S10E127 Rick Vanzura / Freight Farms - Buliding a Resilient Food Future & Collaborative Partners

0:00:00 - Harry Duran

So, rick Ranzera, ceo of Freight Farms, thank you so much for joining me on the Vertical Farming podcast.

0:00:06 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

0:00:09 - Harry Duran

In true vertical farming form. You've got a rich verdant background there On brand. Yeah, on brand. Where are you calling in from?

0:00:18 - Rick Vanzura

Boston. So we're right on the Boston Dorchester line, yeah.

0:00:24 - Harry Duran

Are you a Bostonian when raised?

0:00:26 - Rick Vanzura

No, but I went to grad school here maybe 30 years ago and then met my wife at grad school and we moved back about 15 years ago, so it's definitely home now, although we spent a lot of time in Detroit so long suffering and currently suffering lines fans.

0:00:44 - Harry Duran

Yeah, and the weather is always fun as well. I grew up in New York and I live now in Minnesota, so it's like winter to the next level, so it's something that I have to get acclimated to.

0:00:54 - Rick Vanzura

That is true.

0:00:56 - Harry Duran

Yeah, and which actually speaks to the benefit of having vertical farming as an option in different inclement weather zones. And I'm wondering, given your background, you've had a lot that I want to get into and obviously I want to introduce you to this audience as well, because people be familiar with Freight Farms from my previous conversation with John, and John was nice enough to join this podcast when it started back in 2020. He was guest number five on the show, so a lot's happened since then, as I'm sure we can get into. But I want to go back because you have a bit of a background in retail and I want to talk a little bit about your entry into the world of food and agriculture. But I was interested.

You had you spent some time at Borders Group and a couple of different stints, and what I found interesting about that is this perspective of being at a company that, for all of us, may not have been like the number one in the space. And I'm wondering in your time, are there things that you can look back and see that you learned in terms of how Borders Group was able? It seems like you had various positions there and I'm curious what is it that you learned in those various positions about the ability to survive and thrive in a very competitive environment.

0:02:03 - Rick Vanzura

Yep, yep. So it's interesting at one point, borders Group, although you know our main competition, barnes and Noble, was larger, we were actually more valuable and at the time we were more valuable it's because we had a very clear mission that we owned around, how we differentiated, from customer service to bookseller knowledge around the category, to customizing inventory by local city, and then over time we just, I would say, kind of lost our way and started to chase a lot of the things that Barnes and Noble and did well and, as I've said many times, we went from in some ways being the best version of ourselves, which was pretty darn good, to being an inferior version of Barnes and Noble because we were chasing a lot of what they did. So that was, I would say, you know, one learning which is the way you're going to make it. In any consumer facing business really any businesses you have to understand what makes you unique and you always need to evolve as the world evolves. But maintaining what made you unique and sometimes that can be a trick, and that sort of relates to my second Borders experience.

That directly relates to Freight Farms, which is my boss, and I met with Jeff Bezos in 1997. And he had brought his head of business development finance guy and, anyway, spent the whole meeting saying you guys are the big guys, we just want our little share. And basically the deal was we could get percentage of Amazon in exchange for handling distribution for them. And we left that meeting saying, well, why would we ever invest a lot of time putting this tiny company on the map and diverting our resources? And don't people know how expensive it is to ship a book around and how are these economics ever going to work?

And in fact, people might forget it did take a long time for Amazon to figure out how to make that model work, but they obviously did, and our little piece of Amazon would have been worth far more than our entire company was worth at its peak. So anyway, I think that's a good example and vertical farming, I think, suffers from this of seeing what exists today versus what can exist in the future and how much value you can create. And so if you really focus on where that huge opportunity lies and that was a big part of what brought me to Freight Farms is really understanding how big the potential could be. And after that borders experience with Amazon, I never again am going to allow myself to be short sighted and overly analytical about where something is today versus thinking about what can be in the future, and the promise in our industry is huge, so that promise was a big part of what attracted me to Freight Farms.

