Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Testing your ideas against reality can be challenging. Not everything will go as planned. It’s about keeping an open mind, having a clear hypothesis and running multiple tests to see if you have enough directional evidence to keep going.
This is the How I Tested That Podcast, where David J Bland connects with entrepreneurs and innovators who had the courage to test their ideas with real people, in the market, with sometimes surprising results.
Join us as we explore the ups and downs of experimentation… together.
David J Bland (0:0.879)
Welcome to the podcast Marc
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (0:3.354)
Thanks so much for having me on, David.
David J Bland (0:6.021)
So could you share a little bit of your background before we jump into the topics of experimentation and testing and how you use that to drive your business? A little bit about you and sort of how you came to the idea of founding Susgainable.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (0:21.540)
Sounds good. So yeah, I joke around that I do everything accidentally on purpose. And I've evolved that with the company that I built to say I'm doing everything accidentally with purpose now. So the business has kind of transformed my thinking. But basically I went and did my undergrad in Ontario in kinesiology, got an exercise physiology degree, worked seven years in healthcare. The latter part primarily with diabetics.
At the same time, I worked 11 years for an airline in Canada called WestJet, various different roles, super loyal to like the companies. I worked for two companies for quite a period of time, but always evolving in roles, 16 different roles at both companies. So I would say I was kind of geared towards entrepreneurship. The latter years at WestJet, I actually went off because I worked so hard, basically straight through university and into my early career.
⁓ and then, so I became a flight attendant for a little bit and just enjoyed traveling. And then my mother said, can you please use your brain again? So I decided I'd go back and get an MBA because I always gravitated towards the business side of things. And that's where my business, Susgrainable was born out of, was actually going to get an MBA to kind of move up the corporate ladder. ⁓ but then I fell in love with the problem. ⁓ and the fact that it's two massive problems with a super simple solution that people get excited, like it's super easy to communicate.
we turned beer waste into a sustainable flower. And that is like the three second pitch has been there since almost day one. Started out as a student project. I'm like, if this is a food thing, we got to get it back in people's mouths. And that could even start literally from day one during the student project, four weeks in, I was like, we had a product in people's mouths and immediately getting people's feedback.
David J Bland (2:12.792)
That's incredible. That's such a short feedback cycle for something that's edible. How did that manifest? How did you come to that point of view of we have to get something really fast? How did you make that happen?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (2:26.298)
Sure. So it started out in an entrepreneur class. So basically in the entrepreneur class, we had somebody who came from the beer industry. loved, this was born out of UBC MBA. And one of the reasons I chose to go there is their focus on sustainability and innovation. And it's a very international student group who comes. So from all over the world, we had a very diverse background in our group that addressed the problem. One person basically suggested came from the beer industry, real problem for
craft brewers is that this is a waste management problem for them. So they take barley, steep all the sugars out and the fiber and protein and minerals are what remains. Me working with diabetics was like, this needs to stay in our food system. And I was like, we quickly learned that shelf stability was a problem. Now, since none of us worked in the food industry and one, we had other students who basically had to give us feedback.
We didn't have to worry about food safety guidelines in the early days or anything like this. So Super Bootstrappy managed to convince one of the really small craft breweries to let us take like an ice cream bucket out, dehydrated it in the oven. That was the very first batch was dehydrated in the oven. I am like, if I'm going to subject other people to this, I will always do it myself. So I was the first test case.
But we dehydrated in the oven. We learned a bunch, like we had to shake it because we burnt the first tray because the top burnt in the bottom. I was like, burnt stuff's never going to taste good. So learned that that was not going to be a scalable process. But we're like, we could get about 200 grams of flour. And I say flour loosely on that first batch because we used a Vitamix to blend it. And that first iteration of product that went, was just about a group of about 35 students.
And this is where I owe a little bit to my kinesiology degree and why I advocate for anybody who's doing a food product to like watch your customers and literally try and pick out and ask so many questions because people were like, this tastes good. And I was like, your face is telling me something different. And it was like, well, so you knew they wanted to love it. They love the premise of the company that and like what we're doing. They love the fact that it was more nutritious.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (4:48.164)
but it scratched their throat. And so that's actually how I met Clinton, who's now the big co -founder. and him are the two ones who've carried it forward over six years, but he was a barley farmer. We had met when we both worked at AHS back in the day. He worked on the administrative side. And so we are very yin and yang founders, but I joke around that he asked too many questions, because I was just like, hey, you grew up a barley farmer. I have a few questions around flour.
