00;00;06;23 - 00;00;37;24
Speaker 1
Hi. Welcome to Dig in the podcast brought to you by Digg Insights. Every week we interview founders, marketers and researchers from innovative brands to learn how they're approaching their role and their category in a clever way. Welcome back to this week's episode of Digg, and it's going to be a great one. We're here today with Katie Couric, who's the founder of To Tolu, which is a trail mix brand with some of the coolest packaging I've ever seen female founded.

00;00;38;04 - 00;00;39;05
Speaker 1
Katie, how are you doing?

00;00;39;25 - 00;00;42;23
Speaker 2
Doing so good. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

00;00;43;11 - 00;01;05;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, of course. We're so happy to have you. I'm going to dove right in because we've got tons of questions for you today before. Before you kind of started to. Can you give us a little bit of background about what you were up to or what was going on and maybe what your your background was prior to being a founder of a business?

00;01;05;16 - 00;01;35;23
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'll give you guys kind of the origin story. My background really is since I was a kid, we just did infatuation with food. Like, I loved food of all times and so much so that I've always had, like, a challenging relationship with my my health, my weight. I was really overweight as a kid. And this is common throughout my family having some kind of health issue because I just loved food way too much and not the healthy food like the processed foods, the microwavable foods.

00;01;36;11 - 00;01;40;27
Speaker 1
So what was your like? What was your go to as a kid? What was your go to snack?

00;01;41;03 - 00;01;57;28
Speaker 2
I'll never forget the day I had like four Uncrustables PB and J's back to back an entire bag of Hot Cheetos and then frosting literally just by the spoonful out of jar. Like, I'm obviously not hungry at that point. It was just an emotional experience, but that's.

00;01;57;28 - 00;01;58;16
Speaker 1
Totally.

00;01;58;26 - 00;02;26;21
Speaker 2
That's what happens with those kinds of foods. They're they're formulated in the laboratory to hijack your brain and your taste buds and just go berserk. And I fell prey to that, you know, from a young age, which good times can't do that anymore. But, you know, so I kind of always had this unhealthy relationship with food. And, you know, if I was sad out, if I was upset, I'll eat and that's how how it was in my family.

00;02;26;21 - 00;02;45;15
Speaker 2
And I didn't really understand how to take care of myself until one random summer when I went to summer camp. And, you know, I was able to be outside and experience life and farming and healthy eating. I sort of learned how to kind of take care of myself from there and fell in love with the world of healing.

00;02;46;28 - 00;03;19;21
Speaker 2
And so in college, I went on to study environmental sustainability because I was just so emphatic about the outdoors. And I really learned about the healing powers of plant based nutrition for the planet, and then also started to like tinker and explore into the the healing properties of plant based nutrition for the body. And when I learned that it was something that could prevent climate change and also heal people who have diabetes, heart, heart failure excuse me, congestive heart failure or just overweight?

00;03;19;21 - 00;03;58;22
Speaker 2
And so many of these like illnesses that we face in and our lives in my family particularly, I was like, this is just a no brainer. We should be practicing this and we could all heal ourselves instead of suffering. And I didn't really know what to do with that until quarantine of 2020 hit the like the first one when we were all scared of germs and like Clorox bleaching, our Amazon packages and all that good stuff, I found myself just throwing everything I knew about healing that I had learned over the past decade and was resorting back to those old coping mechanisms of just binge eating everything.

00;03;59;02 - 00;04;08;10
Speaker 2
And one of the things I happened to be gorging on was like a family size bag of trail mix, you know, the ones that are from like the superstore super grocery stores.

00;04;08;16 - 00;04;10;04
Speaker 1
Like Costco or like.

00;04;11;00 - 00;04;21;19
Speaker 2
Oh my gosh, Eminem's and peanuts and refined oils, refined sugars, dairy. I remember looking on the back of the ingredients and it was like, how could they fit this many ingredients.

00;04;21;19 - 00;04;21;24
Speaker 1
In.

00;04;22;17 - 00;04;42;18
Speaker 2
Nuts? And a couple. And then there was just wild to me. And in that moment I kind of got angry because I felt like, you know, not only are we kind of stuck in this inside world and really scary, but we're being fed poisonous snacks that are marketed as healthy. And, you know, they're not they're not good for the planet.

