 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Startup Store Front podcast. Today's guest is Ross Mackay, co-founder of Daring, the plant-based chicken currently taking over your local grocery store. Maybe you're carnivore. Maybe you're vegan. Maybe you're even, as Ross would say, plant curious. No matter who you are, the three most important criteria you're likely to consider when buying food are taste, texture, and price. Ross has managed to create a plant-based chicken that emphatically checks all the boxes. Because if you're going to change the dining habits of your average American, you've got to come up with a pretty damn appealing alternative. So listen in as we cover everything from why the Scottish government told him there's no market for his product, his not-so-secret recipe that he cooks for investors, and why the average consumer has a lack of trust in plant-based meat. Now back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Ross, CEO, founder of Daring. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. For those small, little amount of people who don't know what Daring is, tell them a little bit about what your company does. Yeah, I know. I mean, Daring Foods, our mission is pretty simple. It's to rethink and replace chicken from the food system. So pretty audacious, but we're the creators of Daring Chicken. So it's the first clean-label plant-based chicken on the market. For those people who love chicken, you can love Daring, so it's a solution for any chicken lovers out there. A lot to get into. You launched this company almost two years ago. Two years ago, effectively. So you've basically been alive since the pandemic, which is insane, and you've grown out this tremendous. What made you want to start the company? What was the thing that you were like, I want to solve this problem, and you saw some semblance of a solution? Yeah, the business was really born on a real need. It was definitely an itch that I had. I've been a plant-strong consumer. I call it plant-strong. I think veganism is just a terrible word. It's off-putting for a lot of people. It sounds like a political cry. More than anything. 100%. I think it's become very political. Yeah, it's more of a religion, and I think it comes with these negative connotations, but to take a step back, I've been a plant-based consumer for more than 10 years. I grew up playing a lot of sports. So I've always been obsessed with health, nutrition. This idea of you are what you eat, and I ate a lot of chicken. I first stopped playing tennis very seriously, and competitively. I took a look at my diet and was like, wow, I eat far too much meat, far too much chicken. We're told it's the healthiest protein in the world, but is there another solution? So I became obsessed with learning about this knowledge of reducing one's meat intake and the benefits of doing so on your body and your composition and your output, essentially. So I cut out all meat. I went completely cold turkey, forgive the pun, and it was cliche as it sounds. I felt better. I felt like higher energy levels, lost in body weight. I just started to perform better at sport as well. So I became a consumer in the category, like most people enjoying almond milks and oat milks and dairy-free ice creams. And as I stepped into the meat alternative space, I realized they were great. They delivered on taste and texture, some better than others. But what they lacked was this sort of intersection of health and taste. A lot of them had 40, 50 ingredients, didn't really fit within my personal belief of health, which we kind of, you know, we talked about there. And, you know, felt there was an opportunity really to deliver on something that, you know, could appeal to a wider audience of people that care what they eat, look for the ingredient profile, look for the macronutrients, and daring as five ingredients is like for like for chicken. So I really think it has more scale and more ability to reach a wider audience in this market. Were you in Scotland when you had the idea? And then did you know to come to America right away? You guys eat a lot of chicken here in America. Yeah, we do. So you said, OK, here's a macro level, birds-eye view. Let me go to the place that's got chicken. Everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah. I think it kind of reflects a little bit about, you know, sort of very audacious and very ambitious, unapologetically so about where I want to take this company. And, you know, to look at the great product, but where's the biggest time, where's the biggest lane that I can really create impact? Sure. So USA became your highway? Yeah, I mean, it was also the catalyst was as we started to raise some capital, there was a lot of influx and opportunities in the US to meet alternative companies, creating massive waves in the industry, raising a ton of money, creating consumer awareness. And I moved over here, actually visited New York for the first time in, must have been September 2019, really to, you know, backpack, bag of my product, wasn't even vacuum sealed, cooking in an office like this and pitched to investors. Fast forward, January of 2020, I moved here on a nest of ESA. When you were pitching, what were you pitching? Like, did you have any sort of the proteins locked in? Did you have the lab you were going to work with? There's a lot of that, right? And they all want to be protective and they all want to make products, but are they going to execute well? Now, we had a