And he was like, what? So he jumped on the phone and then eventually he's like, oh, well, you need a mill. And he's like, where do I go about getting one of those? He's like, well, my grandparents, because he grew up on a farm, 1910s, they're like, oh yeah, we have a tiny home -based mill that my grandparents used. Do want me to ship it out? I was like, yes. So yeah, we have this like artifact number one of our business, 1910 mill, which got it fine enough.
so that on iteration number two, about nine weeks in, we actually had products that everybody was like, and it made for a big transition period of going from like, oh, this scratches my throat and everything like that. And we'd even had more time to evolve the recipes to the point where it was like, oh man, this is like, this is actually like, you've got something, this is cool. So yeah.
David J Bland (6:7.995)
It sounds like you learned really quickly from rapid feedback cycles there of trying to shake it when you're baking it and having it burning to finding out how to do that to people not really enjoying the process of eating it, but trying to convince you that they were to milling it down to something. so all in nine weeks, that's pretty incredible.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (6:32.004)
Yeah, well, and this is like, this is part of evolving a business and being a first time founder. It's really easy to pivot when you're small and don't have much, but as you keep getting bigger, it's harder and harder to pivot. So the more you can hone in those early days and the more you can do before scaling, I highly encourage. And then the one thing that me and Clinton focused on, like when he joined, is he's been all about the process and how do we scale and make this product cheaper and more affordable.
while I'm busy building out the market and who gets the most excited and worrying about who's the ideal target market and where do we scale through. And we both constantly tell anybody on our team, we encourage you to make mistakes, but make them as small as possible so we can correct them as quickly as possible. And when it's all of a sudden like we're getting more pulled and we have to push, then it's like, okay, then we dedicate more resources towards that.
David J Bland (7:27.168)
I can imagine there's so much unknown as far as, what distribution channel should you use or acquisition channels and how do you get to your ideal customer and all that and then hopefully doubling down on the ones that work and not spending money on things that aren't working. I'm thinking through your story here. So nine weeks, you get to something that people enjoy. Where do you go from there? mean, how do you start going beyond that small sample size?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (7:57.060)
Yeah, so this was still part of the student project at the end of this whole class. There's final presentation and then most like most things if you work on it hard enough and sure enough you quickly learn that most things are meant to like fail until you get something. So they asked like in the class who's continuing on with their projects. Nobody in my group wanted to continue on with it except for me. Like my hand was up high. I'm like I'm taking this forward and then there's a whole other group in the class, but every other group.
I think there's 13 groups in total. Every other group's like, no, we're killing our business. Like it makes no sense. Um, so that was the whole premise when I was like, I'm taking this forward. Nobody lifted their hand, but the one guy who was a food scientist is like, if you need, if you need help, like he's like, I want you to keep building this, like go for it. He's like, if you need anything, reach out to me. And that was incredibly valuable in the first two years. Uh, but yeah, no, I
Basically the roommate I had at the time, she worked in the restaurant industry, knew a bunch of our contacts and brewery contacts. And so she had to deal with, endure the smelling of the grains, our house smelling like a barn in the earliest days. We had to move to a commissary kitchen and Clinton came and like found us a place to do some batch drying and get the, the cost down. Cause the first, the first batch when we did it, we like timed out the cost.