00;04;42;18 - 00;05;11;29
Speaker 2
They're using GMO ingredients and there's polluting packaging and all of these things. And having watched almost every episode of Shark Tank and every podcast, how I built this, I've always been coming up with like random ideas. But there's always one theme throughout most successful businesses that I saw on their is that they found like an untapped category and they've reinvented it, reimagined it, and that sort of where I saw an opportunity in trail mix because it's all the same.

00;05;12;00 - 00;05;21;26
Speaker 2
It's either Peanuts and Eminem's and all the chemicals or it's kind of just plain and boring. So I was ready for some some new new looks.

00;05;21;26 - 00;05;46;21
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's super cool. I mean, we'll get a little bit more into the actual product, like the trail mix flavors and kind of what you're doing there in a bit. But I mean, it sounds like it's such a it's so interesting to hear someone who comes from quite a unique background jump starting into an entrepreneurial role in consumer packaged goods or in the food space.

00;05;47;17 - 00;05;53;19
Speaker 1
What is that experience been like for you in terms of transitioning into a full time entrepreneur?

00;05;54;12 - 00;06;28;03
Speaker 2
It is the scariest, most exciting and educational experience I've had in my life so far. I mean, I we joke about the days when we could just clock it and clock out of work. Yeah. And how that does not exist. Like if you want to have more time, those two, because it encompasses all of you and, but the, the beautiful thing is because I'm extremely passionate about what I'm doing and I believe in our mission that it doesn't feel it feels it doesn't feel like work per se.

00;06;28;11 - 00;06;41;06
Speaker 2
I mean, at times it certainly does. But for the most part, I feel like I'm excited to be doing what I'm doing. And it's been every day is a new a new lesson. Every day is a new job that we are learning we have to do. You know, I.

00;06;41;06 - 00;07;08;29
Speaker 1
Think in a in a previous conversation we had, we talked about we kind of touched on this idea of like female entrepreneurs and like what it means to be a female founder. And I always kind of struggle with that question a little bit because, you know, you're a founder and classifying you as like a female founder kind of puts you into like a different or like a subcategory to some extent that I don't even know is necessary.

00;07;08;29 - 00;07;21;10
Speaker 1
But I feel like I'd love to have like a really honest chat with you, like, do like that question like what is your experience as a female founder? Do you kind of resent that question? I'm sure you get asked it a lot.

00;07;22;03 - 00;07;46;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's actually something that is always brought up in conversation in any, you know, any new interview or any conversation with a retailer. And, you know, when I learned about how few women are in entrepreneurial roles or how, for example, you know, women are paid less, I actually enjoy that. It's been called out because now we're paying attention to it.

00;07;47;02 - 00;08;15;13
Speaker 2
The the discrepancies and the inequalities. And I agree with you. Like for a founder, man, woman, he, she, they, whatever, it's all the same talent and it's all the same drive. But I do I think I do appreciate calling it out, calling it, calling attention to it. And it's something that's really beautiful. I mean, in Austin, there's this group of women that I like I met that are all founders of small food business and food businesses right there.

00;08;15;13 - 00;08;36;11
Speaker 2
And it's so inspiring. And we're like, you know, like little girl gang. And it's just a lot of innovation in the food space. And I think women are particularly motivated to change them. Social aspect tied to the food space, which is really cool, like it seems like everyone wants to make, makes the world around them a little bit better.

00;08;36;12 - 00;08;44;18
Speaker 2
I think women have a little bit more sentiment or a little bit more heart in certain areas, so I actually do enjoy it.

00;08;45;18 - 00;08;52;16
Speaker 1
Kind of, yeah, that makes total sense. How did you meet this? This like band of women that is becoming a little girl gang? I love that.

00;08;52;27 - 00;09;09;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. So there's a lot of founder events and like business events in Austin. So this was a an event that Tido put together and they're like a plugin that works with Shopify. I actually don't know exactly.

00;09;09;03 - 00;09;13;03
Speaker 1
What cater to if you can.