minimal viable product. OK, we didn't have the scale we have today. Obviously, we've continued to invest in that. But, you know, the narrative, the vision, the story and the product were in place, but we definitely, you know, overcome a few obstacles since then it's crazy to think it's only two or so years ago. But, you know, that was our first opportunity to put our feet on the ground and the doors were open for us. But I remember just about that time I took a meeting with Sprout Supermarket, their CEO was actually from my hometown. So I was fortunate enough to say, OK, fine, but you're a favor and I'll take a meeting and, you know, cook for him and March of 2020 was our first first sale. So we launched the company then and, you know, I literally haven't been back since. Just that's awesome because of the world. But yeah, it's been amazing. Do you consider yourself a good cook? Because when I hear I was cooking for investors, I better be damn sure that the recipe I'm making is at least palatable, if not very delicious. So like what kind of preparation did you have to do ahead of time? Like, did you practice that recipe over and over and over again before you got it? You know, it's an induction hob on the on the table, plug in pan oil and just the product. I think it's even better, right? Exactly. I'm not hiding it behind sauce or a bun or cheese or relish. What's so special about our product? And hopefully, you know, for people that get the opportunity to try it, it's just like chicken. And I think what's exciting is that it's the closest thing to home muscle is as there is on the market. So we we when we pitch what we love to do is do nothing to it other than just cook it in a pan. And it's like there is chicken on the plate. This one happens to be made from plants, has, you know, 90 calories per serving, 14 grams of protein, no fat, no carbohydrate. And that's the wow factor. Everything chicken. I just made the commercial for it. Yeah, exactly. And chicken is really just a vehicle for sauce. I told my wife would say my wife is a house sauce boss. Exactly. And you don't have your favorite chicken recipe, your favorite seasoning. You're we're so disassociated from from the animal part. We really just love the the texture, the taste and the flavor and the sauce it may have. So when we kick just, you know, just to finish this off, it's really there's nothing on this. This is just a protein. And we know I'm going to get a pretty like, you know, good response. Do you have a good investor story? Like, who was your first investor or your favorite, your favorite, like favorite and maybe maybe favorite favorite meeting that maybe went either way. Yeah, no, one of our sort of what I love when I think about investors, I spend a lot of time fundraising over the last 12 months. We've gone through a significant amount of fundraising and a lot of time behind that kind of raising our series A, B and C in a year. The investors that believe in you before it's obvious are obviously the ones that I favor the most. The ones that come on later on the journey when this has been underwritten, bigger checks, whatever, of course, can add tremendous value. But our first investor, other than my father, was a company called Maveron, gentlemen, Dan Levitan. Oh, Dan, partner in the fund. Yeah, consumer investor. I think he has this sort of strategy of non-normal people and non-normal ideas. So I met him at his house in some valley. Same thing, kick for him, pitch to him. What's great about daring is like it's a physical product. You can try it and I think conviction in the people, conviction in the product, conviction in the category. You know, hopefully that idea. We don't have enough data to say this is going to work or it's not. You just have to believe in the vision and the product and hopefully the people behind the company. So he was our first investor. And then we were fortunate enough over the last kind of eight months to bring on some pretty exciting investors. D1, Big H1 out of New York led by a gentleman called Dan Sonheim and most recently Founders Fund. So Peter Thiel obviously being pretty prolific. When you go to these investors, do you find that they ever compare you to the other big names in the plant-based market and how they are currently doing? What are you going to do different? Yeah, like, you know, I think about Beyond Meat. Like a lot of people were like gung-ho on them and impossible foods. Like they've got an upcoming IPO, but Beyond Meat is currently like tanking in the market. Can I give you a pitch for you? This is how it works in my head. In my head, it goes one, you're tackling chicken, two, you're sticking to five ingredients. That's it. Next question. Is that it? Yeah, and that's exactly it. It's like, you know, no one's really looked at chicken. Chicken is a bigger market than beef, so the ceiling is higher. You look at consumer opinion towards plant-based meat. There's a lack of trust in the category. Why? Ingredient, what makes us special? Five ingredients and I think that shows a bigger time. More versatility, velocities are higher. How often do you really want to eat a burger? And that's just maybe that's a silly question. Maybe it's every day, but the reality is, is, you know, how often do you really want to eat a plant-based product between two pieces of bread? Not on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? How often could you potentially daring? And this isn't a sales pitch, but it reality is, every single