Organic Farming with Matt McLean

george grombacher 0:02
Matt McLean is the founder and chief uncle with Uncle Matt’s organics. They’re an organization that’s been fueling families with uncompromised organic nutrition. Go for decades at this point, Matt, welcome to the show. Hey. Thanks,

Matt McLean 0:17
George. Appreciate the time and opportunity to tell our story. Yeah, excited

george grombacher 0:22
to have you on tell us a little bit about your personal lives, more about your work and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Matt McLean 0:29
Yeah, so let’s see Uncle Matt organic started in June of 1999 hard to believe we’re 25 years into this thing. I’m a fourth generation Florida citrus grower. We’re located just west of Orlando, a little town called Claremont. It used to be the citrus capital of Lake County, but now a lot of things have changed, and we’re mostly a commuter city for the theme parks. But you can find uncle mats nationwide, from Hawaii to Alaska, to Maine to even Puerto Rico. Retailers, over 15,000 doors, Kroger, Publix, Walmart, whole food, sprouts, to name a few.

george grombacher 1:12
And is it just a function of taking over the family business, or what is? What is the driving force behind the growth and the expansion and everything you’re doing,

Matt McLean 1:22
yeah, so we are. I actually grew up in the citrus business. My great grandfather, my father, my granddad, they were all in citrus. I had uncles brother, so it definitely was in the blood. But I went to college to get out of agriculture. I thought, you know, hey, I want to go on the business side of stuff. I had dreams of being a banker or, you know, something on Wall Street. But when I got out of college, it was interesting, the opportunities I had in either sales or marketing. But I had a chance. I got connected with one of my father’s consulting clients. He was a German gentleman who had citrus groves, and he wanted help exporting fresh fruit and juice from Florida over to different customers in Europe. And I said, Hey, that that sounds like a lot of fun. That’s better than other ideas I had and other job offerings I had. So I started a little import export business, and was traveling to Europe and then eventually to the Middle East, selling Florida conventional um, breakthrough juice, orange juice, etc. And eventually that turned into organic. And that led me to the uncle Matt’s and the aha moment that there was no organic orange juice in the late 90s in the US. And so that little idea sparked uncle Matt’s

george grombacher 2:39
excellent it’s just interesting how how things take shape.

Matt McLean 2:44
Yeah, I definitely, when I went to college, I didn’t see it ending this way. I mean, I had visions of being a great, successful business person, but I didn’t know it would be full circle back into agriculture, in citrus, which we grew up in, and which I love, and so it was really the perfect fit. What I realized, like, Hey, this is, you know, something I’m going to be doing for a while. It really just doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like work, because it’s a passion. I love every bit of it, from the challenge of growing organic and the agronomy side to a new product and being that challenger brand. I mean, we’ll probably be the challenger brand for a long, long time when you’re battling Coke and Pepsi Tropicana and simply, they’re just, they’re big companies, but we continue to chip away. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun being that little challenger brand and being new and different and nimble and having a great tasting product, amen.

george grombacher 3:44
So many questions. There I am. I’m curious about starting, what, what were some of the challenges of starting an organic orange juice company when there just wasn’t in existence? I’m curious about headwinds from regulators. I’m curious about you’ve got those huge brands that probably just are interested in either stepping on you or acquiring you. So, so much.