00;09;13;03 - 00;09;32;20
Speaker 2
They hosted this like networking event in Austin and there was like 30 different founders of different companies of various sizes, all just talking about their challenges and what business is like for them. And we kind of would people would share their experience and other people could offer insight. And so there was a lot of resource exchange and it was a really beautiful space.

00;09;32;20 - 00;09;42;25
Speaker 2
And I met three or four other amazing founders at that event and it was wonderful. So we meet up, it'll be about once a month and, and share, share.

00;09;42;25 - 00;10;12;19
Speaker 1
Let's go. Like that community aspect would be really important. It's probably hard enough, you know, starting out a business on your own, being able to share the experience with people who are kind of going through something similar would be would be really nice. Okay. I'm going to ask you a little bit about totally now. So the actual actual brand and the product I referenced, it's one of the coolest packaging, some of the coolest packaging I've ever seen.

00;10;12;19 - 00;10;23;27
Speaker 1
But talk to us about the actual trail mix and the flavor profiles and wow, this is a triple barrel question and the packaging like how did you come up with the design and the marketing?

00;10;24;09 - 00;10;54;11
Speaker 2
Okay, let's do this. So when it comes to creating the product itself, you know, we really wanted to create the most appealing product. And the goal is to show that business can be a force of positive change for the for the human, for our bodies, for our health, our mental and physical health, but also for the planet. So we started with ingredients first and kind of we're like, where at every piece can we offer healing ingredients or something that serves a function?

00;10;54;18 - 00;11;17;10
Speaker 2
So we use sprouted nuts and seeds, which is much easier for your body to digest. It actually removes the enzyme inhibitors that are on raw nuts and seeds, which can cause a lot of bloating or inflammation in people. So that's really exciting. Not really seen in almost any other trail mix. And we also have adaptogenic herbs infused with each and every flavor.

00;11;17;19 - 00;11;35;25
Speaker 2
And we actually started kind of there by picking particular herbs that supported a similar function in the body that each flavor kind of is supportive of a function. So for example, we have a maple flavor called Slow Your Roll, and they all have like little cheeky names that go with them. And that that flavor is a maple flavor.

00;11;35;25 - 00;11;56;01
Speaker 2
It's like slightly sweet and it's supposed to promote relaxation and a happy mood and the herbs used all sort of support that same function. So there's ashwagandha regime. Acuna So that's just one flavor. And then we have another flavor, which I think you said you were able to grab at Summerhill, and that's that called Turning Heads. And it's a good cal flavor.

00;11;56;01 - 00;12;20;01
Speaker 2
And it has botanicals that support skin health and adaptogens that support skin. So each and every flavor is sort of centered around these adaptogens. And then we pulled in ingredients that could further support. So there's almonds, you know, blueberries, coconut chips, that kind of thing. And, you know, our favorite part is they're little clusters that come in the maple and the cacao flavor, because when you pick it up, you kind of get everything you need in one bite.

00;12;20;12 - 00;12;48;12
Speaker 2
So I'm really, really pumped because we created really tasty flavors that are made just from whole real foods like you're not going to find red 40 or hide hydrolyzed, whey, protein, whatever, like these man made chemicals, you're never going to find them in our snacks and my personal favorite part is that we support a healing a healing modality for the planet, which is regenerative agriculture with every purchase.

00;12;48;12 - 00;13;14;19
Speaker 2
So whenever someone buys a variety pack, for example, on our website, we partner with the Rodale Institute, which is this huge institution in, in America. And it's been around probably for 50 years. And they were the OGs with the organic movement and now they're heading the regenerative organic movement, which is a type of farming practice that can clean our water, clean our air, fight climate change, so we partner with them.

00;13;15;05 - 00;13;48;21
Speaker 2
And so that every purchase trends transitions 100 square feet of polluted farmland to regenerative farming system. So that's really exciting. We have plastic neutral packaging, so every piece of business we're trying to make sure that it's the most healing it can be rather than like a business that it's harmful for us. And so we're really excited. And the packaging oh my gosh, the packaging I, I love, I love our packaging and it's brought opportunities for us.

