 Aloha. Happy Friday. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii. Can you tell I'm excited? I'm really excited. This week I have Gary Novicell here. He is the founder of a raw dog food company. Yes. What am I doing? I'm talking about a raw dog food company. Well, this company happens to be about the most sustainable business I can think of. And it's new. He started it in 2012 and he basically takes seconds from our favorite organic farmers and invasive species and turns that into the most healthy food you can possibly have for your dog. And he has built a business out of this. It was profitable in six months. Wow. Wow. Gary, you're awesome. How did that happen? Well, thank you first. Thank you for having me on the show today. When my wife and I first came to Hawaii, I had had my dog on a raw food that was produced in Canada. And when we got here, I was really surprised that with all the amazing ingredients that we have here in the islands that I couldn't find one. So I did what, of course, any good dog owner would do. I started making my own. And my wife eventually wanted me to find my own kitchen. I think it had something to do with the beef livers laying on the counter. But we did. Friends and family wanted the product and we were getting it locally. So it took off from there. When I met you, that was a few years ago. We were at a workshop put on by Whole Foods. It was an amazing workshop, actually, all day long. They kind of told us how we could, with our local business, jump through all the hoops to get on the shelves of Whole Foods. And in that day, it wasn't just Whole Foods regulations that sort of came to light. It was all of the regulations around food. And it's a lot. You've had a lot of hurdles to jump over in getting here. So how have you, what did you do? Well, when we found our first kitchen space, because square footage is so expensive here, we started in the Pacific Gateway kitchen incubator. And they leased the space by the hour. Dog food and human food don't necessarily fit into the same kitchen space. So what we had to do was become a human grade producer of dog food. So we've got the same certifications as any restaurant would. And that precluded us from using lesser quality ingredients. So we sought out, and I would have said anyway, something that if it's indoor dog food, it would be something I'd feed my wife. So organic chicken, grass-fed beef, local venison, using local vegetables from organically either certified or farmers who raised using organic methods in our foods. So how hard was that for you to go out and build these relationships with the farmers? Well, you know, you're the new guy on the island. And a lot of these guys had relationships that went back 20, 30 years. And when you go to a rancher and say, I need 50 pounds of, you know, beef, heart, liver, and, you know, rump steak or whatever, you're a nuisance. So I had to start thinking much bigger than that. And as I started producing larger quantities and started making them aware of what we were doing and how we were doing it, that bridged the gap with them. They started seeing that we weren't here just to make a quick dollar. We were here to physically work with them in taking products that maybe they couldn't otherwise sell to an open market and find a use for them, like in our treat products or in some of our dog foods. One of the things that I was astonished at, I mean, it's nearly impossible to go into a supermarket here and find organic chicken. But oh my gosh, your dog food has organic chicken in it. It does. How did that happen? Well, one of the things that I look at before we put an ingredient in our food is how is the animal raised? If an animal is raised on a feedlot under conditions that I don't deem appropriate and a lot of people would question those methods of raising an animal, I'm not going to use it in food. So we started seeking out farmers and ranchers that raise their animals in sustainable methods. So pause. Sustainable methods. Your background is IT. You were head of IT for Compaq and a nuclear engineer. I was nuclear engineer. Okay. So how do you know about sustainable agriculture? It's a great question. When I was little I grew up with my grandmother and she had a 250,000 bird chicken farm. So eggs, layers, fryers, the whole the whole gambit of birds. So I learned a lot about chicken, but later in life I learned that she was doing organic and you mainly raising animals before that was even a thing, before that was even cool. That was just the way that she felt she needed to give back to her animals and to the land that she was a caretaker of. And where was this? This was in Shetsworth, Georgia. So north Georgia boy. And I would, you know, she had other animals. She had, you know, cattle and she had turkeys and other things, but mainly it was the chicken. They were free range pasture raised. There was little, if any, feed input to it. She was doing permaculture before I think anybody really understood permaculture and she had a lot of time and room to experiment. So seeing and remembering the taste of those birds compared to what I was seeing as I was growing up. I mean, I could remember for years tasting an egg that was anywhere close to what I remember growing up as a child until I moved here and I met the folks at Tenderoo, France, Gillian, Luan, Casey and tasted their eggs for the first time. And