S10E134 Rick Langille/Harvest Today’s - The Secret to Unlocking Nutrient Rich Greens

Harry Duran 0:00 - 0:05

So Rick Langell, founder and CEO of Harvest today. Thank you so much for joining me on the vertical farming podcast.

Rick Langille 0:06 - 0:08

Great to be here, Harry. Thanks for inviting me.

Harry Duran 0:08 - 0:12

A lively conversation about all things vertical farming.

Rick Langille 0:12 - 1:06

I hope so. Yeah, I think tend to bring, I don't lack in energy. Right. Even, you know, for the age that I'm at, I have a lot of energy and certainly done a lot of adventuring and. But I think my business experience has really, you know, it's like for actually right out of the bible, it's for such a time as this. Right. We are a cumulation of our, I call it the background of obviousness. There are things that is obvious to us. Right. And I like to think that here I am at this age and my wife is about to kill me because if I start another company, she will shoot me. And to be honest, I wouldn't blame her. But yeah, it's for such a time as this that harvest today is really here. It's that farming experience, manufacturing experience, the electronics experience. You know, I grew up on a farm so I just, I was always producing food for other people. So harvest today was a pretty natural. The harvest wall came out of that.

Harry Duran 1:06 - 1:11

Make our way through that progression that you just outlined for us so eloquently. Where's home for you?

Rick Langille 1:11 - 1:27

I live in, well, the business is here in Broomfield, Colorado. My wife and I live in Lafayette, which is part of it's Boulder county. We're just northwest of Denver. Boulder is about 8 miles that way. Yeah, the mountains are.

Harry Duran 1:29 - 1:32

And we'll have to guide the listener for those who are just listening.

Rick Langille 1:34 - 1:38

Yeah. To the west of where I'm at right now. Yeah. Unlike you in Minnesota.

Harry Duran 1:38 - 1:39

Where did you grow up?

Rick Langille 1:40 - 1:55

I grew up in Stonewall, Manitoba. So yeah, my kids call me a Comerican. Right. Because I've been, I've lived here in the United States now coming up to 34 years. So a little over half of my life has been here in the United States.

Harry Duran 1:55 - 1:59

What was your connection with food growing up?

Rick Langille 2:00 - 2:50

We grew up on a farm. Mom and dad were farmers. I was post military service for my dad. He wanted to get back farming. He was from Nova Scotia. So we bought a farm just south of Stonewall, Manitoba. And so that's basically where I grew up. And we had a half section of land, so we didn't have a lot of land, but we had a lot of pigs. So we were basically a bacon factory. But we were into breeding, so I thought I was going to be a vet. Right. I really went to university and got a degree in animal science, but that morphed into, obviously, growing lots of food and just producing food for people and lots of breeding stock. So it was. That was the background. But I stopped working on the farm when mom and dad decided to get rid of the pigs. And I got into manufacturing in Winnipeg, and then my wife at the time got transferred from great west life, so she was in the investment division. So that's where started to give my business background and stuff like that.

Harry Duran 2:50 - 3:02

And so did you have thoughts about continuing in something agriculture related or now that you had moved into manufacturing, the experience that you had with your family at the time, did you think that might have been enough for you?

Rick Langille 3:03 - 4:25

Yeah. Farming was in my back. It was in my rearview mirror, for sure. And I got into manufacturing and really enjoyed the engineering part of it, because as a farmer, you're a carpenter, you're a welder, you're obviously taking care of plants, obviously taking care of lots of animals, but you're caring for other things. But it was through that engineering background that I really kind of fell into. And I had an electronics company here in Colorado for 25 years. So long time, had 50 plus employees, and really had. That was kind of really well rooted. But I sold that company. I sold it to a big multinational, and that's when I decided I wanted to raise my kids back on a farm. That's really where it all came from. So I got to know some of the other people in the industry, particularly in the hydroponic industry, and that was in, like, 2012, 2013. And after, you know, I had my MBA head on, and I decided at that time it was very challenging to be able to make a living at hydroponic farming. So I also grew up sailing, so I wanted to go sailing, and that's when we bought a bigger. We bought a rather large boat, and we went sailing for five years. So that was a pretty fun piece of my adventuring background. Right. But, Harry, it was really through that sailing adventure that when we came back, I realized we lived food insecurity. Okay, that's my dog scratching.

Harry Duran 4:25 - 4:44

As a podcaster, I love when these things happen, because it just. It reminds both the viewer and the listener that real life sometimes takes over. And I love it as a podcaster because I don't want. I want to remind people that this is not NPR, and we're not, you know, we don't do professional studios. So what's. What's your dog's name? Lily. What kind of dog?

Rick Langille 4:44 - 4:51

Yeah, we have a Bernadoodle. We have a Bernad he is the best dog I've ever had. He's just amazing. I love him. He's always right here with you.

Harry Duran 4:51 - 4:55

Welcome to the show. So, yeah, you were just talking about the importance of legacy.

Rick Langille 4:55 - 5:42

Yeah. Because, you know, we do things, we study things. We have relationships. How do we actually. What is the epitaph on our tombstone? Right. And I didn't want to be Rick had a family, had a business, and died. Right. I'd like to think that people will look back at harvest today and know that we're not copiers. We don't. I'm not. If it was just to create another NFT channel system, I'm out. Like, that's not me. Right. Because I always believe that there's a better way to do things. It just might not. And not necessarily. Well, no, I am going to say better, because I'm going to hold up my flag and tell you that I really do believe that the harvest wall was designed, and we say engineered by farmers. For farmers.

Harry Duran 5:42 - 5:43

Yeah.