Matt McLean 4:09
Yeah, there’s a there’s a lot wrapped in there. So kind of in the beginning, how to start that business? I, if I had to do it over again, I would have said, Geez, you know the perishable side is the most difficult. We produce a batch every day, and you have a clock that’s ticking on your shelf life because it’s perishable. So that’s number one right out of the gate. I picked one of the most difficult things in the food industry to do, which is perishable. So when I started, I had 600 cases. That was my minimum run. I had to run 600 cases, and there were six bottles in every case, and that’s what I had to sell. And I had to sell it in about 14 days. So the total shelf life there was enough for the retailer to get through it on their shelf. And so. Huh? That is the most motivating thing in business when you go, Okay, so let’s see 600 cases that’s going to cost me how much money, and if I don’t sell those 600 cases, how much money is I going to cost? That’s a lot of money to lose. So you you’ve never been as motivated to sell as when you have a perishable, refrigerated item, but, but that’s what I choose, because it was the best tasting. It was the premium product you could have done. You could do orange juice, hot, filled, sitting in a bottle on the shelf, but it tastes terrible. You scalp up all the flavor because of the extreme heat. It degrades the color and the nutrients in there because of that. So we went for what taste the best and quality, and consistently great quality is what we go after every day. So that was perishable orange juice.

george grombacher 5:49
That is great. Just as somebody who appreciates the value and the deadline or having that sense of urgency, that to your point, there’s, there’s not too many that are finer than that. So you brew the batch you’ve got, you’ve done the math, you’ve got these 600 cases. We’ve got to figure out how to how to get these in the folks hands ASAP. Literally,

Matt McLean 6:11
Yeah, correct. And so initially, when I would go out, I found a local supermarket chain. It was an upscale supermarket chain in Orlando called goodings, and I think at the time, they had 13 stores. And I thought, boy, that’s huge. That’s fantastic. And then I found a variety of smaller, independent Chamberlains was a good natural food store. They had, I think, 12 stores. And then I filled in a variety of distributors, a produce distributor called Albert’s organics that took organic produce up and down the East Coast, and our orange juice was perfect to hop on the stores. And so they went to a lot of natural food independence. And so I pieced together enough 600 bottles, 600 cases in two weeks to be able to consistently turn it not every time, couple times like, oh, okay, that was short, dated. We had to, you know, send that to the food bank. But, you know, you quickly started adding more and adding more people signed up a good food broker. That food broker then really helped push when they went into the stores, like, Hey, do you have this product on the shelf? Taste it, try it. They helped me with putting together programs, because each little store has a flyer, right, like, hey, here you want to be in my flyer, you know, save $1 put it in the flyer, and then your velocity goes. And if it, if that sells, well, then they give you more facing. So we go from one little facing up at the top to now you move down a shelf, and now you’re a two or three facings, and now you become just more legitimate. Your volume gets bigger, and you just you continue to build with momentum. But it’s got to start with a good tasting product, actually a great tasting product. And if you don’t stay consistently with that, none of the model works, no matter what you put out there.

george grombacher 7:59
That’s the trick on that one. I have so much respect for, certainly for somebody who is, who’s brewing small batch, but then you start creating brewing, I apologize. What is, what is the right term for orange juice, squeeze, squeeze. Okay, squeezing massive amounts and and maintaining consistent quality. That’s that’s exceptional.

Matt McLean 8:24
Yeah, there’s a lot to it. That was the other thing. My background in Citrus really helped, right? So I grew up drinking orange juice and grapefruit juice my entire life, and then when I started that export business to Europe, in the Middle East, I had a lot of different customers from different regions, and they had different taste profiles. So I learned a good amount about the quality of juice, and what makes the quality of juice taste the way it does. So the bricks, which is the natural sugar, you know, they call it bricks, b, r, i, x, in the industry. So bricks, then you have acid, you have ratio, you have oil levels, and then you have all the different varieties. So you have different varieties of oranges, early season, mid season, late season, they have different flavor, they have different color. And so how do you consistently try and mix those together throughout the season? Throughout the year, you have an off season where there is no oranges, so you have to store it, and you have to bring it back in the off season and blend it and put it together so it tastes correct. And so all of that is an art form. And I was fortunate enough because I grew up in the business, and then my import export business led me to have that expertise. So it was, it was a kind of, I guess, divine intervention from that standpoint, yeah,

george grombacher 9:45
yeah. It’s, it sounds like that’s the case. And how challenging was it to to shift from non organic to to producing organic?