And it's like, what would this cost us if we got somebody else to do it? And it was about $36 a kilo, which was never going to be able to be managed. And then we got it before we started the business down to $20 a kilo. So pretty good over the course of eight months to get a drop that big, which we needed to. But the first place I say to start, if you really need to get lots of feedback, you want to get really bootstrappy is farmers markets. So we basically took
$50 ,000, the goal of doing 100 farmers markets, and what do we have by the end of 100 farmers markets? And literally three weeks in, we had to hire a baker because Clinton was like baking up as much as he could. And farmers markets are concentrated on the weekend. So he was like, I can't do this and bake. And we got baking hours and the off hours to keep costs down. So he's like,
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (10:18.870)
I also can't be up at four in the morning or like work through till four in the morning and then come to a farmer's market. So we're like, okay, a Baker will allow us to evolve products. Cause one of the things we did three weeks in was we knew like sampling it out and just getting it in mouse was important, but it's like, whose mouse do you feed? And the other vendors we already saw in week one, other vendors who knew each other are constantly trading at the end of markets. We have a perishable product. So we're like,
Oh, farmers markets are all about the farmers and the other vendors. Let's sample to them. Cause if they talk about our business, then it's getting out in the food community. And yeah, we went, as soon as we hired the Baker, like, could you use some of this fresh farm product in our products? Cause then we can tell them to send people over to try our product. And so then the farmers were sending people to our booze and it was growing like that. Um, and then things really just took off when, um,
I just say like again, accidentally on purpose. am like, if there's an opportunity in the moment, I will grab it. And we are a downtown farmers market. The downtown farmers markets is notorious for being one of the slowest markets except for one hour when everybody's like heading home. And this one market one day was like all the vendors were just like buzzing and being oddly weird. And I was like, what are you guys like, what's everybody being all weird about? And they're like, oh, the,
Global News, their weather person's here and they're doing something at the entrance to the market. They're doing their weather forecast from there. And I was like, Clinton, give me some product. So I take three things over and I just like literally go to the weather lady and was like, hey, just wanted to give you guys some products in case you get hungry. Thanks for featuring the market. This and that. She's like, oh, that's so nice. Thanks. What do you do? We turn beer waste into a sustainable flour and baked goods. Hang on. What did you just say? She takes a bite out of it. It's like,
Kate, we're getting you on the afternoon news. We're on like seven different news channels within like the month and a half. Managed to have, you also get a crazy amount of different people coming to a farmer's market. So that's how we really honed. We knew we had something by the end of the hundred markets. We knew we had something by like 55 markets. But then yeah, then other questions needed to be solved. then, so we just kept evolving on the fly.
David J Bland (12:38.885)
It's such a great story. was wondering how did you approach the breweries and the craft places? Did you just call them up and say, hey, what are you doing with your spent barley? Or how did that go?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (12:52.718)
Yeah, so we interviewed a bunch of them, slightly different sizes, never went to the really big guys because we knew like getting in front of them. That was all part of the student project actually and we learned a ton through that. One, we learned a bunch of them were lying to their customers because they were like, oh, it goes to farmers. And the one day we walked out of one of the breweries and a waste management truck was taking the bins and we're like, that is not a farmer.
So then we started diving deeper into who actually might say the story. And then we learned there's waste management fees. Farmers is how it traditionally was done, but then they wouldn't come and pick it up sometimes. And then the fines actually end up equating to more than waste management. And so they're like, we need it out so we can brew the next batch as fast as possible. And we can't deal with fines because the product after 24 hours.
really smells and then the bylaw officers come around and ticket them. So yeah, we learned that it was a pretty big problem. First step was just getting those like ice cream hails and it's like you go to enough of them, somebody's like bound to be like okay whatever and they're like yeah small brewery. They liked what we were kind of about and what we were trying to do with it. We also had the advantage at the time saying we are students because we were and we're like we're working on a student project and they're like okay.
David J Bland (14:16.908)
Yeah, we had a similar thing. went to a talk in San Francisco years ago where the coffee roasters were trying to get rid of spent grounds like waste and someone started a mushroom business just with using that as fertilizer and everything. so they've come around over the past few years where they'll put out buckets and things, but it's still hit or miss. But I think it's so interesting you're going through this.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (14:33.306)
Mm -hmm.
David J Bland (14:42.533)
Cycle right you're trying to say okay their value prop is we give this to farmers But behind the scenes that wasn't really happening that much and so you can help them almost fulfill their value prop by Taking that and then that's a great story for them to say oh, yeah, and there's all these other amazing products Created from you know from what we use so you're going through and calling people You're going after the really big ones and you're you're basically just going is it just you and your co -founder going by hand and like loading things up and bringing it back
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (15:12.654)
Yeah, so the earliest part of the process, and this is like when you run a food business, liability could be a huge thing. So those first days, yeah, we didn't trust anybody else to handle the material to the food safe level that we needed it to. So it was us, we had our dehydration partner. So we were the main transportation part. You also breweries at the smaller scale don't always stick to the tightest timeline.
And so this is where we can't have the bin sitting out. Like a timer kind of goes off the minute it comes out of the mash tun. It needs to go. As we've grown, we've honed that process. They get more serious about it too, because they're like, if they all of a sudden want to associate their brand with it, they need to be part of that process and buy into it. And so that's where we've really defined processes. We have like questions. We, from day one, we've been pretty adamant that in the smallest, we need a...
very consistent product. So the barley, they steep it, different beers require different malting processes. So we take it within a very similar range. And yeah, we haven't been able to scale the flour quite yet. I mean, we're getting very, very close to, which is super exciting, but I can tack through some of those problems if you want.