Rick Langille 5:43 - 6:25

Right. And the other thing is, it's not a toy, you know? No. We go into a lot of. We were just literally at a hydra at a hydroponic store, and Kristen was saying, they've got this rise, and it's like, you know, aero gardens and things like that. You know, they're 100, $200, they can grow eight plants or ten plants, and people, you know, kind of use them for a year. They break, and then they throw them away and they get a new one. Well, I think we live in a very disposable world, and going around and sailing as far as we did. You know, we did sail all the way to Australia. So I have sailed halfway around the world, and I think that's a pretty cool thing to be able to put on your resume, right? Well, it was during that adventure. And this came from Bora Bora.

Harry Duran 6:25 - 6:25

Beautiful.

Rick Langille 6:26 - 6:28

Yeah, it's cool. And. But there's a.

Harry Duran 6:28 - 6:32

For the benefit of the listener, he's just showing a really beautiful arm tattoo there on his right shoulder.

Rick Langille 6:33 - 9:59

Yeah, I got. Half of my arm is covered with absolutely traditional french polynesian tattoo. But again, it's part of our story. Right. I'm very purposeful in what I do. And when we got back, I wanted to. We got into, again, the study of the hydroponic industry and realizing that things the way. Brenda, my wife, is a pharmacist. Okay. And one of the things that she would always say is that if you went and got a hydroponic tomato, it literally tasted watered down. Well, I dove into a study of, well, why does it taste like that? Like, what's, you know, why. That doesn't mean it doesn't grow a tomato. It doesn't mean it doesn't grow a strawberry. But how do we, what causes that? The flavonoids is what we physically taste in our sense or in our tongues. What makes taste taste? Right. Well, it also happens to build into the whole story of nutrients and nutrient density. Right. How do we transfer the nutrient solutions from a hydroponic solution? Be it whatever it is, our Ec is all balanced. Our ph is perfect. We've got great water, got great iron, got great calcium. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, that list of things that we keep going talk about? How do we transfer that into a plant and do it in a meaningful way that allows the plant to be more plant nutrient dense and have more flavonoids in other. More taste, more flavor? Well, it does go around to the, eventually, we're going to get to this magical word called a microbiome. Right. You can't do it in a. People would say, you can do it in hydroponics. I would debate them with that. And that's why the harvest wall is really vertically irrigated potted plants. For the lack of a better definition, we do use the term vertigation, right? So it's not hydroponic, it's vertigation. It's vertical irrigation of potted plants. Right, right. So we have two different ports. We have the small port, which is two inches, that supports lettuces. We've grown peppers in them, we've grown tomatoes in them. We've grown acres of basil. And then we've every kind of variety of leafy greens and herbs you can think of. Okay. And I would suggest that the flavor is different on the better side. Right. And then again, we get. So then the other thing is we get into the whole cea equation. And in that equation, Harry, we talk about just straight up capex, like, how much does it really cost to build this farm? Right? And I go back to my days of farming in Canada, and I realize that we're kind of peeing in the ocean, for lack of a better term, when we're talking about controlled environment stuff. But it's not necessarily about growing gobs and gobs of food. It's about serving communities. It's not about, I'm not going to set up a farm in downtown Denver and say we're going to feed the entire population of Denver. It's not going to happen. We're going to get people that are truly interested in plants with flavor. Right. There's a reason for the name of our company. It's harvest today. We haven't figured out how to tie that little bow around, harvest it today and eat it today. Because again, we could go into all the equation about how long it takes leafy greens and herbs to lose that flavors, the minerals, the vitamins, everything that we want in our bodies as food, because it doesn't take very long because we're basically harvesting water.

Harry Duran 9:59 - 10:10

Well, that'd be helpful for the benefit of the listener if you could walk through that, because I know we had a brief chat about that last week, and I think those stats would be a bit sobering for some who are hearing it for the first time.

Rick Langille 10:10 - 11:40

Doctor Justin. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's three data points that you really need to think about. Any leafy green or herbs can lose up to or more than 50% of its nutrient value within 72 hours. Right. That doesn't take three days. Then to lose 100% takes ten days. Right. Seven to ten days. Again, depends on the variety, the average number of days it takes for a harvested farm or harvested vegetable, leafy greens or herbs to get to a grocery store shelf. The average number of days is ten. So that means everything that we're basically eating, be it any retailer that you're talking about, the value, the nutrient value of the food is zero. Right. And probably the best way that I can really communicate to any of our listeners right now is that when I eat a salad off of the harvest wall, I am satiated. It really does. I don't have to eat a mound of salad in order to feel full. And probably the best example that I can give you is that because I eat salads all the time when I go to, even if I go to a restaurant, right, the next morning, if I have it for night, for dinner, right, or late lunch or whatever, the next day, I'm typically hungry. I'm ready to eat when I wake up. If I do it from home, I usually don't eat until noon. Okay, that's pretty typical, because I don't, I'm not a believer in three meals a day, but I am a believer in eating good food. And then because you do feel satiated.

Harry Duran 11:40 - 12:30

I think that's what's interesting for people to really think about, because we have to readjust our perceived notions of what food is, where food comes from. Our opinions about, like, a salad is something you would typically eat because it doesn't fill you up. But we never really question why doesn't it fill you up? And this concept of satiation is really interesting because, you know, you've now you've done the test yourself. And it's not that by virtue of it being a salad that it's not filling, it's by virtue of it being a not nutrient rich and not nutrient dense, leafy green or salad or greens, whatever it is. And now you're experiencing that firsthand. Like, what is the difference when you actually can have greens that are harvested in the way, harvest today, harvest them, and keeps and maintains all that density, all that nutrient in the greens.

Rick Langille 12:30 - 12:46

Yeah, exactly. But it's also is about how we grow it because they're literally, and probably the best example that I think we can kind of noodle around is grandma had a garden. Do you remember what things used to taste like from the garden? Wow.

Harry Duran 12:46 - 13:11

And that's for the people that were lucky enough to have a grandmother that had a garden. And growing up just outside New York City and living in New York City and Los Angeles, like, you know, when you look at the stats of the percentage of people that live in dense populated cities, you know, it's really high. And I will venture to say that there's a large percentage of people that have never had the experience of, like, fresh produce, fresh greens, you know, grown in their garden or in a backyard.