Matt McLean 9:57
Yeah. Well, for our family. It was very interesting timing, because my grandfather was towards the end of his life. He had began farming, you know, 1930s 1940s 1950s and he was alive. He was born in 1919 so he was alive when there weren’t pesticides and there weren’t synthetic fertilizers. He said, You know, it wasn’t till after World War Two that that stuff was really invented. So his father farmed basically organically. My grandfather started farming organically, and they just didn’t call it that, because they didn’t have, you know, a terminology for but it was about building a healthy soil. It was about cover crops, you know, compost, manure, you know, really the the natural way to do it out in the grove. And so from an agronomy standpoint, it made perfect sense to him when I came back on that, that meeting, after I had the German inquiry about organic I came back and met with my granddad and my father and and he was excited. He was very excited that, hey, this at the end of his life, he had had this calling, feeling that we should go back to a lot of those practices, because he had observed over decades that he felt we were on the wrong path in agronomy, and we were doing more single factor analysis. Hey, we’re going in, and if you find a pest, then I need to find a pesticide. And if I have a weed, I need to find a herbicide. If I find a fungus, I need to find a fungicide. Instead. How he used to farm. They didn’t have that. And so they would, you know, from cover crops, from more biodiversity and soil, more biodiversity and the grove natural predators, that would work in harmony, and not perfect harmony, but that would work in harmony to keep a lot of disease pressure down. And so as those things got eliminated, and he went more synthetic, and he went more single factor, you actually saw more pest pressure, and you created more problems. And you’re the trees had less and less lifespan. They weren’t living this long, and the soil was depleted of some of those key things in the soil and the microbes because of herbicides and things that were being applied to it. So for him, it was a really just a cathartic moment of, hey, this is this is complete for him, like, we can go back and do it organic, and we should do it organic. Those methods of farming were not disproven. They were merely displaced by new technology. And he felt that we really should go back to a lot of those old methods. So it was that was the first step. Could we even grow it? And could we go back to farming organic? Because there was no roadmap here. There is not the University of Florida or the USDA, you can’t go there. And you definitely couldn’t go there in 19, you know, the late 90s. And say, How do I transition to organic? How do I go back to these farming methods? We had a lot of learning curve, a steep learning curve, but not as steep as others, because of my granddad and my father’s experience. I

george grombacher 13:21
think that that’s so cool. I wrote down harmony versus disharmony and just trying to be attuned to nature versus over engineering and forcing it. Yeah,

Matt McLean 13:34
and it’s very interesting, as agriculture and organic becomes more popular. It’s very similar to human health. And now, if you look at you know what’s trending and what’s people are really looking at now, and human health is your gut microbiome. You know that your immunity is actually in your gut, and your gut brain axis, and so you want to have a good, healthy microbiome. And what do you find when you take a lot of these other things from the that the doctors will give you that are not natural, it depletes it. It depletes your natural microbiome that helps you fight pathogens and improves your immune system and helps you function. And so the soil is the same thing, and we saw it over many decades. My grandfather witnessed it over many decades, that, hey, the health of the tree is changing. It’s not getting better. If all these methods are better, why is the lifespan of my tree less, and why am I having more disease pressure than we had 3040, 50 years ago. And that is a big thing. You’re you reduce the biodiversity of the population of the friendly pest from spraying pesticides. You reduce the healthy microbiome and the biology in the soil from round up and different herbicides and fungicides that are sprayed. And so you’re just, you became, you know, always dependent upon everything that you’re putting out on soil and in the leaf. What does the future hold? I think it’s great. You know, where there is a will, there is a way, and we have survived for 25 years. And, you know, organic has survived longer than that. It’s still a small percentage of the marketplace. You know, two to 3% probably for orange juice, five to 6% for the industry overall, it’s been penetrated. And then some stuff is as high as 15% like salads. So I think as as each segment continues to catch up with supply on the demand, we will continue to grow, which is great. And I think overall, people are becoming more well, more aware of their health. And you know how after the pandemic, what do I need to do to really change my health and be, you know, more resilient to disease? And also, people want to have longevity. I want to live to 100 that’s one of my goals. A little bit past halfway there. I want to be able to affect my future generations, for my kids, and be able to teach them some of the lessons that my granddad and and great granddad taught him. So I

george grombacher 16:30
think that that’s excellent. And so in general, organic foods are around 15% of the market is is is that fair?