day, twice a day if you want. So the velocities are higher, the market is bigger. But of course we get comped against the meat alternates of guys. When it comes against like the X and O's of the execution of it. So if it's 2020, I'm thinking like, okay, cool, there's an adoption. We know it. There's noise. We're good with it. But there's a velocity in terms of it's selling, right? And so in some way you're limited to maybe the airwands, the whole foods, the sprouts. And so the higher end market. And so as an investor, like that's the question, right? How do you get into the major market? How do you become like the Toyota? How do you do that? And so for you, I don't know if you're there yet, but like what was the, was it, was it just sampled or just like hitting the ground running again with like educating the market? Honestly, the market has evolved so much. Like this category is being built for us almost, you know, beyond or in, you know, I don't know how many stores and possible in tens of thousands of stores, restaurants also. We're in, we launched into Walmart in December, 4,000 stores. You know, we're close to 7,000 locations today in retail. So this is not an obscure idea anymore. Meal alternatives is not an air wand only or kind of hacky sack, sock wearing, like the category has evolved so much where even when you look at milk alternatives, everyone is selling them. I mean, out here, they don't even have, right? No dairy, no dairy here. I found them come. It's crazy. Yeah. West Hollywood is a very fitting. Exactly. And also it's 2022. We're in LA. I get that. But, you know, even Arkansas and Atlanta, wherever you go, now there's an opportunity where you can pick up a meat alternative on a menu or in a retailer. So we're very fortunate that there's been a ton of capital deployed into the space to create this awareness both from a grocery retail perspective. What makes us different as we look at the next wave and say, OK, the category has been built on taste and texture, but consumers care about health. You know, it's being COVID. Everyone's looked at what they're eating, what they're consuming. And for us, this next wave, what we call this 2.0 next gen is really about better for you as well as delivering on taste and texture. So, you know, very fortunate we have a team now executing on retail, but four skews and just about seven thousand doors right now. And what's the price point? How did you, you know, begin about pricing this thing? At the beginning, I assume it was expensive, volume helps, but 100 percent. I mean, our mission is to remove and replace chicken from the food system. The easier part is taste and texture. The hard part is price. We do have the vision of price part to chicken. That's how we create impact. That's how we get to a bigger audience. We average about six nine nine for an eight on serving. I suppose it's still premium compared to the category set. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's not bad. Yeah, compared to chicken, though, we're more expensive. Sure. But again, we're two years in, we have line of sight to continue to drive that down and pass that on to the consumer. So was COVID like jet fuel for you with everyone cooking at home and being like as conscious or I guess health conscious as anyone could have ever been? I think from a consumer demand perspective, yes, we sell frozen retail, but a large part of our business is fit service. You know, just on the street, we sell to, you know, dozens of restaurants, you know, Delilah across there on the menu, Tackles to Madre up the road. We're on the menu, Seoul House were on the menu. So none of these places were open. None of them wanted to add a new product on the menu. When you think about marketing to the plant curious customers, you said, you know, I've seen your billboards all over town, but is there a specific manner in which you are intending to bridge the gap between those who have been meat eaters all their life, aren't interested in going, you know, plant based full time or whatever. But like you said, plant curious, like how do you, how do you, you know, reach them where they are? Yeah, no, I mean, I think if you've seen our sort of recent out of home campaign, it's plant chicken for chicken lovers. That's who we talk to. That's who we love. That's where we even try and position ourselves in retailers, like beside chicken where possible. I think a lot of our copy, a lot of our advertising really tries to entice, you know, chicken lovers. And of course, that's the high hanging fruit. That's, you know, the North Star. But the reality is today, a lot of the customers who are buying our product, they're still, are still plant based, plant curious or flexitarian, which is kind of, that's the new term. I like that. Where in LA are you? Just people listening that are local. Where, what stores are you in? Mostly for me. I'm going to go buy some today. Whole Foods, Sprouts, Air One, as we talked about, Wegman, Sprouts, Ralph's, Vaughn's. OK, everywhere. Shameless plug, but store locator on the website thereing.com. But honestly, more than a few hundred, probably a thousand locations within, you know, a couple miles from here. All right. So people listening. So the kid from Scotland moves here 2020, raised over 150 million so far, short time. Where did it come from? And so we kind of talked about this before, right? And so as a kid, you were always an entrepreneur. Yeah. What was that like? Well, you know, where did you do you think it was nature, nurture a little bit of both? Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think it's a few things. You know, I'm very inspired by my father. He built a business. I was watching him from a very young age, kind of one person, two people, 10 people, 100 people. And I think you learn a lot when you watch someone, I suppose, as a role model. And I was it was sort of ingrained from a family perspective and seeing my father build a business, hire people, what was important to him, the values in which he sort of had at his company. So he was our first investor and first believer in the company and me and the idea. But, you know, from a very young age, just given the sport background, competitiveness, and there's a lot of relationships between sport and mindset and entrepreneurialism, although entrepreneurialism is a very glorified term. But I was the kind of kid who would take his packed lunch that his mom made for him and sell it in the school. I was always hustling. I was always thinking of ideas and I had this idea, not idea. And it wasn't until I took a step back and said, what do I really have a true, true believe in? Being plant-based, plant-strong for more than 10 years. And I love business. I love building things. So really marrying passion and what I think is my true calling, although it sounds a little bit cliché on this passion of building things and building teams and executing seemed like the right marriage. When it comes to just the country of Scotland, is it? I know a lot about Norway's entrepreneurial culture, which for people listening is basically if you have an idea, you can go ahead and submit it and then the government has to give you a contract to a budding entrepreneurial, which I think is like, takes away the hustle and the grit that's required. And so I think you see some cool things come out of Norway, but nothing anyone could cite right now. Totally. But when it comes to Scotland, what is it? Were you one of many? Were you one of very few? I have a, if this wasn't live, I would say a few other things, and I'm joking, I think I posted on my LinkedIn a few months ago. I applied for a $20,000 grant in a competition in 2019, like bringing money like not that long ago. With the same product we sell today and a great pitch, I know the pitch was nailed and the letter we got back from what is the sort of the main sort of media, main company that give grants or investments into Scottish entrepreneurs was no market for this product. Oh, I love it. Do you still have it? They gave it to, you know, no disrespect, but they gave it to like, you know, some cupcake company. Yeah. Big market, big cupcake. Big market, world changing idea. And again, no disrespect. And I get it, listen, I'm not coming with a garage, like if, you know, if I had said yes, would I have gone, who knows? Like hindsight's a great thing, but it's not really a market that I would, you know, would I ever go back whenever I build a business? They're absolutely not, you know. So you knew to leave. So a lot of people in that would get down on themselves, maybe have to revisit their plan. And you just thought, you like, I have this too. I have this too. Like when I say something to somebody and they don't get it, I just go, oh, I'm talking to the wrong person. Totally. And then I just go, it's like a radio station. I'm like, oh, I don't like that. I'm gonna go. But I don't take it personally. It's super weird. Same, and I think, you know, high conviction in the market and the impact and the product and listen, you're just too early for a lot of people. And that's why I talked about people believing you before it's obvious. Now, like, you know, if I had a dollar every email from the Scottish government to say, come back, build a factory here, build a team here, like we wouldn't need to raise any money ever again. But these things just make you better and stronger. And, you know, thousands of no's. We've all heard the stories that, the Howard Schultz of the world and so on. But it's definitely not a place that I would say is flush with opportunity. Do you have it in you or desire to fix that? Like, will you ever have like your own? No. Go back and change. No. No, no, no. It's not, again, I don't want this to come across like I have a garage because I certainly don't. Your visa's good. Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not allowed back in. Listen, Scotland was built on export beef. And it's not built on that. But Scotch beef industry is a billion dollar business. Salmon, Scotch salmon, and whiskey. What I do is a little bit still obscure there. Could be the best export ever. Exactly. No, it's different. So the market is there. And my ambition, no, we've got a lot of work to do here in the US. Yeah. No time, no time to sit. I mean, leaving your home country for really a country that you'd never really known before. Yeah, it's never been, it's not easy. It's not easy to do. It's certainly, for a lot of people, their family might have some hesitation. But with your dad being an entrepreneur himself, did he have an inherent understanding of why you needed to leave Scotland? Where your family like, you know, go, we understand, go do your thing. Yeah. That's interesting. It's like he bought you the plane ticket and he's like, go. I think, you know, they dropped me off the airport and I'm sure they were like, we'll see you in a week. Yeah. They visited me a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a few years. I'm very