0:05:02 - Harry Duran

And that's an interesting perspective, and especially to have had that experience and have that meeting with Jeff and understanding maybe the way his mind was thinking at the time, obviously thinking bigger and thinking of the potential. Do you see, or do you look back at conversations like that and think back then about, like, what might have been going through Jeff's mind in terms of like, how visionary was, in terms of seeing the potential for what's there, even though at the time maybe borders and borders management didn't see that that was something that would make for a fruitful partnership.

0:05:30 - Rick Vanzura

And hindsight and also, you know, having talked to a lot of people who were senior executives at Amazon then and going forward, it's pretty clear he was telling us, you know, in the meeting we're just the little guys, but his whole, you know, mission in life was get big fast and that there were going to be huge opportunities created by having massive economies of scale and also being the best at serving the customer and always keeping the customer relentlessly number one.

And I would say that was, I think, the key insight is his vision.

It turns out, wasn't to be the world's largest bookseller at all, even though that was their original mission. Their original mission was to be the world's leading customer centric company and, thinking about it in broad terms, and if you really are at the heart of customer experience, what's all of the value you can attach to that? And I think it's that breadth of vision that allowed him to be willing to go in a direction like AWS, which obviously has very little, on its face, to do with selling books over the internet. And, by the way, their initial value proposition was this inventory list, super high ROI model, which, of course, now they control distribution in an integrated way. So they've totally changed that model, but what hasn't changed is his relentless focus on customer value and what can happen if you own that customer relationship, and so I've learned a lot from that being flexible in how you get to the end, but being pretty rigid in what is sort of your North Star and what's going to make you different.

0:07:18 - Harry Duran

You mentioned Detroit and what I think was interesting is and this you talked about AWS as well and building the infrastructure or the piping of the internet, and we've had several conversations with CEOs on this show about what's happening with vertical farming companies and keeping a lot of their infrastructure and the ways of doing business close to the vest not sharing best practices, maybe not looking for opportunities to partner with other companies where there's opportunities, to see if there's synergies.

And I mentioned Detroit because obviously, the example there is with the Detroit Automotive Industry and then the whole infrastructure that was created for all the suppliers that supported all the major manufacturers. And I'm wondering if you think I don't see that there's anything happening to that extent now, but because of all the different ways and a lot of the dirty little secrets of some of these, when we talk to vertical farming companies, when you look behind the curtain, there's a lot of bubble gum and scotch tape in terms of making a lot of these systems work and like piecing together systems that are, you know, maybe international and not with universal standards. And so I'm curious, just because you mentioned that, if you see that there's an opportunity within the world of vertical farming, from your experience so far, to do more of that, to see if there's ways to partner in a way that's beneficial for the entire industry, to leverage best practices, to leverage, you know, ways of or systems that could be working together, operability standards, I think of those things.

0:08:41 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, 100%, and I've definitely had several of those conversations with other companies in the industry. Obviously it's a tricky thing because investors a lot of what they're investing in is IP and differentiation et cetera. But you know, certainly my point of view is this industry is so young and so much of this is about growing the market as opposed to each of our individual successes that the right model is definitely going to be co-opetition. So we have to recognize we all do need to develop and protect stuff that makes us unique and special, but at the same time, we're all going to benefit from things like. I was talking to another recent industry participant about a lot of R&D work they're doing on light spectra. Well, we're all going to wind up doing a lot of that same thing. So we all could shortcut if we could find a way to share a lot of that and again, our market will just expand as a result, as well as other use cases.

I think another piece that would be really important for the industry is I do think we've suffered occasionally from needlessly either bashing each other or bashing other forms of farming, and the reality is, at least from my perspective climate change is real. Declines in arable land are not going away, pressure on fresh water is not going to go away and no one form of farming is going to solve the whole problem. Every form of farming has its right role, including very old forms of farming, and what we all should be doing is working together to make all of our forms of farming better, more sustainable and rooting for each other along the way, because, frankly, one resource issue we all face is farmers themselves.