Rick Langille 13:12 - 13:22

And this is straight out of the USDA website. You can go and dig this up yourself. And they recommend three to 5oz of leafy greens eaten per day.

Harry Duran 13:22 - 13:22

Yeah.

Rick Langille 13:22 - 13:38

In order to have a really good balanced diet. If we were to actually eat that 108 port harvest wall would support an average four to five person family in a house. So you can easily do it in your own house. We don't have to go back to grandma.

Harry Duran 13:38 - 13:39

Yeah.

Rick Langille 13:39 - 14:36

And it doesn't take a whole lot. You know, it would be 360 watt lights, so 180 watts of energy six times a. So you could actually do the calculation of what it would actually cost to physically grow that food. Each port, we always say each port on a harvest wall will produce about three pounds of leafy greens per year. Right. So you can do the calculation back to exactly what it would do. But again, from, you know, because our scalability from a manufacturing standpoint, like I say, engineered farmers, you know, producing food as farmers. Right. Whole concept. Because it really is. It's an engineered solution. Right. Using three different molding technologies. Because that's what I used to do. Right. And using nothing but food grade certified plastics. I know somebody's probably going to say, well, are we recycling anything. Well, the problem is, recycled plastics really are meant for different purposes.

Harry Duran 14:37 - 14:37

Yes, sure.

Rick Langille 14:37 - 14:50

I wish, I wish, I wish. We've done some tests for. It's called PLA polylactic acid. It's basically corn based resins. Okay. We are playing around with that. But the problem is it's designed to be composted.

Harry Duran 14:50 - 14:51

Yeah.

Rick Langille 14:52 - 15:10

We put light all over it and then get it wet with nutrient solution and make it so that it doesn't fall apart. It kind of doesn't. It's not really designed to do that. But we are absolutely open to that conversation, and I hope someday I'll be able to call you up and say, harry, I got a corn based harvest wall. Works great.

Harry Duran 15:10 - 15:42

Well, technology is advancing so quickly in all realms of science, and I would not be surprised if there's something that's going to be discovered soon that could actually fit your needs and really dramatically change how we think about our resources and our natural resources and how we're building things. Because you've obviously mentioned the manufacturing background a bit. I want to rewind the clock back and just talk about what that experience was like because you grew it. Imagine you grew that company from zero. You started that company, and then when you finally exited, how many employees did you have?

Rick Langille 15:42 - 15:44

50? 52.

Harry Duran 15:44 - 15:46

Was that your first experience as a CEO?

Rick Langille 15:46 - 15:48

No, that was my second one.

Harry Duran 15:48 - 15:49

Okay.

Rick Langille 15:49 - 15:52

Yeah. I had another manufacturing company that did window coverings.

Harry Duran 15:52 - 15:53

Okay.

Rick Langille 15:53 - 15:57

Yeah. And I sold that. And that's actually still here in Louisville. They're doing great.

Harry Duran 15:57 - 15:57

Okay.

Rick Langille 15:58 - 16:09

Yeah. Wonderful friends, wonderful people. I just went into an electronics background. We went into electronics instead of just buying, you know, taking fabric and cutting aluminum, making it into a blind. That was kind of boring.

Harry Duran 16:10 - 16:23

So you had the experience with that first company, and then I imagine you learn a lot along the way of what to do, what not to do. And so this being your third go around as a CEO, how have you evolved as a leader throughout these experiences?

Rick Langille 16:24 - 16:31

Oh, I got it for you, buddy. That's a great question. Thank you. I always considered myself to be a CEO by default.

Harry Duran 16:31 - 16:34

Expound on that, because my partners were.

Rick Langille 16:34 - 17:18

Never wanted to lead. They never really had the vision, and it seemed to be. But I always looked at myself as being the CEO, the leader of a company by default, because I never really thought, you know, I'm not the guy to have the tie on. You know, I got a t shirt on with the boulder. Boulder logo on it. This is me. It's not. There's no facade. I'm not going to be the one with all the acronyms about Wall street. I'm not that guy. I am not the one that's going to. I will tell you, we have been very successful in raising equity capital for the company. Been very successful at it, and we have some wonderful equity partners. But this company isn't about how much money we've raised. What I'm happy to tell you is we just sold a bunch of walls to Disney.

Harry Duran 17:18 - 17:19

Congrats.

Rick Langille 17:20 - 18:26

We just. We're about to sell two projects down in the Caribbean where we are absolutely going to impact the lives of a bunch of people on some islands that have never had a chance, because they're all volcanic islands. They don't grow vegetables on those islands. These people are filled with sodas and bags of tostitos, you know, processed food out the yin yang. Have they ever really had an opportunity to really consume nutrient dense, leafy greens? Right? And we're not talking little farms here like, these are going to produce an unbelievable amount of produce. Okay. That's what I'm proud about. We are going to change these people's lives. Right? We talk about diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Three things. Those three things. If we can get people eating leafy greens on a consistent basis, they will feel better, they will sleep better, they will think more clear. It's just, how can we impact our fellow humans?

Harry Duran 18:27 - 19:13

I definitely want to dive into that. And obviously, as the host and the ringleader, it's my responsibility to make sure these threads get connected and we close the ones that we've opened as well. So I just want to circle back a little bit. I'm curious if you have any other additional thoughts about your evolution as a leader throughout these experiences. And if you're managing teams and you say you're not the typical CEO, but where have you seen the growth? Because sometimes you can only see it looking back, and I was using myself as an example. I'm much better at podcast interviews than I was on that first one in 2014. I've got almost 400 under my belt, but I only see that looking back. And I'm curious if sometimes we're moving so fast and we don't take the time to sell it, not only not celebrate the wins, but also not see how we've grown. And I'm curious what comes alive for you when you think about the.

