Eggheads

In this episode of Eggheads, Greg talks with Henry Arrowood, the founder and CEO of Farmshare, about the transformation of agriculture via direct-to-consumer practices. They discuss the challenges farms face in a commoditized market, the role of intermediaries, and how Farmshare is helping farmers build direct relationships with consumers. The conversation covers the logistical, marketing, and operational strategies Farmshare leverages to empower local producers, enhance transparency, and create value-driven farm-to-table food systems.

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What is Eggheads?

The average American eats almost 300 eggs per year. But how much do you know about where they come from? What actually makes an egg organic? And could better eggs be better for you?

Host Greg Schonefeld is your resident Egghead and digs into topics like egg nutrition, cage-free farming and what it takes to build an egg empire. From egg-onomics to chicken genetics, Eggheads crack open the unexpectedly fascinating world of eggs.

Henry Arrowood: Just watching how much backbreaking work they're putting in, day in and day out, and knowing the value of the ultimate product that the consumer was paying when it was merchandised, where was the disconnect? Where was the rest of the margin being compressed? For the ranch that I was working on, I counted seven intermediaries that sat between them and the end consumer of their product. And that just, to me, seemed wild. How could we take some of that infrastructure that had revolutionized other industries and bring it to agriculture? How could we connect producers more directly to market?

Greg Schonefeld: Hey, welcome back to Eggheads. I'm your host, Greg Schonefeld. If you go into your local store and look at eggs on the shelf, you might recognize some brands, such as Vital Farms, or Pete & Gerry's. These are labels that market in the store and control their own egg production. They sell a differentiated product at a differentiated price. The more common thing you'll see in the grocery store is a label who buys from a farm or various farms. A perfect example is if you go to Walmart and buy the Walmart labeled eggs. Walmart isn't producing that egg. They are buying it from a supplier or, more likely, a variety of suppliers who perform the farming process.
Another example is if you go to the meat counter and buy ground beef. You're not buying a branded ground beef. You're also not buying a branded rib-eye steak at the counter. The meat counter might have a reputation, but the meat itself doesn't. For example, I like buying steaks at Costco because I'm a fan of the quality, but I can't tell you the actual brand of the steaks. I'm not buying a Nike steak. I'm trusting Costco to do a good job sourcing their steaks.
Why does this matter? It matters for a couple of reasons. For one, more and more people want to know where their food comes from. And more often than not, if you are buying meat or eggs, your purchasing experience in the store doesn't tell you where your product comes from. The second reason is that when the store has a reputation for quality and not the farm, the farm's product becomes a commodity. For those who study business, you know it's a big challenge when your product is a commodity. For one, as we learned in the last episode with Brian Moscaggiuri, you cannot control your pricing. Your eggs are lumped into the hundreds of millions of eggs that are counted in supply, and your pricing is largely controlled by supply and demand. When you can't influence pricing, your business becomes a game of cost, which has its own implications. And as we'll learn today, it also affects the farm's share of the pie.
What if you knew exactly what farm you're buying from and you could feel a sense of trust directly with that farm that they deliver quality every time? And perhaps that you also feel a sense of connection with them. That's the vision of our guest today.

Henry Arrowood: I'm Henry Arrowood. I'm the founder and CEO of Farmshare.

Greg Schonefeld: Henry's path to ag began far from the pastures of Montana where he is now deeply tapped into agricultural practices. Growing up in Washington, D.C., Henry's exposure to agriculture was limited. His connection to farming was sparked, not through personal experience, but through the agricultural interests overseen by his mother, who worked for Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming. This connection led to early experiences in Wyoming, experiences that planted the seeds of deep-seated passion for agriculture. Despite this early inspiration, Henry's professional journey initially took him into the tech world, from the corridors of Visa in Colorado, to the tech hubs of San Francisco, where he was immersed in the world of e-commerce with companies like Square. But then-

Henry Arrowood: The pandemic hit, and my fiance and I, we got really into the show, Yellowstone. And we were watching that, and we were like, "Wow, that looks a hell of a lot better than the life we're living here in our tiny apartment in Russian Hill in the middle of San Francisco." And so I started just reaching out to ranches in Southwest Montana. And this one family, they responded to me. And I think it was obviously because of my dog, they had a bunch of Bernese mountain dogs, I had a Bernese mountain dog too. And they said, "Yeah, why don't you come by?"