David J Bland (16:32.574)
I just wanted to hear more about how you get the material because I think sometimes people skip that part and they're like, oh yeah, of course people just give it to you and it's never that simple. And so you go through farmers markets, you said what, 55 different farmers markets? Was that all across Canada? Like where did you focus?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (16:48.728)
No, so this was our first summer. It was all Vancouver, Canada, and the lower mainland there. But we had a couple unique ones. So the year before when I was a student, and this is something I've always just loved, love farmers markets. So I kind of went to the ones and I was like, okay, these ones are busy. one, was like, we're going to do this Squamish one because it's outside of town.
But it's like all the climbers go, it's a lot of outdoorsy people. And I was like, I really want to test that farmers market. There's a few other rural ones. We really want to stay somewhat close to home to keep transportation down and keep our logistics as simple as possible. But we did try a few a little further out and we dealt with four farmers market bodies because you never know, right? Like if a farmers market body all of a sudden doesn't like you and doesn't let you come back in year two, if you've done everything through one, then
that's a lot of risk. yeah, our biggest thing that happened in year two is that COVID hit. And so we killed it in farmers markets. And then a lot of the traditional shoppers at farmers markets, there's a lot of older population that gravitated towards their product because especially when it comes to fiber, doctors tend to start talking about it a lot when people are in their 50s and 60s. And so there's a fairly...
wealthy demographic at a few of our farmers markets and we became like their fiber source. And they just like loved everything we were about. So we lost a lot of them because they felt it was very risky to shop at farmers markets during that first year of COVID. So I joke around that I said we could do no wrong in our first year and a bit in business. And then when COVID hit, it's like we could do no right for about two years.
David J Bland (18:40.476)
Wow, that's quite a long time. It sounds as if before COVID hit though, you were almost even thinking about the different farmers markets and is your target customer coming to these markets? I've never really thought about it, having different segments show up to different markets, but it sounds as if you were beginning to back your way into these types of farmers markets are ideal for us.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (19:6.904)
Yeah, and we've done unique things because as soon as farmers market season ends, because in Canada, it's like during the summer, it's gangbusters and everybody goes and all the fruit and vegetables are in season. But during the winter time, there's very few of them. And there's also like people just don't go as often, don't go as much, go for different reasons. And it's different people. But we needed to find, what's going to be a consistent place?
beyond farmers markets. Like where do we see our product going? And we had two products that were fairly easy to make that were our most popular products that we were like, okay, these could do well in certain cafes, places like this. So we actually took the demo model from grocery stores and approached cafes with like, hey, we have this really unique product that we're not going to have anywhere to send people to come the end of farmers market season.
We have what we want to do is we'd like to come in between 7 and 9 a .m. when you have your busy coffee rush and just sample as people wait in line. So it'll be an add value customer experience for your the people coming to visit for a coffee. We're just going to chat about the story and let them learn and they'll try a little piece of the cookie. And when they get up to the till, they'll let you know what they think. And so literally every cafe launched after we did this, we even had one
um, one of our employees, because we had hired an employee. Um, she was an environmental science student. We met her at a farmer's market. She just loved everything we were about. She was also very outgoing and kind of salesy. So we're like, if you're willing to do like half science, half sales, um, we'll bring you on. And so she loved doing these things and there's so much hype, but she was also a climber.
So she was at the local climbing gym and was mentioning what she does and they're like, oh, you should come sample it out here. People might enjoy it. So she's like, can I sample it out here? And like I said, we encourage little mistakes and trying little things. And we're like, it's not very hard for us to sample out at a climbing gym once and send them to the cafes. It'll benefit the cafes. And the climbing gym after the demo was like, okay, every single person said we need to carry this product, but you guys don't do packaging and we don't do non -packaged products.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (21:28.986)
They're like, what? Like, how do we go about this? I was like, well, how about we just buy you a cookie bell and you put it on the counter? I'm like, judging by the reaction, like they'll sell through fast enough. And we doubled orders every single week. We are only there for six weeks before the pandemic hit and shut them down. But literally every week doubled the order.