fortunate. I think my mom was a nurse growing up, so. Caring. Yeah. Well, or not because she's really seen people that were suffering and been through, you know, real trauma and they had this whining son who was complaining about, you know, no, I'm just joking. You know, I think my mom had seen my father, you know, build a business and gone through the ups and downs. So I think for her success was more, you know, a real job. My sister's our lawyer. My other sister works in, you know, marketing and HR. You know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Perfect Life. And this son who wants to make fake chicken and move to America with very little money, you know, is that really what I want for him? Who knows? But, you know, again, I understand, you know, your parents just wanted the best for you. My father was go get them, like come back, let's go. And I'm sure my mom probably wanted me to, you know, get in the seat and get a quote unquote real job, which we've all had the experience. I don't want to sound like I'm the only one. That's the family pressures. And this wasn't my first idea. So I had ideas. I'd not really executed on it. So it's kind of like the boy he cried wolf, you know, borrow money before ex, you know, failed or quote unquote failed and learned and call them expenses. But yeah, definitely felt some pressure to make sure that we build, you know, we build something real this time. At what moment of your journey did you have like a good night's sleep? Like you moved to America. I used to my eyes. Right, you got some investors. The early investors are coming in. And so you have belief that sort of fills the tank a little bit. But then it's also like at what point were the sales was like the indicator there that you're like, okay, we have runway. We are on the tarmac officially. I think just to answer that in a kind of roundabout manner, I think a lot of entrepreneurs mistake raising money and building a great business. Yeah, all the time. Most of them are just chasing the Forbes article, frankly. Exactly. I think, you know, there's so much money in the private markets now to raise a series is, it's not that hard if you have a great product. Right. Funds are going earlier and earlier. Spacks are coming in. Yeah, so like, the only thing that really matters, it's all noise unless you're building a great business. For me, when I started to attract great talent, I started to realize like this is real. People that we shouldn't have been able to attract to the company just given our size and where we were, like great, great heads of department from product and marketing and HR. I was like, okay, we're building something real. Raising money like fine, like we have some money. We have some runway. We can extend it. But when I'm able to hire a VP of finance from a company that like we just shouldn't be able to like, okay, like this is time, it's time. And then, you know, when you start to, of course, you know, a lot of our businesses selling into grocery retail, when the retailers start to recognize you and work with you, rather than just send your proposal, we'll take a meeting when it's the right time. Now, listen, a lot of this is macro, big companies going public, raising money. Employees want to be part of that. We have the ownership. Everyone in our company has ownership. So it's probably a little bit of both way, but definitely when we were able to track talent. That's such a good answer. This is how I actually view industries, like the marijuana industry. It's like once I see the right people moving into that industry, that's how we know it's poised for acquisitions or it's just the sophistication is gonna go off the charts. But some markets, like the marijuana weed industry, it took a long time. It took like 10 years for them to attract that talent. For obviously it was regulations and stuff like that and taboo. But that's such a good answer. Yeah, I think we're just being underwritten by great people who have seen greatness before, both from an investor perspective and from a personnel perspective. Like I want to go and take my excellence and put it towards a company that is still very obscure and isn't obvious or is still going through like phase one of growth and when I could be at any other company I want to. Was there a moment where you had so attractions good, stores are good, the velocity is good and then at some point it's like we hit this wall and we're like, crap, what's next? Was it like Walmart as an example? Like getting in, so that's a hurdle you had to clear at some point. Was there like a marker for you that was like, how do we, it's almost like you're stuck? No, not yet. Not yet? No, I always say this, we're just getting started and a couple years in, how do you really build a business that is where we want to go, there's more product, there's more velocity and there's more distribution. Food service, restaurant, industry is really a big focus for us this year continuing to execute on probably 1,000 locations, there's, if you think about just LA alone or New York or Miami or Florida or Austin there's thousands of locations we should be in and national chains, so big rollouts and hotel groups and universities and non-commercial business. So the possibility is just for their current product there's enough to build up two, three, 400 million to all business. That's such a good answer for investors too because it's always like, what else are you gonna do? Like the testers always want to know like what