The average age of a farmer in the US is over 60. And all of us need to make farming a more exciting, successful, easier to handle profession, to the extent that's possible. So I really do root for everybody. I root for all forms of vertical farming. I think we're all going to be needed in the long run. And so back to your original question. Co-opetition is going to get us all there, I think, a lot faster than if we're all just doing our own thing and forcing everybody to duplicate investment trying to solve the same problem.

0:11:16 - Harry Duran

Yeah, it seems like the slogan right here is make farming great again. We just got to spread the word. So, after your time at the borders and correct me if I'm wrong but then your first foray into food was as co-chief operating officer at Panera. Is that correct? How was that experience moving from the world of food? Because obviously it foreshadowed some of the future roles you would hold as well, and it was different about your time at borders and what you learned at Panera.

0:11:45 - Rick Vanzura

So they both have in common is it's really about multi-unit retail, the difference between restaurants and traditional retail being retail, you usually have more of a skew management challenge, but restaurants you have the issue of you're also a vertically integrated manufacturing operation preparing the food, along with being a retail distribution operation. So it's all about how do you drive the best four wall economics and concept differentiation possible out of a single unit and then how do you create standard operating procedures that allow you to replicate that hundreds of times. And I would say it was that background that was part of the reason I was recruited here was to bring more of that optimize a single unit economics and then how do you scale that hundreds of times and create value from that scaling process. So they were very similar and I think, at their best, particularly Panera. Just the discipline of going from concept creation to concept development and iteration based on what you learn was just a great experience.

Ron Shake, who was one of the founders of Panera and has a book out now I would encourage everybody to read Know what Matters. Anyway, just a fabulous teacher in terms of again being very true to the concept essence and the vision of what the company should be, but pretty flexible in how you get there. And one of his mantras is we will never achieve concept essence, we will just continue to iterate to get to closer versions of it and that whole process of thoughtful iteration. And again, like Jeff, he always began every discussion of concept evolution with the customer and it's surprisingly rare how many retail and restaurant concepts truly start with the customer first and then work backwards, as opposed to start with target economics and work forwards.

0:13:58 - Harry Duran

So, moving on from there, speaking of restaurant concepts, you spent seven years with Walberger as well, and as the original CEO also, I might add. What was it about that opportunity? It seemed like something that was interesting and maybe I'm curious about your thought process and decided to accept that position.

0:14:13 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, well, for one, I live in Hingham, massachusetts, and Paul Wahlberg, who's the chef, also lives in Hingham, so that sort of created a natural connection. Yeah, yeah, I got involved as they were building the first restaurant and I was looking forward to running something. And when I looked at the concept I thought, just the design, the way they were approaching it, looked interesting, looked smart. But what really captured my attention was again back to what is sort of your unique selling proposition. What do you have to offer? The world? To my knowledge to this day is still the only example of kind of world-class celebrity with true culinary chops, all within one immediate family. And Paul has a fine dining restaurant, almanove Fine Dining Mediterranean in Hingham. That's a very good restaurant, and so I was really intrigued with this. What happens when you combine that really top level commitment to culinary excellence with everything you can drive out of the celebrity side of the brand? And, yeah, that was a great experience. I would say a lot of highs, a few lows, but never a dull moment.

0:15:32 - Harry Duran

I'm curious in your time at Panera and at Walburger and now, obviously, with Rade Farms. I'm curious about your thoughts about when we talk about this last mile like this is something that's come up a lot in these conversations and it's not something really that was top of mind for folks and something like COVID hit or the Ukraine war and people start thinking about where their food is sourced from, how much food has to travel produce especially, has to travel to get to the final destination and I'm wondering if you encountered any challenges with that in your time at Panera and Walburger and also if that's more present and top of mind for you as you start learning more about the intricacies of how food is delivered within vertical farming.