David J Bland (21:49.921)
That's incredible being able to test different segments and climbers seem to really resonate. So, okay, so COVID hits, right? It sounds like farmers market traffic almost goes to nothing. I'm pretty sure some of these other places like climbing gyms are struggling as well. So how did you sort of test your way through all of that? What was your mindset going through there? Like how were you trying to find different acquisition channels through the pandemic?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (22:18.392)
Yeah, so this is where me and him, and this is where I say we could, it felt like we could do no right, but we really stuck to like our initial assumption and thesis. We both came from healthcare and we're like, this COVID thing is not gonna be a short thing. Like it's gonna take two to three years. I was in health promotion and injury prevention that looked at like longer term health conditions. And I also worked in the airline industry. So I was, quickly within when COVID hit we took,
a month and just like, we're just like, we're still small enough. We had basically, I think our burn was like a thousand dollars because we weren't taking salaries at the time. Um, so we're like, our burns, a thousand dollars a month. We can take a month and just sit here and watch and kind of like, let's just watch and see what's happening. And so everybody's just in chaos mode who owns a business and trying to figure stuff out. we're like building partnerships going to be incredibly hard.
for like a young nascent business with like a lot of education to do. And so we actually wanted to avoid CPG, consumer packaged goods for as long as possible. We wanted to go food service. We're actually two weeks away from a funding round to get an automated cookie dough maker. So we could actually scale the two skews that we sold in because universities were starting to get interested in it. And I say those, that's like feeding a small town.
We were born out of the university, our story resonated. We were like, yeah, it was going to be great. But then we got to learn consumer packaged goods, super expensive, super hard to scale. Getting your story out there becomes a lot harder. It's pay to play. But we're like, we have to learn about it. Let's take this time to learn. And we're going to really just learn about every channel and any non -dilutive funding opportunity we can get. We kind of grabbed.
Um, and so we did secure quite a bit of non dilutive money to just keep building out the ethos of the business. The ESG side of it resonated with a lot of folks. Um, there's a lot of impact. We worked, we are in two accelerators at the time. So we're like, let's just hone in and hone our processes, really build the foundation, which has a lot of risk to it too, cause you're not selling a ton. Um, but we are still selling and evaluating every channel.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (24:46.084)
Because we made the big assumption that coming out of the pandemic is when this can truly scale. But the other side we really focused on is now we had a really good idea of what price we needed to get the flower to, to scale the flower out. So we're like, how do we find the technology? How do we work? How do we hone the process and get all that so that we can be the flower producer? Because that's the true impact and the true
ethos of our business. Like that's, that's what really needs to change is the more flower we can make, we can get really big partners who are, who we've assumed would become interested in upcycled ingredients after the pandemic. And right now the market for this type of thing is pretty hot. Everybody's still kind of learning, but we're coming out as like experts in how to do this.
David J Bland (25:39.302)
Yeah, it feels like your risk kind of moves around, especially if you have to go through, you know, the pandemic with your business. And I was thinking we usually frame it desirable, viable, feasible. it's a desirability being like the market, your value prop, the needs you're trying to solve for them or the gains you're trying to create. then viability is a lot of like your cost and revenue. Like, will people pay enough? Can you keep costs low enough? And then feasibility is sort of like your ability to execute. You know, can you actually make the business run? Are there any like regulatory things that might cause issues? And it feels as if
you nailed desirability pretty early on, know, with your kind of rapid testing. And then it became a, how do we keep costs low enough? And then, well, how do we execute this? Because now this may not scale in a way where it becomes viable for us to do.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (26:26.520)
Yeah, and one of the biggest things, and this is where we, lot of the government money during the pandemic was to hire consultants and firms. So they wouldn't directly give the money to companies. It was like, get a firm to do this. And so we were very good at selling in person, in physical. None of us, I'm like, I, this is a fun fact. I have never made an Amazon purchase in my life. So I am like,
I am an anomaly for somebody my age. I've had friends buy me the odd thing off of Amazon, but I'm like, it's a slippery slope if I got an Amazon account. So I was like, you know what? I'm against complete consumerism, which is what I think Amazon really kind of builds towards. So I'm about conscious consumerism and I rarely purchase anything online. So I really didn't know and had to learn a ton during the pandemic. So I relied on these folks.
And everything was putting because we were selling baking mixes, that was like the primary part of the website. It was all about the baking mixes. And the story of the flour kind of got lost in the background. And I'm like, the whole business is about the flour. I feel like the flour. And I also got a lot of this, this like really reaffirmed when we started looking at investment and started going through this. Everybody constantly was sharing our, our like key people were sharing our About Us page and not our main page.
And I was like, fascinating. And I'm like, so I looked at both pages and I was like, yeah, about us is the story. And the main page is literally like, check out these baking mixes, which is like, okay, but like baking mixes, what's excited about baking mixes versus our story is the exciting part. And it's like, oh, you have baking mixes. This is the best place to start trying it. anyways, learning curves, we're navigating it. We also have a new product that is
kind of from our learnings from our earliest days that were like, this will be the product, but we don't have the expertise to do it. So we kind of put that to the side until the right partner came along and was like, we could do that for you. And we're like, let's see where that takes us.