are the products you're gonna bring and your argument is you don't need to. We're still early. No, we're a laser like, I mean our mission is what I said. It's chicken, the place chicken, yeah. And you know, 100 pounds per person per year in this country. Just chicken, not beef in total, wow. Eight billion chickens a year. So if you take a step back and you think about how do I execute on the mission you create great product that delivers the taste, the texture, the health of chicken in the categories where chicken is. Chicken is consumed in 65 billion of it in the fresh aisle and retailers and the rest in food service. Like that's our only focus. And I'm a, I think a big believer in doing something very, very, very well. Just doing a few things very well. Two channels, couple products and like get your head down and execute. You think the lobbyists are coming for you soon? I don't know. Who knows. I think they're coming. I think they're coming. I think, you know, our New York Times article I don't know if you saw it the other day like we wrapped in New York Times and it was a big front page spread seeing chicken is broken. Nice. We got a few phone calls. Yeah. Well, how do you view lab grown meat? Cause like with the way I see it, plant-based meat is already out. It's already in mass production and it's got a leg up on any kind of competition in terms of replacing meat consumption in the US. When I see lab grown meat, I see that is maybe more of a tangible product for like someone who's been a meat eater all their life to try. But I also see it as lagging way behind and also way more expensive right now and the technology just isn't there. Yeah, obviously being just a massive fan of all innovation in space. I think for me, I haven't been fortunate enough to try and lately I think what matters to consumers the most is taste, texture and price. And if it can deliver on taste and texture, the next most important variable will be price and we're seeing price sensitivity in the market. How expensive is it compared to chicken? You're always gonna get benchmarked against chicken. If you go out there and say, I wanna go after chicken, great. It tastes like chicken, I get it. But it's three, four times the price that's going to be hard to really break into mass impact. But again, anything other than real animal or real animal derived products is of course our mission too. So I'm excited to see evolve. I think we're a few years away for sure and there's a lot of capital and a lot of innovation happening. But I think customer trust is gonna be super important. We've all said, is plant-based really good for you? Our meat alternative is really good for you. It's gonna take a lot of education, a lot of capital to educate consumers into sale-based meat. What is it? How do you make it? And then of course building the infrastructure to have scale. That's gonna be the other most important factor. Those things seem linear though. All right, so 2022, the Super Bowls in LA, is there a Super Bowl commercial? Maybe featuring Kev Newton. No, I think we are doing a few things at the Super Bowl, no commercial this year. We're doing a party with Hwood and Drake. That should be super fun. I think there's gonna be a time and a place to really build a trigger and as we get money is really well spent when you have the distribution. Yeah, that's so true, the ROI is clearer. Exactly, clearer. When I see your investor list, and I see all these superstar athletes like Cam Newton and Naomi Osaka, I see it as a perfect pairing between athletic performance the way it is now. Everyone at a super high level is worried about nutrition and how to make their bodies as a perfect athletic machine. Whereas, I feel like in the past decades there hasn't been as much emphasis on nutrition but we've really turned the page nowadays. And yourself being a high level tennis player, you said that you didn't really switch to plant-based until after you stopped playing. Do you ever wonder what it could have been like had you switched to plant-based while you were playing and the heights you could have accomplished? No, I mean, I definitely don't have FOMO. If I had gone plant-based earlier, would I be Roger Federer? Probably not. Come on, man. No, I don't. Come on. But I think access to information, there's so much information right now and there's so much data to show that a plant-based diet or a plant-forward diet can have benefits, one's performance, recovery rates. I mean, you just have to look at the list of athletes. Lewis Hamilton, probably one of the best athletes in the world, a plant-based athlete. And all of these athletes performing at a high level, not just for marketing dollars, but because that's how they feel they can best create performance. So I think the market's kind of doing it for us. And as you look at, again, I want to be plant-forward or I want to eat Palm Beach products for my health, my weight or whatever, that 85% of consumers step into this category for health reasons. We still live in a very selfish world. And when you're faced with products that are 40, 50, 60 ingredients. That's always my problem. That's the problem. So our opportunity is pretty obvious. It's chicken, it's five ingredients, 90 calories for serving. So listen, I don't think so, but I am a massive advocate for a plant-forward diet. Clearly, it's the reason I wake up in the morning. But our job is to just allow more consumers to step into the category. There's a bit of a barrier right now and