0:16:13 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, I would say supply chain challenges in general obviously are something in the restaurant industry Try to address. I would say, in the example of Panera they have regionally distributed fresh dough facilities. Exactly for that reason to realizing that you're gonna create a lot more value out of the bakery side of the business if you really control that whole supply chain and it's a local, responsive supply chain so you don't deal with long supply chain issues. Certainly for us here I would say that came screaming during COVID. I mean the amount of inquiries we got from both grocery stores and restaurant chains that said we can no longer reliably supply something that's core to our menu really popped out and certainly I had plenty of discussions on the Panera side about some of the things they're going through. So, yeah, absolutely had been an issue. I would say the awareness of that issue definitely accelerated during COVID.

0:17:21 - Harry Duran

Thinking back prior to taking or being offered the position at Freight Farms was what was happening in this space. When did it come on your radar either? Vertical farming, controlled environment, agriculture, ag tech, even what folks are doing in the greenhouse space when did you start to notice what was happening?

0:17:38 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, I mean sad to say it really only was a big focus when I got approached by a recruiter on this job, but I would say it was sort of perfect timing because, well, I mean to be frank, while I was at Walburgers, my environmental interest was really colliding with the nature of what we do. I mean, we're selling hamburgers and obviously cattle is a major contributor to the problem. So we were one of the early adopters of impossible foods in Massachusetts. We looked at a lot of different plant-based options, we worked on expanding a solid category, but I knew at the end of the day, we're fundamentally a burger chain and from an environmental interest standpoint, that was always gonna be a challenge.

And so one day my middle daughter who, for lack of a better way of characterizing it, I would say is quite woke, and essentially said hey Dad, way to live the capitalist dream, but when are you gonna do something for the planet and your legacy? And that really hit home. And that was right about the time that this opportunity came up. And I would say I was already very well versed in the resource challenges we were facing, with declining arable land and pressures on fresh water and climate change. So this just seemed like the perfect way to plug in something that I am still a capitalist, so it has to be a business model that I think ultimately can work and can scale, but it also, from a mission-driven standpoint. It just hit perfectly for what I'm looking for at this point in my career.

0:19:18 - Harry Duran

That makes sense. So talk a little bit about what's been like since you've taken the job. I think it was around 2020 when you took the leadership role there. Talk a little bit about how the company has changed and what you were tasked with there and what was on your plate and obviously there's a lot people look at the first 90 days of a CEO's role and then everything that you had to think about and implementing. I'm just curious, because there's a lot of leadership and fellow CEOs that listen to this podcast, and I'm curious about what you saw when you landed there and when you're on the ground there, and then what you had in front of you and what you've accomplished over the past couple of years.

0:19:54 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah Well, let me start by saying full credit to John and Brad, the co-founders of the company, forgetting the company to the point that it was when I joined, because economically growing produce and shipping containers back in 2014, 2013,. About as crazy a notion as somebody could come up with and it was just a lot of grit, determination and smarts that took the company from where they were to where it got to when I joined. So, anyway, I really joined at the transition point from the Leafy Green Machine, which was based on the notion of repurposing used shipping containers and outfitting them with LED lights, air flow, nutrient delivery, climate control to grow food, to having had that aha, which again the aha was pre-me that there's a limit to what you can do with that approach and transitioning to the greenery in sort of the late 2019, early 2020 timeframe which is when I joined of taking a bunch of IP and building completely new purpose built containers that are optimized for growing produce and that would just open up a world of yield improvements, precision growing, et cetera. So a lot of what I've been doing since then is just working on things to continue to fulfill the promise of that vision. So we're five generations of farms farther down the road of the greenery. In fact, with our international version, six versions farther along than where we started, each of which has had significant improvements in reliability and yield and precision, climate control. As a result of that success, our farmer network has grown 15X from what it was in 2019, our revenues last year were 13 times what they were in 2019. And this is public. Folks could download our perspectives and see this. But we're expecting another call it 50% or so increase again in 2024.