that was just a major flashback for me because it was exactly the same taste that my grandmother's eggs had 40 years later. And so they were one of the first people that I started talking to about consuming local products, their chickens, some of the land that they were raising. And that's, I guess, that's what really got us started into pursuing things more locally. So not only do you bring in the local producers of like of ag like the chickens and the produce, but you're also helping with our invasive species problem. Yeah, anytime man gets involved with moving a species, there are a few times it works out and then a lot of times that it's an epic fail. So with with deer, a gift to the islands, you know, given to Maui given to Molokaii and when I then before you know it with no predators, you've got hundreds of thousands of these deers that are damaging the watersheds, changing the terrain on an island, you know, eating the grass that run off is horrible. But eating the grass of grass fed cattle ranchers that are trying to make a living growing cattle. So I met a gentleman on Maui, the Maui deer cooperative that came here to help identify the seriousness of the invasive species problem, and then find ways to use that invasive species in either restaurants or shipping to the mainland or in or in other ancillary products. And for me, that was a natural fit. I mean, access deer here is some of the best deer you're going to find in the world. Taste value. I had it. Very good. So that was a very popular hit with our customers. But the difference between us and a restaurant is a restaurant will use about 50% of an animal, whether it be a cow or whether it be a deer. Most of it will wind up going in the trash. So for us, because we're making an animal food, other than head, hide hooves, feathers, feet, digestive tract, we can use the whole animal. And we can process it very quickly and and have much less waste and put it to an efficient use of feeding dogs. So how does that work? I mean, this on Maui and Malacca, you're sourcing the venison, right? Yes. So hunters are notoriously, I'm not going to say disorganized, but going alone kind of a group and don't bother us kind of a group. So you eat and as the Malahini who newcomer who came in, you have somehow really made this work. What what happened? Well, with the Maui deer cooperative, that was a phone call to me asking if I had a mead for venison. And of course, yeah, I knew as an invasive species. The hunters on Malacca was that was different. My wife is much more social and outgoing and able to know everybody in a group in 10 minutes. And on the mule ride on Malacca, she met a guy who happened to be a hunter was underemployed and wanted to find a way to make more money, you know, for his family. And she mentioned, you know, my husband gets his deer from Maui, could he possibly get deer from you? And that that relationship formed very quickly, I put in an initial where I said, Here's, here's what I'm looking for. You know, I know it rains on Malacca, you know, it rains on Maui and hunting schedules can be unpredictable. But this is what I'd like. And a few days later, I got a call and said, Okay, I've got 600 pounds. Where do you want me to ship it? And you know, since then, we've had a growing relationship week over week, I still get deer from from Maui. I think Maui may suffer more of an environmental impact from the deer because of how and where they're located on the island. Molacae, there aren't as many jobs there. There are people who are really struggling, one to protect their land, one to keep Molacae the way Molacae is, but also to have jobs available to them. So in the last few seconds before we go to the break, can you do you happen to have any numbers like how many pounds you of venison you use a month? Right now, sure. Right now, we're probably using about 3500 pounds a month from Molacae. But I think the bigger number is there was a purchaser on the mainland who wanted to buy. And their question was, what is your break even number before we start reducing herd size in the islands? 300,000 pounds a month does not even begin to put a dent in the deer population. So 300,000 pounds a month of deer meat of deer meat a month. Okay, I think we'll take a break now and come back. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show education movers, shakers and reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Aloha, my name is Justine Espiritu, and I am the co host of Hawaii Farmers Series. This is my co host, Matthew Johnson. And we are live with you every Thursday at 4pm at thinktechhawaii.com. And our show focuses on Hawaii's local food community. We feature not only the farmers that are producing our food, but we also feature the supporters and other folks involved in the community that are trying to promote local agriculture. Aloha, join us at TEDx Honolulu 2016. It's at the Blaisdale, July 9. From 10 to five, the discount code is R-A-C-H-A-E-L underscore T-E-D-X-H-N-L. See you then. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland heater on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon from 3 to 3.30. Today I have an amazing model of a truly sustainable local business that's taking into account all sorts of my favorite things. There's a kind of the there's the invasive species part. And there's the no food waste part taking the produce that would be otherwise discarded. And then there's the part of underemployed hunters. It's just beautiful. It's just beautiful. So thanks for coming, Gary. And we're going to show the little video you made for the FedEx just to kind of give an overall look at why raw dog food. Aloha from Hawaii. My name is Gary Novasel, and I'm the owner of Raw Dog Hawaii. We're a canine health care provider and we make locally sourced organic raw food for dogs. The reason I got into making raw food was my best friend Bear. He had every allergy in the book. We tried every traditional Western medicine and food that we could find. We switched him to raw food and magically within a month, all of those things went away. And I had my puppy back. My best friend was now healthy. Everybody else I started making raw food at home quickly moved to a kitchen incubator and then finally got our own space so we could make human grade food for dogs. Roddick Hawaii helps dogs live allergy free lives and thrive rather than just survive. We get to see these results within a couple weeks and it is amazing the transformation that we see and allergies absolutely disappearing before our eyes. Our farmers and ranchers are absolutely crucial to us. The quality of their ingredients is human grade and without them we couldn't make the food that we make today. This grants really important to us to help us purchase the machinery that we need to expand our business. FedEx has been a huge partner for us and we're now Hawaii's largest ground shipper. Thank you and vote for Roddick. So that was for a contest on FedEx that you're in the final FedEx has an annual small grant competition and they open it up to thousands of companies to kind of present their pitch of why they should be included as a winner of the grant contest. Tens of thousands of companies applied. Somehow we were in the top 100 and we'll actually find out the results of who the winners are this coming Monday. All right. Well we'll stay tuned for that. My fingers are crossed. And speaking of business I mean that transportation is a big part of your business. You've been in business now for four years. Right. And how about profitability. I mean Hawaii is notorious for being horrible for startups. Yes. It's the most expensive state to do business in. We have a large freezer so we have high power consumption. None of our equipment is petite. It's all quite large. But if you can make it here then you could pretty much take a really sustainable model of food production and move it someplace else. But here we've been profitable since I think probably our fifth or sixth month. My account was certainly shocked by it. And we've been growing significantly every year because of it. Once once the customer sees the benefit of what raw food can do for a dog and how quickly that can can rid a dog of allergies. They go beyond raving customers. They become fanatical. I guess customers. Adherence. Yes. So profitability is not the issue with us now. Running out of product is certainly not the issue. And we can't really give Whole Foods credit for this can we in spite of all of that. You don't seem to be selling your product in a lot of the larger stores. Why is that that was a part conscious part unconscious decision at the beginning. I was approached by a large big box pet store and I thought well if I do that who does that help out. Retailer who doesn't have the corporate headquarters here and maybe I'm not the one employee. Whereas if I am going with local businesses and I am selling into their local channels through business that are struggling just like me. I'm giving them an opportunity to have customers driven to their store that might not otherwise get there. And I'm also getting the opportunity of getting customers that I might never ever see. So it felt a lot more synergistic for me to do business with the people that I would do business with rather than seek out the big deal. And I know that's probably counterintuitive to a lot of business people who think you know quantities and margins that that's the best way to do it. But I'd rather do it feeling good that I that I help more than just a farmer or a rancher. But I help business people employ more people. I help you know more dogs that way. And you know it's easier to get the message across what you're doing through somebody local who cares about it rather than being noise in a large store. So we this is I love that you said that counterintuitive because it is right where we're told we need more followers. We need to be marketing more. But you do use social media and in some very skillful ways. You told me my my my lesson on Twitter back there at the at the Whole Foods Sprouts event event. And I've never forgotten it. So how do you how do people find you. I mean is it organic or also or I mean honestly we have an advertised the only advertisement we take out is every quarter in the Island Dog magazine. And that's just one page explaining who we are. The rest is word of mouth and through our retail channels. So we we provide support for our retail channels and training and we have events with them. But I would probably be a little scared if I had to go out and do much advertising and found out that I couldn't keep up with that because it's really important for me to keep my customers and their dogs my nieces and nephews to keep them able to continue to get the