00;13;49;01 - 00;14;12;21
Speaker 2
And, you know, I, I cannot take credit for the way that it looks. Thankfully hired the most amazing design agency call here for studios based out of Oahu. And we were able to come to them with these like basically chicken scratch and these ideas like we want to elicit a sort of Woodstock nostalgic by we want like a really groovy logo.

00;14;12;21 - 00;14;36;04
Speaker 2
We want, you know, crystals. I'm not even joking. I literally wrote crystals. Must have, you know, my dog arrives on the back of the packaging on the barcode because he was my little partner in crime during quarantine, making it so they were able to work with us. And after a few rounds, we got we got literally the most perfect packaging I could ever ask for.

00;14;36;15 - 00;14;38;05
Speaker 2
So we got lucky. They're so.

00;14;38;05 - 00;15;00;13
Speaker 1
Cool. I mean, the the blessing and the curse of asking you to answer like 47 questions all at once is that I now have like a million questions to ask back. But okay, so when I, I don't think I actually realized the way that you had structured the flavors around the I'm going to get the word wrong, adopted or yeah.

00;15;00;21 - 00;15;01;02
Speaker 2
You got.

00;15;01;02 - 00;15;25;05
Speaker 1
It. So yeah, I don't think I actually knew that, but so interesting. And then it aligns with the naming. Like I'm wondering what kind of it came first in terms of how did you did you decide that you wanted a specific array of flavors or did you decide, you know, I want to feature these herbs and how do you know what kind of URLs you want to do feature?

00;15;25;06 - 00;15;27;18
Speaker 1
Like, what did that process look like? Yeah.

00;15;27;18 - 00;15;52;07
Speaker 2
So during quarantine, I really dove into plant based nutrition. I became certified in plant based nutrition. And in that study of fear based nutrition, I also learned about our Vedic medicine and in rabbinic medicine and also in many other cultures, they use herbs not just to flavor the food, but to serve a like a healing function. So they use these herbs in everyday life.

00;15;52;07 - 00;16;16;26
Speaker 2
And I was thinking, why don't our foods have healing herbs, especially snacks. Snacks I've never like. It's so rare. I mean now, yeah, we're seeing an emergence in like CPG and like it's trending now, but for, for decades before I was like there's why don't we have these in our snack foods? And I thought, wow, what if we lived in a world where everything we ate served a function like not only to taste good, but it was healing for us.

00;16;16;26 - 00;16;34;08
Speaker 2
So Adaptogenic herbs were the first key point, honestly. And so when I yeah, so when I, when I knew I had that peace, then it became what flavors taste good with these herbs because some of them are legitimately disgusting and.

00;16;35;19 - 00;16;36;02
Speaker 1
You need.

00;16;36;02 - 00;16;54;16
Speaker 2
To have something that is strong enough to mask it like a cow or, you know, certain types of like maple flavors, for example. So it's definitely it was definitely the herbs and function first. And then like let's how can we make this taste good? Because there were some oh girl, there were some iterations of our flavors that.

00;16;54;16 - 00;16;54;22
Speaker 1
Were.

00;16;55;09 - 00;17;00;16
Speaker 2
Great and they were sent to the dungeon.

00;17;00;16 - 00;17;15;26
Speaker 1
And walk me through where you are when you're tasting those. Are you like in your kitchen, like standing over the sink, like in the hopes that it tastes good or you it allows, like for anyone who would want to start a business like that is like, what does that process look like?

00;17;16;06 - 00;17;33;27
Speaker 2
You know what, honestly, you know, when you're like a little kid and you have like a microphone that you think is a microphone was really your hairbrush and you're like on in your mind. That's literally what I created in quarantine out of my kitchen. Like I bought a dehydrator on Amazon and I just pretended I was in this like magnificent laboratory.

00;17;34;07 - 00;18;06;01
Speaker 2
And so the beginning stages of it, we were really in that romanticized like laboratory of Boston. And then, you know, then came the next part. Once I had this idea and the structure and like, you know, this concept, then I had to find someone who could actually make it, which is really challenging when you're when you have a product or a prototype that you make in your kitchen in, you have to find someone who has the tools or the capacity or the like, the boundaries that you're able to work with to make your product.