And now, in sort of a back to the future way, the company had developed a smaller version of the farm in sort of the 2015 timeframe, about half the size, to have much wider range of use cases, be less expensive. Sold out of it back in 2015, but just the company was too small to manage two product lines, so shut it down. So we just came out with a short run of production of it's called the garden, which is about half the size, much more attractive as a window you can look inside, see what's going on, much lower price point. Actually just had its debut at the Boston Museum of Science, which has been a lot of fun. So again, it's really been continuing to drive that four wall economics, just like retail and restaurants, and working on all of the processes from manufacturing, engineering, customer success that need to go with continuing to scale that single unit across much wider customer segments, much wider use cases, but all with sort of the consistent control and farming process that allow somebody to get the most out of the farms.

0:23:31 - Harry Duran

I noticed that there's an earlier year. There was a press release mentioning the growth in the adoption across nonprofit health care and education sectors as well. Why is that initiative important for freight farms?

0:23:42 - Rick Vanzura

Well for two reasons One is wearing that capitalist hat, the other is wearing the mission-driven hat. So the capitalist hat it's a huge market Education, health care, veterans organizations, homeless shelters, food banks, etc. They all have a range of needs, whether it's food distribution, education, population engagement, particularly with youth or disadvantaged populations, etc. That create huge opportunities. But the other piece is just, it's a big part of you know, our missions around democratizing access to food and driving sustainability, and when people think about sustainability, a lot of time it gets reduced down to carbon goals and those are obviously super important. But the UN has 17 different SDGs for a reason and we hit on we think about 10 of those and the majority of the SDGs get hit on really in nonprofit, in terms of education and empowering disadvantaged populations, etc. So again, both are really important for us.

0:25:00 - Harry Duran

In terms of potential for what's on the horizon, for, having given the time that you spent at freight farms so far, has there been any surprises for you in terms of the actual potential of what's possible, different than what you may have thought when you first took the job?

0:25:15 - Rick Vanzura

I'll say the only thing that surprises me and it obviously wound up being a negative for the industry is how much hype and you know the valuations that were created in 2021. And, to be frank, we were presented back then with some of those opportunities. And the issue with it obviously is, if you have an extremely high valuation and to support that you're raising a lot of money, in a lot of ways forces you to waste money because you've got to come up with some hockey stick plan that supports your valuation and you've got to come up with a use of funds that justifies how much money you're raising. So, to me, one of the great ironies that what seemed like a treasure, this great opportunity, really in a lot of ways sows the seeds for future problems. So and it's been talked about a lot by a number of different people how we've kind of gone through the Gartner hype cycle and 2021. Early 22 was the apex of the euphoria at the beginning of the cycle and then we went into the trough of despair and you know, now I think we're coming out.

I was at the vertical farming world Congress and talked to a number of the existing infrastructure players and I think, genuinely a number of them.

People don't disclose, but I felt good enough, based on what I heard, that I really believe that a number of players are figuring it out and they have models that are working because they've either found how to co-locate with renewable energy or they focused on a specific crop.

Aeropharms, I think, is a good example of a you know a company that now, through the pain that they went through post-back, they found microgreens work and, yeah, it's not a $10 billion business, but if you say I'm happy with microgreens, you can make a nice business off of that.

So I think vertical farming now is going through the period of it's adjusting to reality and the survivors are surviving for a reason and are generally good operators and they're all in the process of figuring out what's the right model for now, leading to the ultimate future where again, unfortunately, climate change is real and all of the issues that created the hype around vertical farming aren't going away and things that are going to be tailwinds for vertical farming in the long run, outside of the climate change issues, like what's going to happen with renewable energy. You know over time, by definition, renewable energy has to be cheaper than non-renewable because it's renewable. So I think in the long, long, long run, vertical farming in general, including the large infrastructure players, will be a huge industry in the short run. We've now entered the period of reality where people realize you can't sell on what the world's going to look like 30 years from now. You've got to demonstrate that you have a model that works today, and I think we're going to see a lot of that showing up this year.