Greg Schonefeld: So they packed up. And it was here, working as a ranch hand before and after his tech job, that Henry was confronted with the harsh realities faced by farmers. Henry witnessed firsthand the backbreaking work of beef ranchers who struggled to make ends meet due to a convoluted system of middlemen that diluted their earnings. The process seemed riddled with inefficiencies. Inefficiencies he would later address through Farmshare. But this revelation was a turning point, where his tech experience met his budding agricultural passion, leading to the birth of Farmshare. Inspired to evolve the agricultural sector, much like how technology has transformed other industries, Henry set out to rethink the supply chain, connecting producers more directly with consumers, thus cutting out all the in between.
Can you talk a little bit about all those intermediaries, and why that caused a problem, or why it created opportunity?

Henry Arrowood: If we talk about the particular farm that I was working on, they were a cow-calf operation. Birth cows, they raise them to a year, and then a broker comes and buys them. And the broker sells it to a feedlot, they sell them to a packer, sells it to a wholesaler, sells it to a distributor, sells it to a retailer, and a customer ends up buying it. And so every point of supply chain, somebody is taking a cut. And by the end of that, the average producer in this country is making 14 cents on a dollar of each dollar expenditure that a consumer makes at a grocery store.

Greg Schonefeld: So the intermediary, having all those, at the end of the day, one result is not much of that pie is going to the farmer. And that's part of the problem here. But I guess just that impact to the farmer there, where the farmer's not seeing much of the pie. How does your platform help solve that problem?

Henry Arrowood: We work with producers to verticalize their operation. We're taking what would be that seven step changing of hands, and we're limiting it down to two or three. If they can verticalize their operation, they're not just selling as an input at the bottom of the supply chain, they're able to capture more of the value of the end product. What we're doing is, we're working with producers that maybe before we're a commercial cow-calf operation. They had this very small and discrete responsibility that they ran for their operation. And we're basically helping to verticalize that. How can they finish off their cattle? How can they have a fat cow that's ready to be slaughtered, and then have a meat product that they can sell to consumers?
Obviously, there's some risk involved in that, but there's such a drastic economic upside. Right now, beef prices are higher than they've ever been. We're in a record market at the moment. But, still, they're getting like $2.10 on the hoof for each one of those animals. That's a far cry from the $15 hanging weight average that we're able to sell our customers meat for, direct to market. So, yes, there's some additional costs that have to be internalized if they're going to finish that meat product. But like I said, there's such an economic upside if they can own the relationship with the consumer, and they have one intermediary that sits between them and the consumer, which is the processor. So we're really trying to build the connection between local producers and local processors to ultimately fulfill as much independently produced meat to market.

Greg Schonefeld: So, basically, a farmer has maybe a processor and Farmshare in between them and the customer, so they've gone from seven down to possibly two. And a processor's sitting one step away from the customer through your platform.

Henry Arrowood: Correct. I look at our responsibility more as a facilitator than an intermediary. We're not touching the product. The product never goes through our hands. What we're doing is, we're creating the connective tissue between the producer, the processor, and the market. So we're operating in the background. Again, I think of us as a facilitator, not so much as an intermediary.

Greg Schonefeld: Okay. Cutting down the number of intermediaries though, and obviously each intermediary plays their role, how have you been able to play, let's say, all those roles? Or, basically, what are some challenges you face here that you're able to solve for the farmer?