00;18;06;09 - 00;18;30;05
Speaker 2
And so I called probably probably 12 different manufacturers to find the right one who could make the products the way that I want to sprout and in seeds and dehydrating and use the use of adaptogenic herbs and so once I found him, then these recipes that I had thought of in quarantine, we were able to actually like enhance and put into scale in a way that could be mass produced.

00;18;30;05 - 00;18;33;19
Speaker 2
And so they're so much better now than they were in my kitchen.

00;18;33;20 - 00;19;00;06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay, very cool. And in terms of the flavors and deciding how many to launch and kind of what that range would look like, obviously we do a lot of strategy and research work with CPG companies, so they often come to us in really early stages of trying to decide on, you know, flavors and scents and all of those things to try and figure out what they should prioritize.

00;19;00;12 - 00;19;19;19
Speaker 1
Was there any element of consumer research or focus grouping to kind of get to a sense or was it literally like these? I have so much. I have so much. What's the word I'm looking for? I feel so confident that these are going to work, that I'm just going to go ahead and roll them out. Like, what did that what did that look like?

00;19;20;10 - 00;19;38;13
Speaker 2
I wish we had done focus groups. That would've been that would have been smart. We didn't do any of that. We kind of we were like, this is awesome. And so we wanted to make sure that we had just a few SKUs to work with because it would be insane if we had a 12, I think, right off the bat.

00;19;38;13 - 00;19;59;15
Speaker 2
So we really wanted to prove out the concept first. And so we tried to hit every flavor profile that we could. So every flavor profiles different like there's barbecue, maple, cookout, spicy and, and any kind of just it kind of just happened together. Yeah, yeah. Just came together that way. Yeah.

00;19;59;26 - 00;20;22;27
Speaker 1
Very cool. And then packaging, marketing, branding. So you said you worked with best agency out of Hawaii or at a blog, which is super cool. How did you decide that they were the right one? How did you kind of know that they were the right people to kind of give such an important piece of your marketing to?

00;20;23;07 - 00;20;49;19
Speaker 2
Yeah, we interviewed with a few different agencies and they were sort of, you know, a smaller group, which I think we all felt more comfortable with. They had, you know, they just had the time and the understanding of what we were trying to achieve, willing to work with us. And, you know, we almost went with a huge design company and I'm so glad we didn't because we didn't know ourselves that well yet.

00;20;49;19 - 00;21;12;04
Speaker 2
So we really needed someone to work in a collaborative environment with us. And that's exactly what the agency we worked with was like. And, you know, we just kind of went off of the vibe of our time together and it was such a positive one. So I think finding an agency that really understands you and that's smaller was really, I think is really helpful when you're just starting out.

00;21;12;04 - 00;21;15;18
Speaker 2
It was certainly helpful for us and they're just like killer designers.

00;21;15;18 - 00;21;37;02
Speaker 1
So yeah, yeah, that's the portfolio was really good. I imagine that that was really tough, but it obviously worked out amazingly well. We'll make sure to send people to your website so they can see what the packaging looks like because I feel like we're really drumming it up right now. You ever see.

00;21;39;03 - 00;22;03;12
Speaker 2
What they did? They just got to the park. You know, part of like what we wanted to create with to do was just this all like this other universe where all things were possible. And you could literally say to Hulu to all of the harm of the past in the food industry. So we wanted to create this like euphoric, like, you know, whimsical worlds that people could start to just feel good when they encountered the branding.

00;22;03;20 - 00;22;09;22
Speaker 2
And that's like the first step of the healing journey is like actually feeling good and excited about it, you know?

00;22;10;16 - 00;22;38;22
Speaker 1
Yeah. I think we also talked about this last time we chatted, but there's so much going on right now with you mentioned it before regenerative agriculture and I I you that a couple of things last can we talk that kind of blew my mind like I just had no idea how what regenerative agriculture was how impactful plant based eating can be.

00;22;38;22 - 00;23;00;04
Speaker 1
And I kind of just want to give you a bit of a platform right now to talk a little bit about. You keep talking about the healing journey. Like what? What is the power of eating plant based? Or maybe it's maybe you want to touch on regenerative agriculture and drop a stat or a piece of knowledge that people wouldn't wouldn't otherwise know about.