David J Bland (28:43.116)
So I love how you're manufacturing your luck in a way. And it seems like you're very open to potentially being wrong and learning from that and then putting that learning into action really quickly. And so I know when we were talking about your company and everything and your story, even before we had you on the podcast, you were mentioning things like A -B tests and how you think through, hey, I'm gonna test this versus this and measure success. Can you maybe just share a couple of examples of...
how you approach A -B testing or how you do it in the food industry.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (29:15.194)
Sure. And I'll start with one thing first, because it'll probably be a little controversial and I love some controversy. So there's A -B testing, which I'm a massive fan on and keeping the A -B test very simple. And then there's these consumer feedback reports, which a lot of big organizations use and I feel have become super popular, but super great at getting you really shit data. Because they're so long and people try and honestly
answer things, but then they're like, I just want to be done this survey. So then they just like rapid fire through a lot. And so you might get the odd person who's giving you some good feedback and it just gets mixed in with a lot of shit data. So I'm a big fan of like, keep it as simple as possible. Keep surveys so bloody short. The really, the only things you really need to know are like, what are those initial reactions to your product? What are the three things you like most? If there are even three, like give me one.
But if you have up to three, it to me. What are the three things you hate most about my product? Because that's where we can improve the most, most likely, if you get consistency. And then there can be like an anything else or would you buy like a couple of key questions. And that's all you need to know, truthfully. That is all you need to know. So that's kind of how we did it. So farmers markets, constantly A -B testing, anything we put out. I'm always a big fan of like, okay, what's the second one?
Like, cool, we're gonna put out a cookie with chocolate chips. Let's put out something without chocolate and let's find out which of these two is the favorite. Let's find out so you can uniquely identify ingredients. So this is where farmers markets were really key and working with the farmers is like, we had a new feature every two weeks so that we would evaluate and see which is the favorite. And it really was good because it was constantly like the farmers have different fruit in Susan. So we had a fruit bar.
It was a fruit crumble. was one of the most popular because there's a limited supply. We never knew how much we were going to sell. And it was always featuring a farmer's product, but every two weeks, like if the season for blueberries was in, then it was the raspberries were in abundance, then it was strawberries, then it was this, then it was peaches, then it was... So it naturally kind of evolved. It's like, I would go to the farmers, what are you going to have lots of in two weeks? Okay, perfect. Let's plan around that. What's our flavor going to be? Done. Second big kind of...
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (31:41.658)
A -B test that we did was around packaging. So we're fighting food waste. We're huge on sustainability. And packaging is one of these things that it's so top of mind. And the big thing is because plastic doesn't break down. So most people don't realize that food waste is a bigger environmental problem. Almost to the like 14 of 14 times, I think, is about the leading research is suggesting. But
Because food waste breaks down and creates gas and we don't see gas, it's not as big a problem to people. then like our visual cortex is the biggest thing. So I often like talk to people about that. And when we went down the different packaging options, so we kind of evaluated jars, compostable and plastic, because glass jars we could do at farmer's markets, no problem. Really people loved it.
We could iterate really fast. There's very little packaging involved. But then when we chat with retailers about jars, they're like, F no. Powder, not in a jar. You're going to have breakage. You're going to do this. It's going to create more food waste. We're like, huh, it's also heavier to ship. So there's a lot of sustainability things with glass as well. Compostable, it's a few things that the market's not quite there yet. Waste management of compostable gets mixed in with side streams, creates a lot of problems.
A lot of the early compostable options actually competed for arable land with food and if we're already having enough trouble feeding people, why are we growing stuff just to turn it into packaging? Seems like a waste. But now there's companies doing it with byproducts, so growing. And then the food safe permeability barrier. So there's a big part there too. So we're like, okay, single origin plastic. Four right now, it's light. It's kind of what the consumers used to.
we're already doing something hugely innovative in terms of the food waste. We're at the top of kind of the level of what people willingness to pay is. We can't add another cost. We're going to kill our channels. So we're like, for now, we're just going to communicate that side of the story whenever asked, but we're like, we're staying up to date. We reevaluate every year and the minute compostable, we find the right fit, we will switch. So as we bring the flower cost down, maybe we switch and it becomes part of our story. I can share about,
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (34:3.992)
big, the biggest A -B test we've had to do to date, which is you've grasped potentially by now that we're very collaborative and we were going to collaborate with the company in the States because they were producing a lot more flour than us. We had kind of like, we're sharing a lot of expertise, I believe in the earliest stages and very nascent markets. It's all about co -opetition. So find yourself a bigger competitor that's not doing it right. And all the little guys like
You're in different geographies. can't even service. So if I'm buying your flower to validate my market and to validate it for investors, great. I'm supporting you. You're supporting us. But right before we are going to sign kind of ink the deal, they were experiencing difficulties financially. And they're like, hey, with all the other stuff in the investment portfolio and the way the market's going with COVID and coming out and the hype's down on food right now.