Rick Langille 19:13 - 21:41

Yep, that one's easy. Business is people. It's not about me. And that it. That took me a while to figure that out. Right? It really did. Certainly. I think the older we get, the ego gets smaller. Right. Hopefully, you know, and that's I think that. I hope that's the case for myself as I've gotten more gray hair. The ability to understand that if we build a really super strong team and we listen to them. Right. So. And I do listen to my people all the time. Like, I think I've got a really strong, really strong case for. I think you've met Peter Marr. He's my global marketing and sales director. His background, with his legal background and his experience with Otterbox, and recently with Blue Lab, we have crafted our team with people that are in the industry that are leading in a thoughtful way that allows us to build our brand. Okay. So again, back in the day, I would suggest. I really didn't understand how important a brand is. Okay. When you go to a trade show now and you see that we call it the logo soup. Right. I think ours stands out. It really does. Our products are branded. You can look at a harvest wall and you can see that is absolutely coming from Rick's company. And that's. I've learned how to do that over the years because I didn't know how to do it, you know, before. That doesn't mean I didn't have good product. Right. It just means I've matched really good marketing for brand recognition and for people to be able to get back to you. Right. And I always tell everybody about the Guinness ad. You know that Guinness ad where these guys, they're all these paper cut things out, and these guys are like, let's invent. Let's invent a six pack, right? Six pack of beer, of course. Right? But it goes like this, and he takes his arm and he goes, what? Like this. Like, it's because it's a paper cut, right. It's his arm literally rotating up. And then they say, brilliant, right? Yeah, that's brilliant marketing. Absolutely. So it's the same thing with harvest today, right. It's the name of the company. Harvest today. It's about food. It's about eating it immediately. There's a whole bunch of other reasons. So, again, I wouldn't have ever even thought about that 20 years ago. Right? Now, I think about it all the time. Right? That's part of it. But it's also culminating in just really strong foundationally excellence in engineering.

Harry Duran 21:41 - 22:06

You've got, obviously, experience with these companies managing and hiring people and a lot of our audience, and there's folks that are just getting started, building teams, figuring out when's the right time for expansion. So how do you think about the challenge of not only finding the right people, how do you do that? But once you have the right people, how do you put them in a position to succeed?

Rick Langille 22:06 - 24:24

Great question. I totally get you. Number one. Hire slow, fire fast. I'm serious. I don't want to be curt. I don't want to be. I don't want to come across as a hard nose. But I have learned that when we have a position, if we're trying to find somebody in the right position, you make sure that you hire the right person, but methodically get the right one. Make sure you don't never hire the first interview. That doesn't mean you don't come around and hire her again. And Wendy is our first, is our office manager now. She was the first interview. I thought she was great. We ordered, we interviewed, actually, we hired her through an agency and it came around. We didn't make her the offer. The first one. Right. The one that we offered the job to the first time through the hiring process. She failed some tests. So means we came back around at that time would have been number two. And it turned out to be. Wendy's just been an amazing addition to our team. Yeah, just amazing. So the other one is. That's clear for me, is that how do we get employees to understand the skin in the game? Like, it's not just about a salary, right. It's not just about punching a clock. You know, can you craft your employment program with your people to include some level of sweat equity? Harder you sweat, the more equity you get. Serious. And I mean it. We've easily done that. So I've given away a significant piece of this company to the employees. Right. Because it's. It ain't about me. It's not about me. Right. It's about our team. And I feel really super strong about that. And I think that we're going to continue to do that as we hire and build our team. You know, we're up to eleven people now. It's good news, bad news thing. But I would say the chances of harvest today staying in Colorado is not good. A political situation here, taxes, just the cost of living, it's becoming really a challenge. So we were looking at a couple other states that could potentially be where we move harvest today. From corporate standpoint or where I live, it's all, I'm not going anywhere. I'm living in Colorado. No other than my wife is afraid because we are in the process of looking at setting up a farm in Roatan, in Honduras.

Harry Duran 24:24 - 24:25

Okay.

Rick Langille 24:25 - 24:28

Yeah. So the chances of that happening is pretty good.

Harry Duran 24:28 - 24:44

I just had a chat with the secretary of agriculture for Virginia, Matt Lauer. They're really doing a lot to sort of make their mark as being, like, the best place in the United States to start an indoor farm. They even had a day in March last year. It was national CEA day, so.

Rick Langille 24:45 - 24:45

Really?

Harry Duran 24:45 - 24:49

Yeah. And they've got the partnering with indoor Agcon. So they do an event in October.

Rick Langille 24:49 - 24:51

So, yeah, we're going to be there.

Harry Duran 24:51 - 25:02

Okay. Yeah. So it might be chance. I'm going to see if I can make it out there. It seems like all my vertical farming friends are now. The group of friends is growing now, so I might have to make a trip down to Virginia.

Rick Langille 25:02 - 25:04

Well, you have to. Are you going to come out to Amsterdam?

Harry Duran 25:04 - 25:10

Amsterdam? I won't make it, but I wanted to connect you with my partner, sapper from Igro News. He's going to be there because he lives in France.

Rick Langille 25:10 - 25:12

I did a podcast with him here in the.

Harry Duran 25:12 - 25:16

Yeah, so make sure you connect. We'll reconnect with him because he's going to look, get some people together.

Rick Langille 25:17 - 25:23

Yeah. And his dad, Jean Luc. Yeah, Jean Luc is a distributor for harvest today over there.

Harry Duran 25:23 - 25:24

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Rick Langille 25:24 - 25:30

Big time. Yeah. They're super, super good people. I can't. Looking forward. They got a couple pretty good projects coming up in Dubai.

Harry Duran 25:30 - 25:41

So, Rick, when you think about why you are the way you are or how you became the leader you are now, were there people that were mentors for you along the way?