Matt McLean 16:41
So it would be about 5% on average, if you looked at everything, when you walked in the supermarket and you said, you know, from beans to orange juice to salad mixes the the highest is salad. The highest salad has penetrated up to 15% so some of the things that you can say from a consumer standpoint, like hey, pesticide residue, eating produce has penetrated higher, but I think long term, that’s our goal. The industry, can we get to 10 or 15% as an average? You know, that would be really fantastic. That

george grombacher 17:12
would be a really, really fantastic and powerful thing. Do you think that, if is it a literacy issue, or is it just a momentum issue, where consumers are starting to learn about it and therefore they’re asking and demanding it? Or is it just, I I don’t see the consequence, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’m

Matt McLean 17:37
doing? Yeah, I mean, one out of the gate. I wish I could say I knew the answer to that. Sure. I think as people become more aware about their own health and what they’re eating or reading labels, you know, the next generation, the younger generation, is more aware, right? I mean, they, they go on social media and they, they dive deeper into, well, what does this company really stand for? What are you really what are your practices? What really are the ingredients? Where do they come from? There? That’s the first part. Is just having the desire to seek out knowledge and learn more about what you are putting in your body. But organic, we still have a good ways to go. From pricing, you know, we are more or higher priced than our conventional counterparts. They have a fantastic, really efficient machine that’s much larger than us, so they can grow crops, you know, much larger efficiency scale process, it more efficient, and then they have more dollars to promote, etc, as bigger brands. But, you know, that’s I’m not complaining about that. That’s part of the challenge. We go out there and try to be the best we can every day, and we we’re fine, just chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, as long as we at the end of the day, I can lay my head on the pillow and know that, hey, we are we have been consistently great today with the product and the effort, then I can sleep well,

george grombacher 19:10
all we can expect from you, Matt McLean, is for you to go out and be the best version of you every day, and it sounds like you’re certainly doing that. So I’m grateful for your work. And I was thinking, as you were sharing all that with me, that think that the main reason that my wife and I consume organic foods is mostly because of our kids, and I probably would have been fine just shoving anything in my mouth for the foreseeable future, but once you have kids, it just changes your aperture a little bit. So who knows. We just need more people to have kids, Matt and we’ll bring that percentage for five way up fast. So

Matt McLean 19:46
if we just get the kids, that’s a really good start, for sure.

george grombacher 19:49
Well, thank you so much for coming on and thanks for all your work and your efforts. Where can people learn more? Where can they get their where can they find uncle Matt’s?

Matt McLean 19:58
I. Absolutely so if you go to Uncle matt.com we have a product locator. Click on our product locator, put in your zip code, and it’ll tell you exactly what stores in your neighborhood. You can find us there if, for some reason, there is nothing there, and we are an uncle Matt’s food desert around you, you can actually order online from us. I will warn you, it’s not as affordable as if it’s in your local supermarket, but we will still gladly ship it to you through e com, so you can get us either in a local store or via direct uncle matts.com

george grombacher 20:34
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, so Matt, your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to Uncle matts.com and check out everything that Matt and I have been talking about. Learn more about the company and what they believe to be the right way to make delicious foods and products. And then hit the product locator button and find out what stores are closest to you. And worst case scenario, you can order it and have it delivered. Thanks again, Matt,

Matt McLean 21:03
HEY George, appreciate the opportunity. Have a great day

george grombacher 21:06
till next time, remember do your part by doing your best, just like Matt, it’s.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.