food over the long term. This is one of the things about your product. I mean it really does change the life of dogs and their owners because of it. So it's like once a dog is on this they really do need to keep going with it. Otherwise they're likely to go back to the poor health conditions they had. So it's it's somehow you've been very smart at scaling your operations. Right. And I think that's where you know having the tech senior technology experience and working for the bankruptcy court and turning around companies has helped because the large scaling taking a business and scaling it that doesn't scare me. The not knowing what had I'm supposed to be wearing in a small business doing 80 hours or 90 hours a week at a certain time or day of the week. I've never done that. I've never worked in retail. I've never had to have those type of relationships or conversations. So that's a big learning experience. Scaling. I'm not too concerned about that. But the rest of it making sure I keep my customers and retailers and my advertising all appropriate and providing enough of it. That's something I have to keep reminding myself of every single day. So when when you do these events with with your your retailers. So can you give us an idea what kind of retailers they are. Sure. Where might somebody find your. So feed trough and while so up north country. We have dog rumors like a daycare and busy scissors that carry our products so one mobile one fixed. You know we've we're also in like a market. So it's it's a very natural fit for us to be there because the other foods they carry kind of mimic the the same thought process behind the creativity of the product. They're using local their supporting local. It's it's a co-op. So the shoppers are the owners. I was there yesterday and saw that your your dog treats very nicely displayed. I have to tell you. Very good. Thank you. I'll let my delivery person know that I thank you. So the this the treats don't need to be refrigerated but the dog food itself is it frozen or refrigerated. And yeah the dog food is actually frozen and from the time we get it this is other than the vegetables it comes to us in a frozen state. So during our manufacturing process of it it never comes up to higher than about 22 degrees Fahrenheit. So we'll remain frozen through the process. Yeah. And it's important because we don't want to have to worry about any bacteria or we run our kitchen just like we were going to feed people. And and my staff knows that if you're going to put something in there that my wife wouldn't eat. You better not put it in there because she'll find out somehow that's just the way it works. So we maintain those same high quality standards. We batch test for salmon and E coli which is a common sticking point for people. Gary you talked about we have about three minutes left. You talked about packaging and the other day when we were speaking and I was very impressed with the depth that you went. Would you talk about that too how you've changed your packaging to be more sustainable. Oh my gosh yes. You know when we started out I'm I would be embarrassed to go back and look at my packaging. Hopefully I've deleted those photos. But since then we we looked at more sustainable ways to package our products in in our new packaging. It's going to be 100% compostable which is our box. The shrink wrap inside that's going to hold the patties. We've actually found a producer that makes a compostable shrink wrap. And there's a common misunderstanding between biodegradable and compostable. The definition of biodegradable is we'll degrade over a period of time or as compostable is you know over 30 or 60 days. Well a period of time can be a million years. It can be a thousand years. It can be 10 years. It can be 600 years for one diaper. Right. So we we elected to go compostable even with a frozen product that we knew would encounter moisture because it was the right thing to do. It was a more expensive thing to do. But we found that people who would buy our big 15 pound bags of food that came in one big plastic bag would divide it into 10 smaller Ziploc bags. So instead of creating a minimal amount of plastic waste. I mean I was indirectly adding to it and that just that wasn't acceptable for me at all. Well the the level of thought that you have put into that chain of sustainability all along the way is truly remarkable taking into account the way that your customers handle the product after it's left the cash register and building that into your business model is really I mean this is the way that all businesses need to be thinking. And when I go for my favorite Korean barbecue and they hand it to me and styrofoam with plastic and wooden chopsticks from trees that were cut down. I mean it how how tough how expensive was it to make this. Oh you know what we're going to have to come back. Just just can you say I'll be ready to answer it just right now. Yeah. Anytime you ship this product to Hawaii the shipping cost usually equals the cost of product of the cost or the price of the product that you're shipping. So it doubles it. And if you can't find it here and you can't get Amazon to give you free shipping to get it here. It's cost. All right. Well thank you so much Gary for coming here to Hawaii is my mainland and good luck. Thank you on Monday with FedEx. Yay. Pleasure is one thanks for having me.