0:28:37 - Harry Duran

It seems like the trend that you're headed in is really positive for the injury and, if we're in series B3, funding around in late 2022 was a testament to you know the support that you're getting from the investment community, but also the belief that the model that you have is working and adding value for the investors as well. I also noticed that a couple of the you've got a new hire, a new CMO, and you've been in a new VP of software engineering, so I'm wondering how you think about, from that leadership position, where's the right place to invest in terms of the growth of your team and, with a forward-looking vision, to where you want the company to be a year from now through years from now.

0:29:14 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, well, I would say investments need to occur throughout the business and a lot of it work hand-in-hand.

So our job number one is always going to be make the customer successful in the long run.

There's no way you can have a successful business if you don't accomplish that mission, and that runs through the intersection of R&D and customer success team by and large and connecting it with the sales process and the sales team.

Having said that, marketing is hugely important because, at the end of the day, our ability to invest in R&D at the level we would like, our ability to provide that customer support at the level we like, obviously gets much easier at scale. And in an industry that still has such relatively low awareness like ours, a big challenge is just having people understand that we even exist. So I would say we're pretty balanced around the organization in terms of level of emphasis around how much time we need to spend making sure people get the message versus how much we invest in making sure that our solution delivers against that, but again, all of it through the lens of, at the end of the day, our number one priority is going to be making customers successful, so we need to map everything we're doing to that and if somehow it doesn't relate to that which, again, marketing and creating scale does, if it doesn't relate to that, then it's going to have a hard time getting funded.

0:30:51 - Harry Duran

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious in the different roles you've had in a leadership position and obviously, as you learn more with each position, you mature and learn from your mistakes. I'm curious what your experience has been and how you've changed your leadership style over the years, based on all the experiences you've had, to current day.

0:31:12 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, probably more confessional then that would be great. But say again in full disclosure, I earlier in my career I would say I was I could be autocratic and not listen enough and not appreciate enough that the closer you get to people who are close to the customer, the more likely you are to be getting the truth. And I would say part of that style is, earlier in my career, a lot of important information. I look back on it I probably just never got because people weren't willing to take the risk or they thought it's a waste of time. He's made up his mind anyway. So I would say you know, it's obviously always a work in progress, but I make a much more concerted effort now to listen to others. I would say I also.

One of my best learning lessons in hindsight is I had a boss at Borders who it's pretty clear his philosophy was he was a believer in allowing non-fatal errors because that's how you would learn, and he would just step in when he knew like for the company's sake or my sake he had to step in. But he gave me a lot of freedom to try things that in hindsight I think he at the time suspected I was doing something that wasn't the right decision, but felt like for his personal growth, it's gonna be better for him to find this out himself than for me to say, no, this is what you wanna do, and I think that worked, because those lessons become super ingrained where you make a decision that, for whatever reason, doesn't work out well. So I would say that's another one where I try to follow that philosophy, and again for two reasons.

one, empowerment helps folks feel more ownership and learn if it's a mistake. But the other is I'm not always right and there are plenty of times where somebody has elected to do something that at the time I thought I wouldn't have done that. But I see how it works out and I'm like what do you know? Their idea was better than mine, so I'm glad I gave him the freedom to do something I wouldn't have done. So that's really it more listening, more understanding what you don't know, and also team composition. Like to me, it's super important to have a good sense of self because, as you're building a team, a big part of building the team is making sure you have complementary skills and gap fillers, and you're not gonna do a good job of identifying the right gap fillers unless you're willing to acknowledge you have gaps that need to be filled.