00;23;00;04 - 00;23;03;27
Speaker 1
But I kind of just want to give you the platform to blow other people's minds straight off.

00;23;04;08 - 00;23;24;03
Speaker 2
Oh, okay. We might be here for a while, so let's know. This is my favorite thing to talk about. So in college, when I was studying environmental sustainability, I learned this one sentence that has captivated my heart ever since. So they say, according to the Rodale Institute, which is, you know, I learned about them in college and now we partner with them.

00;23;24;22 - 00;23;53;02
Speaker 2
They say in one tablespoon of fertile soil, there's over 100 million to 1 billion different microorganisms in that one tablespoon. That is insane. And and why that blows my mind is because, you know, we trip out over the cosmos, but there's an entire, like microscopic like universe underneath our feet. And these little guys are what are responsible for healthy soil.

00;23;53;10 - 00;24;17;15
Speaker 2
So those little critters actually help sequester carbon dioxide and keep carbon dioxide in the soil. And carbon is actually not the enemy. There's just too much of it in the atmosphere. And what we don't know is that soil is a carbon sink, like it is made and it functions and it thrives and it's sustainable and regenerative. Like it regenerates itself when it has carbon.

00;24;17;15 - 00;24;43;20
Speaker 2
And this is interesting because our current farming farming systems are called conventional farming systems, and so it's practiced on probably 95% of farms across the country. And I'm not sure about the world statistic, but it's one of the most practiced forms of farming and inherently destroys the ecosystems that those microorganisms need to survive. And we need those microorganisms because we need carbon in the soil.

00;24;43;28 - 00;25;00;02
Speaker 2
So when we tell the soil, when we spray pesticides and herbicides, we're literally just like taking and breaking up their homes and just like, like, you know, what's the word when you get evacuated from your your apartment, when you're kicked out, your landlord sent.

00;25;00;02 - 00;25;00;09
Speaker 1
You.

00;25;00;23 - 00;25;01;10
Speaker 2
Back in.

00;25;02;13 - 00;25;03;15
Speaker 1
Like, gosh, what is that?

00;25;03;25 - 00;25;06;07
Speaker 2
What is that word? If we're doing that to them?

00;25;06;07 - 00;25;07;05
Speaker 1
I know what you mean.

00;25;07;10 - 00;25;08;23
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I know.

00;25;08;23 - 00;25;09;07
Speaker 1
What you mean.

00;25;09;19 - 00;25;29;17
Speaker 2
Pushing them out of their homes and and it's it's not sustainable. Like they say, we're going to run out of soil or we're going to run on topsoil in the next 50 years, which means we won't be able to grow food on it. But this is what is the kicker. Regenerative agriculture is something that heals the soil. It restores fertility to the soil.

00;25;29;24 - 00;25;51;14
Speaker 2
And they do this by just returning back to the ways that indigenous people have been farming for like millennia, like for as long as farming has existed, Indigenous people practiced a practice region of agriculture, which is, you know, there's a few different pieces to it, but they don't till the soil. So they don't like break it up. They don't use herbicides, pesticides and these like toxic chemicals.

00;25;51;24 - 00;26;25;02
Speaker 2
They, you know, there's there's a few different principles that they follow. And it sequesters carbon dioxide. It cleans our water, it cleans our air, it promotes biodiversity. So I don't know if you guys have ever seen this movie called Big, Big Little Farm and Biggest Little Farm where they regenerate 200 acres of farmland. And it turned into this oasis where there's butterflies and like all kinds of critters and hundreds of different types of fruits and vegetables that all live and coexist in this harmonious, like beautiful landscape.

00;26;25;02 - 00;26;54;28
Speaker 2
And that's so different from the modern crop fields of GMO, corn, wheat and soy that we see across America where people have to wear hazmat suits to, you know, handle their crops and just like it doesn't make sense, you know? And so this this this is what blew my mind. If we transitioned all of our farms from conventional farming systems to regenerative farming systems, we could literally sequester 100% of the carbon emissions produced by humans in a number of years.