Rick Langille 25:42 - 26:20

Easy. Of course. That was an easy one. Morley, Myron Morley is a dear, sweet friend of mine. He was the executive marketing director for K Tel International. So if you remember K Tel's goofy greats or, you know, it was kind of back in the seventies. I'll never forget when I was back in the day with Morley, because he's the one who hired me off the farm. He was the guy. 1982. Yes. And I'll tell you how old I am. The gold albums on the wall of his office. And so I'll never forget that. That was a really interesting experience. And he had, remember back in the day when Nike started.

Harry Duran 26:20 - 26:20

Yeah.

Rick Langille 26:20 - 27:20

And they had the poster. No finish line. Remember that? That was on the wall of his office. Right. And actually, Wendy's in the process of trying to find that poster for me. But there is no finish line. There is no finish line but him. Morley gave me my first manufacturing job, and eventually I became the operations manager for his business. We had over 150 people manufacturing blinds in the plant in Winnipeg. And it was through that experience I worked for him in Winnipeg for eight years. Fantastic experience. Also connected me with a group in Denmark, and it was through that kind of european process that I really learned a lot of really good foundational processes and how to do it. I don't want to age myself, but that was before computers. Okay, this is long. This is all long written out process stuff and telexes. This is before faxes, right. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. That makes me feel old. That's exactly where I started.

Harry Duran 27:20 - 27:34

Where does your. This drive? But also this attention to detail, and this seems like a strong work ethic, because I can kind of sense that as a thread through everything you're talking about. Where do you think that comes from?

Rick Langille 27:35 - 28:02

I grew up on a farm, buddy. I grew up on a farm, and. Yep, that's next. No, I'm true. If somebody comes to me and they said that they grew up on a farm, I will take you seriously about working for my company. Absolutely. I've had some less than desirable experiences with some other younger kids from urban backgrounds, and as much as they think they work hard.

Harry Duran 28:02 - 28:03

Yeah.

Rick Langille 28:03 - 28:14

Not even close. Yeah. Yeah. Right? And if somebody's punching the clock at 05:00 and they're itching to get out of here, or how about this? You know what time I was on my computer this morning?

Harry Duran 28:15 - 28:20

05:00 a.m. that's a four. He's holding up for the listener.

Rick Langille 28:20 - 29:26

04:00 a.m. it's only because I had a. We're in the process of documenting the water handling for this project that we're doing in Tulsa, and I wanted to document it and be ready for a meeting this morning that I had before I came to see you. And I was all ready for it, had it all prepared, but it took me a while, and I don't just rush into stuff and, you know, slap some peanut butter on and call it good. There's a lot of detail involved in doing stuff like that. But I woke up and I was like, I might as well just get going to it because I'm not going to get back to sleep because it's. My head's going in 100 miles an hour, right. Slow down. But I think that. I think it's part of a DNA, right. It's kind of who we are, but it's the same thing, you know, if a cow was having a calf or we had 250 sows. So the chances of, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and having to go check a litter was pretty good, because it's money, you know, every time they pigborn, you know, it's $300. Well, last time I checked, you know, it's pretty important to make sure that they're all alive if you want to be successful at your business. Well, I learned that, you know, as eight, nine years old, running out to the bar in the middle of night. Right. And how about this? Even when it's 50 below, doesn't matter.

Harry Duran 29:26 - 29:27

Yeah, of course.

Rick Langille 29:27 - 29:31

So it's work ethic. It's not all. This isn't perfect. I don't think I want to go to work today.

Harry Duran 29:32 - 29:33

You have a choice.

Rick Langille 29:33 - 30:22

My PTo's run out. Don't tell me that it's not going to happen. Right, but I think. But as farmers, you know, can we bring that kind of same work ethic back into culture? Can we combine that with. I've been to some other farms that have been set up by harvest today, and I got to tell you, I was disappointed. I was really disappointed because they just weren't clean enough. They were too busy singing Kumbaya. I don't know exactly what it was as it relates to having the visual acumen to see work needs to be done. It's not going to done on its own. Right? And if you see if a floor needs to be swept, guess what? Here's the broom. And if you don't do it, I'm going to do it. And it will be clean when I'm done at the end of the day. But again, it's work ethic. So that's what you're asking me. It's because I grew up.

Harry Duran 30:22 - 30:39

The other thing that's come through in our conversations has been this idea of doing what you do for a greater purpose and also caring about the impact harvest today has on communities. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Rick Langille 30:39 - 31:20

A solid christian background. And I believe it, I live it. But I was an interesting conversation with Peter actually just yesterday, because I think that sometimes I'm not going to be faith forward in my conversation with anybody. Right. Because unfortunately a lot of people have been burnt by people who say that they're christian. I'm not going to be that person. I will live it, I will do it and I will demonstrate why I'm the way I am is because of my study of the Bible, because I understand christian values. But that's what I believe. That doesn't mean I'm going to force it on you at all. Only thing I'm going to offer you is a fresh salad.

Harry Duran 31:21 - 31:27

So if Rick comes knocking on your door, it's not to share a bible verse, but to share a plate of salad with you.

Rick Langille 31:27 - 31:52

The conversation gets around. I can keep up with most people. Okay? But my point is that I think that it's our values and it's how we. It's our background, and we live in North America, and the majority of us are faith based or faith based people. You know, some of the best friends I have are from Iraq. They're Muslim. It doesn't matter. I don't care. Last time I checked, you cut us, we all bleed. I rest my case right there.

Harry Duran 31:53 - 32:28

So talk to me a little about where you were. Talked about being on the boat and then realizing, like, the importance of, you know, access to fresh food. And as that being a little bit of the catalyst or maybe a lot of the catalyst for harvest today. And obviously having that manufacturing background did everything sort of coalesce into, this is probably what I'm going to be doing, and this is what it's going to look like just because I'm looking at what I have in terms of my skillset and what I know, because there's so many different models you can do right now in indoor farming right now. So was it clear for you when you were getting started that it was going to. It looks as what it looks like now.