it needs to be broken with better, healthier products. When it comes to crypto, NFT, anything you guys are doing in that space? Not right now. You know, I'm a follower for it and we talked a little bit about it. Obviously, I think that market is, there's so much opportunity for sure. But who knows, maybe there's a collaboration one day and maybe there's opportunities for sure, but I'll need to get your advice on that. What would it look like? What would it look like? What would it look like? I don't know, I was just thinking like what do you, because the physical space isn't really something you guys have. It could be something maybe at your office. Maybe they get invited to exclusive parties, something like that, which would be pretty cool. It connects the brand to something unique in that way. Exclusive drops, products. Yeah, products, but mostly, it's a function of like what would the art be? You could almost make something like, for every NFT we create, we've saved a hundred thousand chickens or a million chickens this year and whatever. Yeah, I know. And so there's an interesting angle there and then partnering with like local artists or cool artists. Yeah, no, no, no. And stuff that'll do interesting things. It's more of, honestly, it's really just a community building platform. I think people that see the JPEG, they have it wrong. It's really just can these groups build communities through the art? And it's really like, the way I view it, it's like startups, except it happens in, it happens instantly. And so imagine if all of your investors had a Discord or a Slack channel to you and your whole team in real time and you would share your whole roadmap for 2022, 2023. And then every once a week, you would do like what they call an AMA, which is a live meeting about your updates. Imagine if you did that, right? In startup world, that happens quarterly basis, maybe annually, depends on how you set things up. But in the NFT world, it's happening daily and weekly. And so what I think people don't realize is a lot of the people that are investing in NFTs, a lot of the younger people, they're really becoming super savvy startup investors without even recognizing it. And I think for one of their NFTs that might take off and maybe they make $400,000, a million dollars, whatever it might be, they're gonna transition to moving that money into their own startup or investing in their friends that they saw create cool stuff because there's belief. 100%. It's pretty amazing and crazy because you also see people lose quickly, which is part of it. That's not- 100%. If you put your life savings into it, you're gonna have a bad day. But if you understand like you're gonna be wrong most of the time, then it's an education. And when you're right, it'll be fine. Yeah, it will be. You just got to start yourself with good people. There's a lot of information out there. Oh, tons of noise. Tons of noise. Tons of marketing, tons of crash grabs. Exactly, like who do you follow, who do you trust? And I think it will be interesting to you. But there's an idea for us for sure to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna need your advice. Well listen, tell everyone where they can find you. Obviously all your socials, I'm gonna go to the store after this and get some. My in-laws are vegan and Natalia and I are just always like, we basically try it, my wife and I, we try not to eat meat all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like four days a week, we won't do it. Flexitarian. Flexitarian, yeah. Big business if I can make you switch once a week. But even in that, it's like, I didn't even know it was five ingredients. Yeah. Which sounds crazy to me. And we started. And I did research. And so I'm like, how did I miss that five ingredient thing? No, we need to push style a little bit harder. I think we've been- 100%. We've been, it's the drop the mic moment, honestly. It is. It's in all of our sales materials. I'm convinced right there. That was it for me. Five ingredients, don't mind. Got my job. No, anywhere, pretty much every retailer now, that's the exciting part is I posted it the other day is like launching into 4,000 retailers, 5,000 retailers, 6,000. It's great, but it's unbelievable now that pretty much everyone in the country can buy our product via Instacart or GoPuff or any other platform that you may be able to get instant delivery or visit your local supermarket. Like how great is that for the mission? Right. Yeah, I mean, socials, Ross and Kai on LinkedIn, that's kind of my, other than that, I am Ross and Kai on Instagram, so. The king of Scotland. The king of Scotland, yeah. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks for joining us, brother. Yeah. Pleasure having you on the show. The Star of the Storefront team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexu Jameson, Owen Capolini, and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is composed by DoubleTouch. I think it's safe to assume that if you've made it this far, you've enjoyed the show. So consider subscribing if you're not already, or better yet, leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's one of the best and easiest ways you can support us. Our handle for all of the social media platforms is at Star of the Storefront. You can always go back and listen to any of our other episodes available wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, starofthestorefront.com. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.