Our investors don't want to kind of double down on it. He also lost his business co -founder, but he's like, in all this, you could potentially purchase my equipment. So we're like 1 .5 million in capex savings, eh? Okay. Sent Clinton down to look at the equipment. They're farmers. They understand kind of building out and scaling this type of thing. So we're like, do we take the biggest risk of our business and use
a massive amount of our cash on hand, along with some debt, to buy this equipment to then go back to investors because that was one of their biggest concerns was the cost. And we're like, hey, we just found a solution and we cut our costs in half.
And so that one's still panning out right now. It's gotten a lot, a lot of investors are coming to the table, but there's still the fact that not a ton of people understand a lot about this market. So we're educating investors, which we're trying to not to have to do. And then the latest thing that's got a lot of excitement and things building, and hopefully this will get the last of the people together is the thing we wanted to do for the consumer since day one.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (36:15.096)
And this brings in all our stakeholders into one. So it's a pretzel cracker. We initially thought, how do you get something back to the breweries? So they can tell the story in the tasting room as well. And that's where we think the magic's going to happen is with this product, early days, we can get it back in the breweries. can scale it. We know the retailers are interested in it. We've already, we've kind of.
test launched it real A -B testing because we launched two different versions. It's very funny. Consumers show very well funded, lots of big companies, and we were getting the most attention because we were actually A -B testing two things. None of our branding represented what we were up to, but people knew like there's key people who knew what we were up to. And so they were sending key people over and we were having like some investors come over and stuff like that. So
All the other companies were like, who the heck are you? What is happening? Cause we just moved it from BC to Alberta. Cause yeah, comparables. Honestly, when you're building your business, looking at comparables. So this is kind of an A -B test in and of itself. We compared what's the cost of building out in the BC network versus the Alberta network. And we're just like, holy crap, the real estate costs for the price that we could lease space for three years in BC, we could buy our place in Alberta.
So we're like, okay, with the fact that like everybody's worried about costs in the investor market, everything like this, we need to move to Alberta. So we've made a lot of big changes recently to set ourselves up. It's been the scariest time in our business, but also the most exciting. And yeah, we've got about six months left to figure it all out. So let's hope we do.
David J Bland (38:5.537)
Yeah, I think.
You're very agile in the way you're approaching all of this and very open to testing and using that to inform what you're going to do next. I love the idea of getting back into the breweries. I think that's such a strong story. And that circle really illustrates what you're trying to do at a fundamental level from a food waste point of view. So where do you think this is all going? What are you excited about over the next, let's say, six months? Where are you trying to?
test things. Where are you trying to test your risk now?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (38:44.250)
Yeah, I feel like I'm, from a personal standpoint, I'm being tested the most as a first -time founder because it's like, you're not supposed to make it as a first -time founder. First -time founders, it's like, you're supposed to learn, 94 % of you fail. We've already made it to six years, which is crazy. We shouldn't have. But that's also got like investors being like, oh, okay, well, you're definitely passionate. You're definitely this.
I've also, one of the weirdest things I think in the past year is that I'm just like the levels of stress and everything like that. I've never had anxiety in my life. Even when COVID hit, I was like, you know what? It's okay, we're gonna make it through. Like just everybody, like my two co -founders at the time were just, everybody was anxious and they're like, how are you so calm? I was like, I'm like, it's fine. Like things are gonna be okay.
What's the point in panicking? We're locked in a house together. Like, don't panic. Let's just play a of cards. Like, turn off the news for a little bit. But this is the first time that I'm just like, there's so much potential. I've put so much in personally, and so has Clinton over the last six years. And there's really two big things going on with our business. There's people who are like trying to rip us off and trying to like replicate and trying to do this.