Rick Langille 32:29 - 36:14

I lied to my wife. Is that what you're saying? I promised her I would never go back into manufacturing. Never. Honey. I will never do this again. Well, okay, so there's a story there, and that is that I did get involved with a group out of the east that had a pretty good basic idea. But when I saw how it went together, the guy was less than honorable, and I didn't want to do business with him. And then he disappeared. And I'm like. Because all I wanted to do was buy equipment, set farms up, and get people growing food. That's all I wanted to do. And it was William, who is a, my nephew, and b, he is the director of operations in Canada for harvest today. William is fantastic at his job. He's doing. Just crushing it. We got some projects up there that are just, wow, bearskin Lake. We just shipped a bunch of walls up to a resort. Well, it's hard to say. I don't want to use the term resort, okay? It's a reserve. Happens to be on the side of a lake, and people fly in and go fishing. Right? So fair enough. But they needed food. So this guy's coordinated a bunch of things for these people in these communities, and they have a fishing camp. And so you can go. Let's go fishing, buddy. I'm serious. Like, I want to go here so bad. But again, William is just crushing it up there. But he was the one who introduced me to this group of people, and we eventually got around to the point where it was obvious we weren't going to be able to get the equipment from them. And they introduced us to the concept of the peacocks, but everything else from there fell apart. Right? And there's nobody else doing it. So I said, well, okay, let's put the old manufacturing hat back on, and away we went. So, from the time where we said, okay, we're doing this. Okay, to our first parts, we're coming off of molds. And we were putting our first harvest walls together was eight months. So that was at the speed of Rick, which most people would take probably the better part of a couple years to do that. We did it eight months now from the first farms that we set up to today, the product basically is the same, right? Because the tile, the anatomy of a harvest wall, builds from a tile. That tile comes off of our mold, and it clicks together like a bunch of Lego blocks building both in width and height. A wall. Okay, well, we've come down to, by the time you put on your legal hat and you realize that you can't have OSHA limits, swing radiuses of doors, you name it, like, there's a whole bunch of reasons why the first things that we built were, it was a good idea. They worked. But today we build harvest panels. They're three wide, no more than five high, because that's 50 pounds. It's under the OSHA, you know, lifting limit. The number of plants we can grow in, the number of plants we can irrigate. All of those things all add up to. This is what they're. How they are. Then you put four panels into a tank and a flood rail in basically a frame. Okay, we can do it single sided or double sided. Now, I can grow up to 720 plants in 18 sqft. That's a lot of plants in 18 sqft. Right. So we've got a bunch of projects on the books right now for greenhouses. Right? Because it's not no longer just this flat surface anymore. We take it, we turn it vertical, and now we've got fantastic fenestration. We've got phenomenal auxiliary lighting fixtures through our friend. I think you've met whit at Spectre Girl.

Harry Duran 36:14 - 36:15

Yes.

Rick Langille 36:15 - 38:57

He's a strong partner with us, and that's part of, again, it takes a village of mentality. We are not a lighting company. We will never be a lighting company. But we have a phenomenal lighting partner. Right. Wet at Spectragroup. So we go from that, and we've got, what are the varieties? Like, what are we really growing in a wall? Because we can't. Man cannot live by lettuce alone. Now, we've finished the engineering on a, what we call our four port tile. So instead of having six two inch ports, we now have four. We can also, in the same anatomy of a wall, click in some tiles that are the larger ports. Well, I've got peppers, tomatoes, strawberries that are going to blow your mind. And it's all along this vertical wall. Well, it's a vertical wall that I can actually stand up, keep my posture right, and I can harvest it. How about this one? I can also take the panel out and go to a harvesting station. I can also take that piece of growing equipment and put it into a wash rack and sterilize it. Right. No more, you know, great big, long channels that can never be cleaned. I'm also the other. We're strong believers in fail small. Right? Fail small, lose small. Right? You don't. If you make a small failure that gets, like, let's say something gets wrong in a nutrient, we get some disease in some plants, and it goes into the nutrient solution, and it goes into 100,000 plants. I've heard of it happen. I've seen it happen, actually, and that's bad news. So the nutrient solution on in a harvest wall is a one way trip. So we're actually taking our nutrient solution, raw water, to nutrient down dosing tanks, and then we dose small amounts into a harvest wall, and then the plants respirate. Now we're going to recycle that into the atmosphere, recondense it through our h vac system, and put it back in the water. Right? So the water does circle all the way around, but it's through the atmosphere and then back in. There's a bunch of different ways, but it's, again, it's all scalable, and it's all about how much, you know, what's the investment that we're going to make? How can we actually get a physical building a controlled environment farm up and working? So if you want to, you know, have arves wall there in your office, we can get you growing fantastic food, no problem. Okay. But if you want to scale it up, you want to make me like I have. At my house, one of our major test beds is the grow room. At my house, I have 350 plants in a small space. Our neighbors love us because we're always walking around with a bag of basil or a bag of kale or a bag of lettuce or whatever, right? Because we just can't eat it all. There's too much food.

Harry Duran 38:57 - 39:14

Who would be an ideal customer for you? If you think about the folks that you service now, you know, at, for folks that are listening and watching to understand, you know, because you've outlined all the benefits of it. I guess they're trying to understand if it's a fit for what they're trying to do. So can you talk a little bit about, like, the customer mix?

Rick Langille 39:14 - 39:41

Yep. Anybody who's serious about eating good food, any need to be, because it's not a toy. A typical 108 port wall with all of the lights and kind of the startup kits, about four grand. And if you think about it, if we were to, say a family of four going to, and we're not going to compare, let's say, stuff we're going to buy at Costco or at Walmart, we're just not there. That's just not good food. It's bulk.

Harry Duran 39:41 - 39:41

Yeah.