Henry Arrowood: Yeah, it's a great point. If our expectation is to go to any farm across this country and say, "Hey, why don't you stop being a commercial input farm? Why don't you verticalize your business and create a market for your product?" Come on, on top of all of the farm responsibilities that they have, it's just unrealistic. It's too much of a burden for them to bear. And so what we really recognize is... Well, we had seen some farms that have done it. There's the White Oak Pastures of the world, there's the Joel Salatins, there's the Five Marys. There's a bunch of innovative, renegade producers who have figured out this direct to market model. Now, they are all extremely resourced and they have taken a lot of time and money to build the businesses that they have. What we started to think about is, how can we dissect and reverse engineer that, and productize it in a way that we can offer it out to any farmer so that they can participate in this market channel?
So we've slowly picked apart all of the operational needs for a producer to go from being a commercial operation to owning the entirety of their business and having that direct to market relationship. When we started this thing, the two things that became most apparent as high barriers to entry were logistics and marketing. Traditional shipping isn't necessarily optimized for large, heavy, perishable products. And so if you're going to take a 50 pound box of meat, an eighth of a cow, and ship it to a customer, you're going to incur some pretty egregious shipping costs. It could be a $300 order. We recognized that if we wanted to be able to empower this channel, we needed to figure out a way to really lower the price point and make it more accessible for any farmer to swallow and for the customers to swallow.
And so that was a huge unlock for us at the beginning is, we figured out how to build a piece of software that worked with many different carrier networks around the country, aggregating the volume under single accounts, and then negotiating on volume pricing that we then pass those discounts out throughout our customers. So we save our customers 85% on shipping, compared to what they would otherwise have access to. We also figured out how to do packaging that worked for shipping perishable products in the dead of summer to a customer across the country. Those were two huge unlocks that we are able to provide to our customer that totally lowers the barrier to entry for them to contemplate the sales channel. And we've done similar things in marketing. We've done similar things on the e-commerce side of things. We have figured out how to create a business in a box. You create a premium product, we will be the partner that provides all of the operational stack for you now to sell direct to market.

Greg Schonefeld: It's more than building a brand that's difficult for a farmer. It's also the distribution of the product. According to the Consumer Price Index data available in February of this year, the average price Americans pay for a dozen grade A large eggs is $3. It's pretty remarkable that the current system can produce eggs so cheaply when you consider everything it takes to produce and distribute an egg. If you wanted to start an egg business in your backyard, how would you possibly deliver a dozen eggs for $3 to any grocery store that's not basically right in your backyard? It's economies of scale and well-established distribution networks that make that possible today. Farmshare is working to deliver some of those aspects of economies of scale to its partner farms.
Processing is another important piece of the equation. A major shift Farmshare is promoting involves bridging the gap between local meat producers and processors. Traditionally, many producers have been distanced from the meat processing phase, often ending their involvement when brokers take cattle off their hands. But with Farmshare, they're fostering direct connections between ranchers and local processing facilities. This not only empowers producers, but also helps establish a more integrated, responsive supply chain. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed severe vulnerabilities in our national food systems, particularly in meat processing. You might remember the empty meat cases in your local grocery store, but this wasn't just a supply chain issue. Major facilities, centralized and labor-intensive, became hotspots for virus transmission, leading to shutdowns that rippled throughout the entire supply chain.

Henry Arrowood: There's four companies in this country that own 85% of the meat market. It's ridiculous. And if one of those major plants is to go offline because of an outbreak of COVID, well, that's a national security issue. And that's what we really experienced during COVID. USDA was swift to respond and say, "Okay, we need to build out a more resilient supply chain here. We need to inject some capital into the market to basically bolster more independent meat production capacities across the country." So there's hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, that were administered through the USDA to create more processing capacity across this country. And it's been awesome to see. And we're riding the wave of that because, as these new facilities come up, they need technology to help with the operations of their business. And so that's where we're capitalizing. We truly believe that the future of, not only the meat industry, but our food systems more broadly, is one that's a lot more decentralized and distributed. And we are the technology partner to bring that change about in the meat space.

