guys, you from essentiallyeverything that happened to your
family in this agriculture whatand not just you guys.
I mean you know there's thingsthat have happened with the
freezes, with the pathogens,with the all these situations
that have come up.
I mean to be able to like comeback from that.
(41:25):
I mean you got a degree fromthe university of Florida.
You could have went off and didsomething else, you didn't have
to be in agriculture.
But here you are, one of themost successful uh orange brands
, grapefruit brands in thecountry in in 20 000 stores and
and you're on our podcast.
It's amazing, I love it.
And you got cincinnaticonnections on top of that yeah,
(41:46):
big time cincinnati connections.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
I'm gonna have to come see you next time up in
cincinnati oh you definitely.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
We're gonna go get some conies and I'm gonna bring.
Kyle won't go in, he think hehates the smell, we'll go down
the street.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
I get there's a.
There's a restaurant on abuilding that I have, that I'm a
partner in.
We can eat there.
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
That's more, that's better than you get old rooftop
and all that.
Now you still got to get thecrappy.
Come on like you.
You're.
You're fine, matt, you've beeneating healthy for so long you
can come here.
I always say we got the best,worst food in america.
It's like gold star is not badfor you.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Ribs chili if you look at the chili, it's not bad
for you not that type of chili.
It's like if you look at theactual like macros of it.
But it's just like youshouldn't have to go wash your
clothes after you go to arestaurant.
It makes your whole car smelllike you can't get that rid of
that smell?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
we'll go get.
Get him some ice cream too,kyle, we'll get him some.
Some graders, we'll get.
It's Oprah's favorite ice cream.
We'll go get you some of thatas well.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Oh, let's do it All right, I'm in, I'm in and I'm
buying too by the way.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Oh wow, there you go.
Just bring some juice with youwhen you come up.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
You got it, but uh, this and what's next?
What's next for the company?
So kind of crazy.
We're doing a little bit of apivot Now.
Our brand has been in therefrigerated juice set and we've
done lemonades and fruitpunches, but now in primarily
all juices.
So now we're going to pivot.
(43:05):
We're actually going to go intofresh brewed organic tea.
Oh so I was raised in the southwith black tea tea.
I was raised in the South withblack tea.
We love the half and halflemonade and tea and so we're
going to do a sweet and unsweetand a half and half organic
refrigerated, fresh brewed teaand that will launch here in
(43:25):
another month.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
And then I will do in a month and two days.
I will do a half and half withvodka.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Hey, if you need a bourbon connection, kyle can get
you the bourbon connection too,if you guys ever move into that
space at all.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Let me just tell you I do have, for another thing
that we're launching over thesummer is a ginger honey
lemonade, and for anybody thatis a big bourbon fan, it is a
perfect little mixer.
Bring a mixer for a nicebourbon.
I'll just give you that headsup.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
You just changed Kyle's life.
Well, now you guys can do acollaboration.
Kyle will do the intro and youguys do, like a juice, bourbon
collaboration.
How about that?
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Heck yeah, let's do it, kyle, we'll set it up, all
right, you're going to have toput it on like 1.5x, because
everybody else will just zone meout Well, matt man.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
we really appreciate it.
Good luck with everything.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I really appreciate you being on today and yeah,
you're an inspiration.
I appreciate that, man.
Thanks.
Likewise, you guys.
Keep up the good work for thepodcast.
Thanks for having me on andlook forward to seeing you in
Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(44:58):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Bye.
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