Rick Langille 39:41 - 40:02

It's what we call roughage. It's true. Right. But at the end of the day, people who are serious about eating good food, okay, you're going to get an roi. If you're buying food at here in Colorado, it's natural grocers or Whole Foods is probably that's the best example. Right? Those guys are going to get an roi. You're going to pay off your harvest wallet about a year and a half.

Harry Duran 40:02 - 40:02

Okay.

Rick Langille 40:02 - 40:22

It's the same amount, but it's. We have a ten year warranty on it, so it's definitely going to pay for itself. But you have to be serious about it. And it's not. We have a. We're working with a gal. I think she's actually. I think she's in. I think she's in New Jersey. Stephanie, she's a big podcaster. She's got like, almost 20,000 people following her.

Harry Duran 40:22 - 40:23

Okay.

Rick Langille 40:23 - 41:16

She's about to get her harvest wall. Yeah. She's absolute sweetheart. I just really appreciate her heart for the work that it takes to grow food. And she's super serious. Like, I don't have to say anything. She saw the wall and she's like, I want one. Okay. Yeah, I'll send it to you. No problem. But the point is, she'd be the first one to tell you, your customers have to be serious about food. This isn't a toy, and it's not a hobby, it's a lifestyle. So when we think about it that way, that really talks about the b, two c side of our business. Now we talk. Let's talk b, two b. The people that are supporting restaurants, people that are supporting professional athletes, we've got this whole big, huge list of who is our target market as it relates to small to medium commercial farmers.

Harry Duran 41:16 - 41:16

Okay.

Rick Langille 41:17 - 41:59

I am not going to be the guy to say, I will sell you a thousand walls to go into a big building so that you can, you know, blah, blah, blah. That's who we are. I don't think that's where I would rather see, like, let's just take Denver, for example. I think that we could easily have five to ten small, two to 3000 square foot facilities sprinkled around the city that support a really good CSA program. I really see that as being a wonderful job and a business that could support a local community. Maybe. There's. We've got one season, which is our distributor out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Harry Duran 41:59 - 41:59

Okay.

Rick Langille 41:59 - 42:40

They set up an amazing little three harvest walls in Tulsa's catholic charities. And they've got a fantastic food distribution hub. They've got a soup like a kitchen. They grow food. They actually teach cooking to kids. Oh, my gosh, Harry, the program that they've got going is amazing. Like, they really are. But it's about growing great food and supporting the community at the same time. That is a scalable size of business that I see is really our target. It's really. Yeah. But that doesn't mean we can't grow up a night. The one season farm that's being built right now in Tulsa, it's 22,000 plants.

Harry Duran 42:40 - 42:41

Oh, wow.

Rick Langille 42:41 - 42:47

Serious. This is a serious farm. 100,000 pounds of produce a year. That's a lot of food.

Harry Duran 42:47 - 42:53

Yeah. I also noticed that there's a harvest today app as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rick Langille 42:53 - 44:08

Yeah, absolutely. Because it's about. Okay, again, that goes back into my electronic stuff because usability is huge. And what do we want to do as it relates to being able to grow different varieties? We want to be able to adjust how many times a day the plants get watered and how much water they get. Okay. In the app, it gives you the immediate handshake. It's a Bluetooth device that's connected through either an Android app or iPhone app. Or you can do it on your, on any kind of tabloid as well, or tablet as well. Then you connect the wall to your device and then you can adjust all the settings just from the app. Super simple. You can rename it, know, Harry's wall one, Harry's wall two. Right. Or, you know, whatever. Whatever you want. So you can actually identify what you're controlling. You can see it, you can control it, but, okay. Along comes a project with his Majesty's prisons. They can't have a connected device in the prison. Like, can't win to lose or can't lose to win. Right. I don't know what it is, but. So we had to come up with, how do we control the ability to have the. Because it's about precision irrigation.

Harry Duran 44:08 - 44:09

Okay.

Rick Langille 44:09 - 45:28

Because a harvest wall is only going to run two to three times a day for a minute or two at the most. It doesn't run all day long. It is not a vertical channel. I'm not going to use any brand names because I don't think you're just know. I don't need to run pumps all the time. Don't care if it's a channel going up and down or horizontally. I don't run pumps all day long. Cause that's not. We don't need to. Because that's what the harvest wall is all about. One of the many things it's about. So I had to come up with a way to take our existing flat form and make it controllable without an app. So, snap, simple, no app, pump control. Snap. So we did a snap, then we were like, so we actually. Because we've been selling code, a few schools and they wanted to not use the app too, because there's too many teachers and they didn't want to. They didn't know. What is this set at? Can I turn it on? There's a manual bump, too. So if you want to just irrigate the pump, irrigate the plants, just push the button. Right. It will then run for whatever's programmed. So if it's. If you had a two minute irrigation cycle and you push the manual button, it will run for two minutes and then turn off. Okay. So snap. You can actually do the whole thing with just the two buttons.

Harry Duran 45:28 - 45:29

Okay.

Rick Langille 45:29 - 45:51

A little lcd screen on it. It works great. Well, fast forward that to about two months ago. And we were able to. We had to put our code on a diet because it didn't fit because we're using an ESP 32, which I'm sure you know all about, that. It's an Arduino part. And now we have a one control does it all.

Harry Duran 45:51 - 45:51

Okay.

Rick Langille 45:51 - 45:59

I can run it with an app. I can run it with a snap. Whatever you want to do, it works. And it works fantastic.

Harry Duran 45:59 - 46:13

Nice. So as we get ready to try and land this plane, sounds like we could have this conversation. Could be 3 hours easily. I could totally see that. What is a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

Rick Langille 46:13 - 46:15

Where's sales coming from?

Harry Duran 46:16 - 46:17

Okay.