Greg Schonefeld: One thing you said there was that 85% of beef is in the hands of four companies, but you're helping these small farms. I guess, at the end of the day, is it all passing through those four hands, but the farms are independent? How's that work?

Henry Arrowood: No, we're really empowering everything that flows outside of that. So that 85% is growing very quickly. Just like 20 years ago, it was only 75%. But there's four companies, the Big 4 as they're referred to in the beef space. And there are similar conglomerates that exist in poultry and pork. But they control 85% of all the meat that is distributed in this country. We're working with the 8,000 fragmented processors across this country that represent the long tail, the 15%. And we are working with the hundreds of thousands of independent producers who want to sell outside of the shackles of the Big 4, reclaim some fair economics and have some more autonomy in their business.

Greg Schonefeld: I see. What I'm interested in here is, I guess in that network, there's some smaller farms and some larger farms, I expect, maybe selling to these integrators. Are you able to help a broad spectrum of farmers? For example, 100 head of cattle, or if you have 10,000 head of cattle. I guess I don't know real numbers in that world, but are you able to help a broad spectrum of size in that market?

Henry Arrowood: Definitely. We work with producers that are doing a few head of cattle a year as a hobby thing on the side, and then we work with massive operations. Not to say that we facilitate all of that production direct to consumer, but we work with a few massive operations who have a commercial business. And, oftentimes, it's the case that younger generation is coming in and they're like, "Hey, there's this really cool direct channel opportunity. We could really make some money here. Why don't we try this out?" So they'll finish a portion of their herd, they'll feed them out, and then we'll help them market that beef direct. So, yeah, we've worked with various size producers, all across the spectrum. There's really no perfect size for what we do.

Greg Schonefeld: And part of why I'm curious is, how this could potentially apply to the egg world? And I understand you don't do much in the egg space, which I'd be curious if there's some specific challenges to eggs, why it doesn't work so well, or maybe just something you haven't gotten to. I'm also curious, there's some very large egg producers out there, but then there's some still very much family farms out there, mid-range egg producers. Curious if there could be opportunity, or, yeah, what kind of logistical challenges are specific to eggs?

Henry Arrowood: When you think about these small family farms that are maybe regeneratively minded organic practices, they believe in biodiversity, and they probably implement biodiverse practices into their production. So they have eggs, and we're already helping them get their beef to market. And many of them have come to us and say, "Hey, can you help us get eggs to market too?" We have helped many producers sell their eggs. It's the best thing, for anybody in the city when they have the opportunity to go out into the country, and they can have fresh eggs. It's an entirely different experience, and people recognize that. And I think there's similar appeal and draw to buying eggs direct from producers, in the same way that there is for meat. And so, yeah, we've gone down that rabbit hole with some of our producers, and we have helped them ship eggs. And not only ship eggs, but also merchandise their eggs for local pickup.
We're not just helping producers with shipping. I want to be clear with that. We're helping them connect direct with market, irrespective of what that channel is. We'll help with producers that have local pickups. We'll help with producers that do a delivery route, a CSA, a drop-off point in a farmer's market. We can help with all of that. And with some of our producers that are selling eggs, we've actually helped them ship. The majority of our business is shipping. I think that every producer is trying to index for the shipping business because it's just the easiest. And the reality is, for most producers, they don't probably live around a lot of market opportunity. The most market opportunity for buying this differentiated, more boutique, higher quality in their perception product, is people who live in metro areas.
The troubles then become, "Okay, I'm a producer that lives in a rural area. I want to sell my product direct to market. I'm going to charge a premium for that market." But there's not a local customer that is actually going to buy this premium product at this premium price. How do I connect with a customer in D.C., or, Miami, or New York, or San Francisco, who has demands for this premium product? That's where we come in. And we've helped people do that on the egg side of things too. What we've found is, it needs to be a certain volume threshold to make the unit economics work. For the producers that we helped do this, it's oftentimes four dozen. If you're sending less than four dozen, it's hard to justify the cost of shipping, the cost of packaging. But if you can get four cartons together, I think that there's a business to be had.