0:34:10 - Harry Duran

Yeah, it's a very humbling approach and it's a testament to showing how much you've learned from your mentors the folks that were helpful for you along this journey and also how much you understand the importance of getting insight from everyone on the team because, as you might have already experienced, if you give them the safe space to express ideas that may not be the right idea in the moment, but just show a forward way of thinking, I think they'll feel more comfortable with sharing new ideas going forward. Yeah, so, as you think about the challenges that we face in the vertical farming industry and we talked a little bit about marketing how do you think what can we do better as an industry when it comes to sharing the benefits of vertical farming? Obviously, because of the podcast, I think about it myself as I walk into the grocery store and I head straight to the produce aisle and my eyes are locked in on where the vertical farming companies or where, or at least, the greenhouse companies, and I've been noticing my buying habits changing dramatically as I become more and more aware of the benefit of what we do. What do you think are gonna be some of the challenges? As you mentioned, it's the new space for people who are not immersed in it on the day to even explain the concepts, to understand and explain the benefits.

I had a challenge with my own dad when I was telling him about the podcast and I was like, hey, did you know? Your leafy greens travel 3,000 miles from California to get to the plate. And it didn't even sink in. I mean, it wasn't even enough for him to think maybe I should consider. It's almost like if it's not broken, why try to fix it? So I'm wondering if those are some of the headwinds that we're running into here.

0:35:42 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, I think there are two issues. One is having common agreement on the main problems we need to solve, and I actually think there, in the meetings and the groups I've been involved in, we can get there relatively quickly. But the second, and where it sort of breaks down, is how do you convert that into sort of agreement on an action plan and how we all participate in that action plan, whether it's funding or whatever level of participation it needs to be. And a good example of that is I was with one group, ceo group where the topic was well, how do we think about our positioning versus organic? And everybody sort of unanimously agreed what we should be doing is, rather than fighting the battle to be labeled organic and everything you need to do there, claim the higher position. I mean, we're cleaner than organic, we're more transparent, obviously organic and again, organic plays a role and I'm all for it.

But you can have an organic farm right next to a cattle field and that's gonna create a set of issues. You don't have those issues in vertical farming. But then the breakdown is sort of okay. Well for us to get that message across as an industry, because we would all benefit from it. How would we fund it, how would we agree on the communication plan, et cetera.

And that sort of takes time and it takes resource. And I do think again from my view of the world and others depending on the organizations therein, I'm sure have slightly different views of the world, but everybody right now is so intently focused on this current mandate of proving unit economics and the viability of vertical farming that a lot of how we would cooperate because that takes an extra level of effort to cooperate and it takes some time to actually see the benefit of that cooperation Everyone right now is so focused on their own journey toward on that path, the profitability and viability that I think it's sucking up a lot of what would be good intention around the value of cooperating around these issues, but just the resourcing and the prioritization around it has been high enough.

0:38:15 - Harry Duran

Yeah, and hopefully these conversations can happen at some of these conferences. I know because it's one of the few places where some of the leadership in this industry can gather and have some of these sidebar conversations. What's your experience with some of these conferences? Have you found them helpful for free farming or even you personally to understand what's happening?

0:38:34 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, I think they are great vehicles for meeting others in the industry. Having these discussions. It's super efficient from that standpoint. Whether you're an exhibitor at a conference really comes down to what you're trying to accomplish. So if you are a vendor to others in the industry, then I think it's a great vehicle. Again, to be honest, for somebody like us, where our end customers tend to not be the folks who attend industry conferences, to invest money as a marketing vehicle is a challenge to see the payback. But again, the investment on time, knowing that so many people in the industry are all in one place and you can be so efficient at meeting them, it's great for that.

0:39:24 - Harry Duran

This question may change day to day, but what's a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently.