00;26;55;08 - 00;27;19;20
Speaker 2
So we could fight climate change by just changing the way we grow food and the way we grow food with regenerative agriculture makes it more nutritious. It makes it more delicious. It's like it to me. It feels like a no brainer. And so now we're at this place where we're really trying to push that that forward. And they have ingredients that are starting to come available in supply chain that are regenerative, organic.

00;27;19;27 - 00;27;47;23
Speaker 2
So my first goal literally was to use every single ingredient possible regenerative, organic, but the supply chain isn't there yet. So yeah, what we do is we help transition conventional farmers to regenerative farming systems with the goal of eventually being able to pull their ingredients into our into our supply chain. And I'm so excited about this movement. There's a few quite a few snack brands now that are kind of banding together and jumping on this regenerative trade.

00;27;47;23 - 00;28;09;12
Speaker 2
And even like big companies, you know, you're seeing huge, huge companies committed to regenerating farmland, which is really beautiful. And, you know, I'm just excited because if it's good for the planet, it's usually good for the human. And if it's good for the human, good for the planet, it's we're all the same. It's it's a harmonious ecosystem where we are all connected.

00;28;09;22 - 00;28;25;05
Speaker 2
And I'm just so excited to see that begin, that journey begin. Because once we start healing ourselves with the food that we grow, we heal our planet with the food that we grow, and then everything just elevates so we're really excited about that.

00;28;26;01 - 00;28;56;20
Speaker 1
You explained that in such a way that I'm like, Let's do it, you know, where do I find? I love it. And it's really it's cool to see that that very clear connection, very direct connection with the product that you're creating. And, and yeah, the way that you guys are giving back with, with purchases, I think you could we're going to have to close out reasonably soon.

00;28;57;10 - 00;29;14;17
Speaker 1
I could probably try to this forever. But if you could talk about kind of your big mission for you to I think we referenced Patagonia previously as kind of a brand that you look to, you know, you really associate Patagonia as a brand with a cause. And what would that cause be?

00;29;14;17 - 00;29;38;05
Speaker 2
Particularly I want to allude to be known as the place where anyone can begin their healing journey. And there's a you know, when you think about Patagonia, yeah, you're like, you're stoked to go climb a mountain. Like, I want to elicit that same vibe where people are excited and they're like, there's a lightness to it instead of such a medicinal, like healing and even climate change.

00;29;38;05 - 00;30;04;17
Speaker 2
All these doomsday topics are so medicinal and they're very hard, almost paralyzing to process. So my goal is that people can come to Tutu and they can start healing themselves. And, you know, this is actually really personal for me because when I learned that plant based nutrition could reverse or prevent congestive heart failure, I think about my my own dad passing away for like so much earlier than he had to because of his diet.

00;30;04;23 - 00;30;26;15
Speaker 2
So I think if this could save someone's dad or this could save someone else's, you know, son, daughter, family, whoever from living a disease, life, if this is the one piece that gets them on the healing journeys, that they have longer to live with their loved ones, longer to live with, you know, the people that they care about, that's like that means so much to me.

00;30;26;27 - 00;30;41;09
Speaker 2
And I just I don't want us to live in a world where our food poisons us and poisons our planet anymore. So I just want to it to be the first place people go to to begin their healing journey, because then it's a ripple effect outwards.

00;30;42;08 - 00;30;43;10
Speaker 1
So they.

00;30;43;10 - 00;30;45;08
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I. Oh.

00;30;46;23 - 00;30;48;07
Speaker 1
Thanks. So inspiring.

00;30;48;27 - 00;31;19;11
Speaker 2
Thank you. Yeah, I, I, I, I know what it's like to have an addiction to food. I know what it's like because these big, huge companies are hijacking our senses and it's not fair. And someone has to. We all have to stand up and make a make a change. And so this is my first attempt at changing the food system and, you know, I'm not I'm not saying trail mix can save the world, but I think it can help start the journey of healing ourselves.

00;31;19;11 - 00;31;19;26
Speaker 2
You know.

00;31;20;13 - 00;31;35;15
Speaker 1
Amazing. I've got a couple rapid fire questions to go through with you. We do this with everyone on the pod. So if you gained double your budget tomorrow or double the amount of money you're working with tomorrow, what would you spend it on?