Greg Schonefeld: That's an incredible thought. So a lot's going through my mind there. I want to get into the marketing side. But first on the eggs, is it just you haven't worked on the market side as much, or is it the logistical side that's tough?

Henry Arrowood: I think it's both. I think it's both. And I think it's also the value. It's a lot easier to justify shipping Wagyu beef than it is to ship eggs. It's a much higher price per volume than eggs are. And so, for both the customer and for the producer, it makes a lot more economic sense to ship premium beef than it does eggs. But, yeah, I've seen some companies... I don't know if you know this company, Fresh Egg Co.? They're super cool. It's a part of a farm that I respect the heck out of called Seven Sons. And they created this direct egg brand and they're shipping eggs all over the place. I think that they're doing pretty well with it. And I think that some producers that I work with, they've seen that. And they're like, "All right, I want to do that with my business too."
Obviously, there's some logistical complexities to shipping eggs. The packaging becomes expensive. When you're shipping frozen beef, you can bang that box around all you want. You don't care about the contents moving around. It's not going to break. When you're talking about eggs, it's totally different. So I think you could do it. You got to figure out, as a producer, you got to figure out a God-darn good marketing strategy to get your customers to pay what makes sense there.

Greg Schonefeld: It's clear that eggs have its own set of challenges, but Henry notes at least one company that is successfully pulling off directly shipping eggs to consumers. To make it work, you have to create value because there's no way you're pulling this off for $3 a dozen. How do you create that value?

Henry Arrowood: You're not selling the same egg that you're selling at the grocery store. You're selling an egg with a story. And that's where you're charging the premium. The biggest realization I had when I got into this business is, we're not really in the business of selling meat. We're really in the business of helping producers sell their story. That's what the consumer's buying at the end of the day. It's so strange, the relationship that most Americans have to food now. There is no relationship at all. There is zero connection that exists between a customer who goes into Walmart or Costco, and where that food is coming from. The average American is so uneducated on how agriculture works in this country. Something shows up on the shelf and they buy it, and they have no idea what happened in the background in producing that product.
I think that there's a lot of fatigue for this, honestly. I think if you look at millennials and Gen Zs, they are demanding something different. They're the most responsible minded, sustainable minded generation of consumers that have ever existed. They want that transparency. They want that traceability. They want to know the provenance of that product that they're buying, that they're putting into their body, that they're giving to their family. And that is where you're capturing the value. If you can do a good job at telling that story and convincing a consumer why this product, this egg, right here is worth three times the cost of what you're buying in the grocery store, there you go.

Greg Schonefeld: I hear people talk about, "Oh, the nutritional value doesn't change from this or that, potentially." And maybe it can, but even if it doesn't, if every single egg is the exact same nutritional value, I think it ignores an important point. And you just beautifully stated it. The thing I've thought about before is that saying, "Hey, the nutritional value is the only thing that matters." That's like saying, "A Rolex is worth $30,000 because it tells time more accurately." Do people really care?

Henry Arrowood: It's a good comparison.

Greg Schonefeld: My iPhone tells me it's 1:38 right now. I'm guessing that's right, probably within a few seconds. I don't care if it's wrong within a minute. There's a lot more to it. And I think what you just said, it speaks to the opportunity in agriculture that maybe hasn't quite been seized, but can be seized. From your direct experience, I guess, what have you seen from people at Farmshare, maybe some of these individual farmers, building a brand for themselves? I understand that's part of what they can do through your platform.