0:39:29 - Rick Vanzura

That's a tough question. I'm trying to figure out which one I would Focus on. I mean right now it's how do you balance the time commitment of trying to complete the process we're working on right now while also running a business, which, again, a lot of folks right now are dealing with that, because fundraising in our industry, and certainly when it's through the lens of trying to go public, is a non trivial exercise. So time management how am I going to manage work obligations and home obligations and multiple facets of work? That's probably number one right now.

0:40:12 - Harry Duran

You're probably not alone there. So, as we get close to wrapping up, I like to leave some time at the end of these conversations. Because of the nature of the audience and it's a lot of your fellow colleagues in the vertical farming space. Is there any message that you have for your peers in vertical farming in CEA? You know? I just any thoughts, because you have this ability to speak to them, because a lot of them, like I said, listen to the show. So anything that comes to mind for you in terms of a message, of a broad message or a message to the broad industry.

0:40:40 - Rick Vanzura

Yeah, I think I already delivered it. But my number one would be let's support each other.

0:40:46 - Harry Duran

Yeah.

0:40:46 - Rick Vanzura

And again, support doesn't have to mean open book information sharing, and I open up my calendar to do nothing but talk to other people and help other people. We all have to run our own business and for each of us, making our own business successful is going to be priority number one. But I do think that for us collectively, this is much more of an issue around growing the total market than it is for each of us maximizing our respective share of the pie. There are still so few industry players and we are still such a minuscule percentage of produce production in the US that if we could grow this market at a highly significant rate, there's more room for all of us to succeed, and I think part of that rooting for each other is sharing our successes and celebrating our successes as much as possible.

I mean one thing about the process we're going through now is we'll have to share our information. That's just part of going down the path to being a public company. So hopefully we'll help the industry by putting points on the board and hopefully people will root for us in that journey, just like there have been plenty of examples on LinkedIn where somebody else in the industry has celebrated a success and I've celebrated along with them and I plan on continuing to do that and, again, having all of us celebrate all of farming and thinking about ourselves as part of that large farming ecosystem, each component of which needs to continue to get better and we need to root on everybody. So, again, as the expression says, a rising tide lifts all boats. So right now, I think focusing on the tides more important than whether our boats ahead of the other boat.

0:42:47 - Harry Duran

And in keeping with that nautical theme, it is at all hands on deck moment, because if everyone was going full steam or we doubled or tripled the output, there's still a lot more to be done and, like you said, it's just such a minuscule part of what's actually consumed on a global scale.

So I think there's a lot of work to be done and I think having that mindset of everyone chipping in and doing their part and being open to contributing and cooperating and sharing where appropriate, I think that's really the share of that. I think that's really the most important part of what we're doing in the industry in the right direction. So thank you for having that approach and applaud you and Freight Farms for being a leader in this industry, and I want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show. I know you've got a busy schedule, but I just love sharing stories. Origin stories are my favorite and I love to hear you know it's such a new industry, how people got into this and what keeps them excited to be in here, because I feel like there's a lot of potential and every new person that comes in and hears these interviews can see the opportunities. So I want to thank you for sharing your journey so far with Freight Farms, because I think it's very inspirational.

0:43:47 - Rick Vanzura

Now, thank you, and I would just part by saying I've had a lot of really fun, interesting jobs, but this is by far the most rewarding, and there's a Native American proverb that always hits me hard. That goes we don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children, and here's our chance to play our role in paying back a little for our kids, which in so many ways I think is important. So I think we also all should celebrate that as well. As I know, the overwhelming majority of people in this industry are in this industry as much because they want to make a difference in the world and they want to make a lot of money, and that's awesome.

0:44:32 - Harry Duran

Hopefully as an added bonus, your daughter now thinks you have a cool job.

0:44:35 - Rick Vanzura

She definitely does. She definitely does much better.

0:44:39 - Harry Duran

Yeah Well, thanks again, rick. I really enjoyed our conversation. I'm glad the listeners get a little bit more insight into what makes Freight Farms take on your journey. So far, great thanks. Appreciate being on the show. Okay, bye guys.