Rick Langille 46:17 - 46:37

No, I'm serious. As an entrepreneurial startup company where. Because without sales, it's all a fluff. You got nothing. And I'm happy to say that we've got some. Our pipeline. Let's talk about that for just a quick sec. Our pipeline is now at $1.3 billion.

Harry Duran 46:38 - 46:38

Wow.

Rick Langille 46:39 - 47:05

I'm blown away. I'm truly humbled. Yeah, yeah. So we're blowing up now. How do we scale up? How do I build that much stuff? How do I hire all these people? Like, trust me, I would tell you that's all the best entrepreneurial questions you can ask yourself. And those are the ones that are, they're easily solvable with. I'm gonna go back to what we said about a half an hour ago. Businesses, people.

Harry Duran 47:05 - 47:06

Yeah.

Rick Langille 47:06 - 47:22

If you hire the right people, you work together as a team, you're gonna end up succeeding. And again, from a legacy standpoint, I'm going to be able to go to bed every night after watching the hockey games and then say, we did good work today.

Harry Duran 47:22 - 47:22

Yeah.

Rick Langille 47:22 - 47:40

And that we've grown some great food and that we've enabled some people to truly think about how they put a meal together or eat truly healthy, better ways. Because I will never forget when we got to Hiwaoa. Right. So you know where Hiva Oa is?

Harry Duran 47:41 - 47:41

No.

Rick Langille 47:41 - 47:42

In the Marquesa island.

Harry Duran 47:42 - 47:43

Okay.

Rick Langille 47:43 - 48:21

In French Polynesia. We sailed for 17 days. We went from the galapagos across 3000 nautical miles. Right. 17 days non stop sailing. It was phenomenal. We get there and here's some kids walking down the pier with a bottle of coke and a bag of cheetos and. You're kidding me, really? This is the best we can do? We are in paradise, right? And here people, these, the kids are just eating how to eat poorly. But then you go to the, you get on island and you realize they can't buy good food. It's not, it's just not there.

Harry Duran 48:22 - 48:22

Yeah, it's not there.

Rick Langille 48:22 - 48:46

They can eat lots of fruit, lots of bananas, right? Bananas are nothing but sugar. And they do absolutely, you know, kind of dig around in the jungle for roots and things like that. But again, it's so starchy and so it's just nothing but carbs. Right. At the end of the day, just forward that to what we eat here today in our north american diet, the amount of food that we eat and the type of food that we eat is just. That's why we're sick.

Harry Duran 48:46 - 48:47

Yeah, of course.

Rick Langille 48:47 - 48:52

So let's just say the legacy that Rick is to hopefully help people eat.

Harry Duran 48:52 - 49:10

Better, that's a great legacy. I like to leave a couple of minutes at the end of these conversations for any messages you have because of the people that listen. It's your colleagues in the space, folks in cEA, and indoor farming, vertical farming. So any thoughts you have for your peers in the space as we wrap up?

Rick Langille 49:10 - 51:22

Yeah, absolutely. It takes a village. There's no one of our, not one of us can do it on our own. I truly believe that if we work together, because it is going to take everybody and there's a lot of people, the space is getting quite active, but there's. I actually heard somebody a while ago talk about, well, is the CEA space getting saturated? I'm like, well, last time I looked, the market's pretty big. Every single mouth walking around on this planet could use what we do. And then if we can impact on a local food level, can we work together and make. I'm not here to build great big massive farms. That's not who we are. That's not what I will ever promote, but I will support everybody who wants to grow food locally. So if we can stop that doesn't mean I don't want to impoverish the farmers of southern California. Yeah, that's not my point. In fact, we have a large project in the Kachaka valley just outside of Palm Springs in Calgary. And their whole stick is, or their twist is that a lot of the farming is getting so bad because of the lack of water. We have to grow food differently, and that's why to do it in some greenhouses. So I think that the, as we take incremental technology and employ it in good, thoughtful ways, we don't have to have robotic farms, right? Because we want to hire these people that have been growing food, right? They can. So if we have just really well thought out, collaborative efforts into putting buildings together that are designed specifically to grow best food and best food practices and distributing them on a very, very short term basis, harvest one day, eat it the next type of thing, I know that's not necessarily ideal all the time, but if we can have people on an average of eating food less than three to four days, that we're just going to have better diets. And I think that our industry, if we were to start to understand what it takes to grow more local and do it together, because I'm not going to be the guy here to tell you that I'm the nutrient guy, I'm not the substrate guy, I'm not the lighting guy, but I got them all on my team and they all work wonderfully with us. And that's what I'm pretty proud of, that the harvest today team is incredible.

Harry Duran 51:23 - 52:12

Well, Rick, shout out to wit for making this connection. I'm really always appreciate, you know, it does take a village to have a podcast as well, because by virtue of these connections and this beautiful network of amazing and inspiring folks that I get to speak with, I don't take that for granted. So I appreciate that. I'm really inspired by your story. I think it's clear when you start to map out the way, you know, where you started, what career you went into, all the experiences you had, your time sailing, your experiences in other countries, you know, you start to see how all the pieces started to come together to form what is now your new mission with harvest today. And so it's really inspiring to see, and I think you've built a, sounds like you've built a great team and there's a lot of potential, and I think you're doing it for the right reasons, which is why you're having the results that you are. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing your inspiring story with our listeners.

Rick Langille 52:12 - 52:14

Appreciate having me. Thanks.

Harry Duran 52:14 - 52:19

And so harvest today for folks if they want to learn more. Anywhere else you want to send folks?

Rick Langille 52:19 - 52:23

Yep. Www. Dot. Harvest dot today.

Harry Duran 52:23 - 52:27

Yes, today is a domain today.

Rick Langille 52:27 - 52:29

I don't know if that was a great idea or not.

Harry Duran 52:29 - 52:36

I think so. I like it. I like the fact that you can have some fun with these as well. Thanks again, Rick, and I'm looking forward to share this with my audience. Appreciate it.