Henry Arrowood: Yeah, I think some of the most important ingredients that go into creating a successful direct-to-consumer brand is just full transparency and ownership of who you are. You're not trying to model yourself after somebody else. I think the most dangerous trap to fall into is like, "Oh, I know Omaha Steaks is a really good brand and really successful brand that's selling beef direct to consumer." They were the first ones that did this. Everybody else, if they're not super familiar with this market, when you tell them about what it is, they're like, "Oh, Omaha Steaks." But I don't want any of our customers to try and fake themselves as being Omaha Steaks because they're never going to be. I think it's really important just to own who you are, own who your family is, own the way that you believe agriculture should be practiced. Because there is a customer out there who's going to identify with your story.
Oftentimes, one of my customers will ask me, "Well, I'm going to be competing with Joe Farm down the road." I'm like, "Does Joe Farm have the same family as you? Does Joe Farm have the same beliefs as you? Does Joe Farm practice agriculture in the same way? No, they don't." Just because your farm's in close proximity to another, doesn't mean that you're necessarily going after the same consumer. When you introduce this direct-to-consumer channel online, where your audience is now, not just who lives in the town nearby, but is anywhere in the country, you have this opportunity to connect with so many different, unique people who, if you're telling your story correctly and authentically to who you are, are going to identify with you, in a different way that they might identify to Joe Farm down the road. So I think that the biggest key to being successful in this business is just to be authentic and find a way to transparently communicate that authenticity to your customers.

Greg Schonefeld: Henry's point is clear, selling online isn't just about having a nice picture on your website. That alone won't capture the essence of your offering. The real connection happens in building a meaningful relationship with the customer. It's about engaging with them at various touch points, providing insights into the why behind your brand. Customers don't just buy a product. They become part of the story, resonating deeply with your mission and values. But Henry highlights a fundamental challenge in agriculture. I see it in the egg industry as well. When your product is just another egg on the shelf, how do you stand out, if not through pricing? And as we know, this often leads to a competitive pricing game, making it hard for producers to reinvest in their operations, not to mention to innovate. So how do people differentiate other than pricing?

Henry Arrowood: I think it fundamentally requires a shift from a commodity mindset. Everybody in the ag industry has been conditioned to think about their production in a commodity mindset. Everything is commoditized. Fundamentally, what we are empowering is the decommoditization of food. Let's go back to the Rolex example you gave. Yes, there's a commodity market for watches, but Rolex is certainly not a commodity watch. You know what I mean? It is a value-added product. It is differentiated. It has a story behind it. There's a reason why a customer is paying an obscene amount for that watch, in comparison to a Timex. It's sad to think about how commoditized the food sector has become. But there's so many attributes to compete on, and to differentiate on, that aren't just price. And that sometimes can be hard to evoke that mental shift in framing for a farm who has been operating on a commodity their entire career, or maybe for generations. And now you go to them and you say, "No, let's decommoditize your product. Let's figure out a way in which we can tell a different story That doesn't necessarily all come back to price."

Greg Schonefeld: Couldn't agree more. One thing I want to ask you about is what you're seeing on consumer trends. You talked about the story being one thing. What are some other things that consumers are looking for? Or maybe even embedded in the story, the things that they really care about, or that really connects with consumers?

Henry Arrowood: I think that locale is pretty important for consumers. People are always interested in local. And I think that one of the things that we really don't have any traceability into in what we buy from the grocery store is, where did that product come from? Everything's sort of just aggregated and standardized, and we have no idea if you buy beef or eggs at the grocery store, where did that product come from? If you give the consumer the option to buy... A consumer in Charlotte to have the option to buy eggs or beef that's produced in North Carolina, what we've seen is there's a strong likelihood that, given a choice, that customer is going to pay a premium for the locally produced product. So I think that local is a huge driver.
The other is sustainability, whether warranted or not. Obviously, there's a lot of mass media around the issues with the industrial ag institutions. And I think that a lot of people have questions about the environmental friendliness of a lot of those production methods. And so I think that if you can tell the story of, "Hey, we're regenerative. We are organic, we do X, Y, and Z to work harmoniously with our environment," that's a really big selling point.
And I think that family, this idea that you're supporting a small family and not a large corporation, that's huge for people. Let's look at another industry, for example. Why did Etsy become so such a success, or Shopify, for example? Both of those companies became successful in the shadow of Amazon. Amazon is arguably a better consumer experience, just from a convenience perspective. But customers started saying, again, "Do I really want this commoditized product, or do I want to have this differentiated product that I feel like I'm supporting a small business?" And both Shopify and Etsy were able to create these ecosystems of representing small family businesses, and they've flourished. So, yeah, of course there's always going to be the consumer that doesn't care about any of this, only cares about price and goes to Walmart, but that's not every consumer. There are millions of consumers out there today that want something different. I think the real opportunity for us here is in finding that next generation that try to think about the future of agriculture differently. And this is the opportunity we have in front of us.