Um, there's people evaluating potentially by like buying it, which is the route we'd have to go if we don't successfully navigate everything. Um, but we truly believe and want to keep building this together. So for us, it's like, how do we manage? it's, it truly is about the vision. Cause people could take this and purely turn it into profitability. If you have enough cash, I mean, you can start doing things the wrong way. But one of the biggest things I love about staying
the founder in charge and the visionary is that we are focused on impact that complements our finances, as opposed to I think a lot of people looking at it right now are looking at it as like, do we as quickly as possible turn this into a finance win? And they're looking at it in terms of impact versus finance. And it's like, if we just put the upfront investment, the
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (41:4.970)
impact of these rescued grains is the profitability of it. So you just have to be working on the few key things and building towards it. And we're also seeing other companies coming to us. So we get approached all the time. Like, are you open to consulting? Like not right now, but as soon as we have our facility up and running, yeah, like that's a huge revenue stream. Can we licensing out? Can we do this? Like we're open to all those options and
So far we just haven't chatted with the right investors who are like, okay, this is interesting. It's early days. Let's put some, what I would really ideally find is a larger investor who's like, let's invest right now. His pipelines are kind of drying up in terms of good businesses at the higher stages. So I have some early indications from conversations that people are looking earlier stage and potentially looking at putting some money.
And one firm really said one of the best things, they finally came back and they're like, you're missing this key position. And I was like, so if we hired somebody in that key position, or we found the person, is that something you'd fund along with everything else? Because we have it in the model that we want to hire that person, we can hire them earlier. And so that's changed things because we found a few key people that want to add to the team. But that's why I jump on these podcasts all the time and do things because we always get
interesting people reaching out off the back of it. And yeah, they're like, I heard your story was cool. And I want to see if I can help. And then we have to quickly evaluate because we we do get a lot of offers we have to quickly evaluate it's like, okay, how do you want to help? Like, what can you do? And this is where I like it goes back to my earlier days as a generalist. If you're like, what do need help with? Like, I can help you with anything. I was like, no, I don't need help with anything. I needed you to tell me exactly what you want to help me with most. What are you passionate about? And what do think you can bring?
because we need to move fast.
David J Bland (43:2.800)
Yeah, I've experienced some of that in my coaching here in the States where especially for nonprofit things or mission driven, right? People say, I just want to help, but I don't know how or it's like, OK, what skills do you have? I have to like fit things in like a puzzle. But I love how you're you're sharing your story with. Look, you never had perfect data. You never had 100 percent certainty of what direction to go. But you're willing to look for sort of like these bright spots, you know, like, oh, we see a pull happening from over here. Let's explore that. Oh, a pull from over here. Let's explore that.
let's dampen down the things that aren't working. It feels like you're very, again, you keep using the word agile because that's what comes to mind when you're sharing your story with me.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (43:43.492)
Yeah, well, here's the biggest thing is since COVID, perfect data doesn't exist. Data is getting flipped on its head and how we analyze it and add AI into the mix. And we're at such an interesting point in time, which is why I kind of, when COVID hit, I'm like, we're just gonna focus on the impact. I personally wanna focus on learning everything about the impact.
a lot of the biggest players in data, like that was one of the things they gave back in the first six months of COVID. There was like, Nielsen was sharing all the data on the backend that the big brands get access to, because they're like, we need to help, we need to make sure. And so I was like, instead of focusing on sales channel, let's focus on like just consuming all this data and learning as much as we can about the industry. And so yeah, now I get asked to do like speaking on circular economy,
and stuff like this, I'll say, I'll go up against experts and be like, well, I was like, I get how that would theoretically work, but that's not how it's working out in the real world right now.
David J Bland (44:48.929)
Yeah, because you've lived it, especially the last six years. So I just want to thank you so much for sharing your story, everything from like how this started as a student project to finding your co -founder to starting that first batch and getting it to be edible. And actually people excited about it and how you test it through farmers markets and all these different ways. If people are listening and they either want to invest or they want to reach out to you for help or just get to connected to you, how would they find you?
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (44:52.430)
Mm -hmm.
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (45:17.444)
Yeah, so susgrainable .com, susgrainable .ca, we own both domains Honestly, Susgrainable across every channel, just about. Instagram, ⁓ you could find me, Marc Wandler on LinkedIn. ⁓ But yeah, no, there's an investment page on the website. There's a speaker page, there's a fundraising page. ⁓ We've got a lot of cool stuff that we're, I mean, we're practically A -B testing across A -B -C -D -E -F testing on our website right now. ⁓
But yeah, we're looking to get it off the ground, get the first facility, but any investor in a different market, you could be the second facility and we can tell you why Alberta is the place to be right now for this facility.
David J Bland (45:56.330)
Thank you so much. So we'll include all those links in the podcast detail page. And I just want to thank you so much for sharing your story with us today,
Marc Wandler - Susgrainable (46:4.974)
You're the best. Thanks, David.