00;31;36;06 - 00;31;37;25
Speaker 2
My gosh, currently inventory.

00;31;38;27 - 00;31;40;23
Speaker 1
We would that's.

00;31;40;23 - 00;32;10;16
Speaker 2
Like literally the most pending the most immediate concern after from filling sprouts and the anticipated growth I would probably buy by inventory. I would probably say another hire would be great to handle operations and logistics and that kind of thing as we scale and then, you know, maybe throw a little bit more into like marketing some tic tac, you know, that kind of thing.

00;32;11;18 - 00;32;19;03
Speaker 1
I love it. Awesome. And what if you lost half your your budget? What would you do?

00;32;19;03 - 00;32;44;14
Speaker 2
Oh, man, that is a scary thought. We would certainly have to dial back on quite a few different initiatives, probably have to cut marketing a little bit. Yeah, we probably have to slow down incoming business like I, I, we'd have to actually like make some money off of our current business. And there's the problem of growing too fast, you know, where you can't fulfill their orders and your foundation is unstable.

00;32;44;14 - 00;32;55;19
Speaker 2
So I think we'd have to genuinely slow down and just perfect the perfect serving our customers as is. Yeah.

00;32;55;19 - 00;33;09;07
Speaker 1
And cool staff. So obviously to to Leo is, is very cool. Any other brands or products that you see on the market that you think like, wow, they're really doing something different.

00;33;09;21 - 00;33;46;27
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think my, my crush like by like yeah, my brand crush is moonshot snacks. They make regenerative crackers, they make me regenerative sourced wheat. And get this, the founder is sensational. Her name is Julia Collins and she's starting a platform called Planet Forward where brands can plug in their entire supply chain, get a carbon assessment. And then she has literally boots on the ground, found farmers that grow a variety of different ingredients, regenerative lead or like more sustainably.

00;33;47;04 - 00;34;07;00
Speaker 2
And she's plugged them into a platform. And like if you talk to farmers they don't do they don't want to do technology. They're busy farming like you're having a little bit of a challenge plugging into this like digital world. And so she's kind of done that. She's found the farmers, plug them in so that if a company has, let's say, I don't know, they're using nuts.

00;34;07;00 - 00;34;22;01
Speaker 2
For example, they're using nuts that have a really, really high carbon footprint and have a lot of carbon emissions. She's found a supplier or farmer that can give you nuts that are significantly better. So she's created that as well as her background. So she's like.

00;34;22;02 - 00;34;24;22
Speaker 1
As well as, you know, running a full business, you know.

00;34;26;01 - 00;34;28;23
Speaker 2
Casual and looking glamorous all the way to.

00;34;29;18 - 00;34;42;27
Speaker 1
Oh my God, that's so cool. I will have to I will have to check out. That's amazing. And then finally, we're going to wrap up, but where can people find you or connect with you and find your products?

00;34;42;27 - 00;35;01;26
Speaker 2
Yeah, you guys can find us at two w dot com t0olo you can find us on Instagram. I think we have a stronger like presence there to lose superfoods and then we just plant sprouts. Actually, there's no sprouts in Canada, is there? Sprouts in Canada?

00;35;01;26 - 00;35;03;24
Speaker 1
No, not the name. Not that I know.

00;35;05;05 - 00;35;06;09
Speaker 2
You're right. Is that Summerhill?

00;35;07;09 - 00;35;14;00
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, we've got a lot of American listeners, so that's all good so they can find you and sprouts in the US?

00;35;14;08 - 00;35;29;06
Speaker 2
Yes, you can find us in Sprouts Erewhon Central Market. A few other boutique shops around the countries and you can find us on Thrive Amazon or or kind of grow and grow in every direction like that.

00;35;29;14 - 00;35;42;13
Speaker 1
And if you are in Toronto, you can get them at Summerhill. I just picked up the KCAL version. I'm very excited to try it. Katie, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much. And we'll chat to you soon.

00;35;42;24 - 00;35;49;14
Speaker 2
Amazing. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

00;35;49;14 - 00;35;56;11
Speaker 1
Thanks for tuning in this week. Find us on LinkedIn at Digg Insights and don't forget to hit subscribe for a weekly dose of fresh content.