Greg Schonefeld: At the top of our conversation today, the word inefficiencies came up a few times, but as I'm thinking about this discussion, it isn't just about bringing food from farm to table more efficiently. It's about redefining our relationship with it and nurturing a deeper connection between the producer and the consumer. Building a brand is about more than the product you produce. Sure, Nike produces a great shoe, and they have done it over and over for decades now, but people also buy Nike for what it means to them. You think of Jordan flying through the air, dunking from the free throw line. You think of runners and other athletes performing these incredible athletic feats. Many buy Nike because they want to be a part of these inspirational stories.
We live in a world today where we're all so specialized, and we rely on so many things that we don't understand. I'm talking right now on a microphone that if it were to break, I would be powerless. I don't know the first thing about how a microphone works. I want to trust the brand, that they will make a quality microphone. And they will take care of it, and me, if something goes wrong.
I was struck by something in the episode with Tara when she talked about how it can be difficult to explain agriculture to a population that doesn't know much or anything about it. As she pointed out, less than 2% of Americans are family farmers, versus 30% just 100 years ago. I could see the impossibility of getting on the same page with the 98% who don't farm. Farming is a different world if you haven't had exposure to it. Maybe the 98% doesn't need or want to know all the details of agriculture. Much like my microphone, I don't understand all the things my financial advisor does. I don't understand how the mechanic fixes my car. I don't know the biology behind what my doctor is recommending, but I trust that he or she does. And I go to the same place because of my trust with the person.
So how can farmers build a relationship and trust with consumers? Henry's platform is one option where the farmer establishes a direct relationship with the consumer. A farmer can create a brand presence and ship directly to the consumer. If they deliver great products, then they can start to build loyalty to their farm. Looking back to Nike, they sell through different channels, but they ultimately put building their brand in their own hands. They deliver a message, and they have grown the trust that they back up that message with great products. There are plenty of challenges out there for farms to duplicate what Nike does, but maybe there's opportunity out there for farmers, or those interested in farming, to establish a brand and relationship with consumers.
Henry, through his insights and platform, provides a potential pathway. I want to thank him for coming on and sharing. And stay tuned for the next episode, where we talk with the founding president of an egg company that has shown the pathway to building a premium egg brand that consumers trust. Make sure you don't miss that episode, or others, by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. I'm your host, Greg Schonefeld. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Thank you so much, Henry. One more quick question. How do you prefer your eggs?

Henry Arrowood: I'm a scrambled guy, but low and slow, real low and slow.

Greg Schonefeld: That is so important.

Henry Arrowood: Yeah, it's so important. Thomas Keller is one of my favorite chefs, and he did a master class. And spent an entire episode talking about how to perfect scrambled eggs, and he just does them so low and slow. And I think that's the best way to cook eggs.

Greg Schonefeld: I need to get him on here. I've recently went to a breakfast place that just opened. And they've got cinnamon roll pancakes, all this fancy stuff. But you ordered a fried egg, and it's seared and browned on the outside. I'm like, "You can't call yourself a breakfast place and not perfect the egg. Come on, man."