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Eggheads is the go-to podcast for egg industry professionals who are interested in leadership and innovation in the egg world. Host Greg Schonefeld explores the evolving world of modern egg farming, from the latest in cage-free innovations and organic certifications to navigating the economics of large-scale production. Whether you're an egg producer, supplier, or involved in poultry genetics, this show provides the insights and expert discussions you need to thrive in the industry. Crack open the science, strategies, and stories behind the egg industry’s biggest challenges and opportunities.
Danny Leckie:
We looked at this and said, "We no longer want to participate in hunger relief. We want to participate in building nutrition security," and the only way we felt we could participate in nutrition security, and plus, through animal proteins, we like to say animals are the answer to a lot of our problems that we have, and we born it out of this idea that two eggs in the morning change a day, change a life.
Greg Schonefeld:
Hi there. Welcome back to Eggheads. I'm your host, Greg Schonefeld. Today we're talking with someone whose journey is woven through a lifelong connection to farming. From his early days studying agricultural education and his work with the Florida Department of Agriculture, our guest's focus has always been on feeding people, whether it was in cattle, corn, or beans. Starting in sales and product management, he rose through the ranks in the corporate ag world, yet he found himself drawn back to something deeper.
Danny Leckie:
I just got to the point where I didn't feel like I was directly impacting the lives of people anymore. I was now a father of three. I just wanted to leave something with them that I felt like they could connect with.
Greg Schonefeld:
When Danny Leckie left the corporate environment, he saw an opportunity to build a legacy that aligned with his early passion, addressing food insecurity. So in 2021, Danny joined HATCH for Hunger, where today he's the CEO. At HATCH for Hunger, Danny's career has come full circle and his journey reflects a commitment to bringing fresh, sustainable protein to communities that need it most. Let's jump in to learn more about his story.
A lot of people are interested in agriculture because they grew up in farming and that's what they know, but you really tied it to feeding the world from the beginning. So jumping into those first couple opportunities, you're like, "Okay, maybe that's a route to go feed the world," and then saw HATCH a more direct route. What was your thinking when you made that leap or what opportunity did you see? Coming from a corporate environment like that, where do you even start on this kind of thing?
Danny Leckie:
Nobody had really ever done this, focusing on animal proteins to help create nutrition security, to feed food-insecure individuals, and really what the impact of that was. And I'm a big believer in animal proteins and the value that full, nutrient-dense foods can bring to individuals and children.
And so this opportunity presented itself, and it's kind of a funny story. I actually said, "No, I'm not interested. I like where I'm at. I don't think I'm qualified." And they said, "Let's just come in and have a talk." And so three hours later, I got texts from my wife. I think she thought I got kidnapped after the initial conversation, and I just realized this was it, this is what I wanted to do. And within two weeks, I had left Corteva and started this new role to lead HATCH and utilize a lot of the business background I had launching products, managing products, managing businesses, and grow this from what was a regional nonprofit with a delivery truck to now, three years later, a national non-profit, 36 states, 100-plus food banks, delivering over 11 million dozen eggs last year and over a million pounds of other proteins last year alone.
Greg Schonefeld:
11 million dozen eggs. Quick, do that math. Okay, I'll do it. That's 132 million eggs. Not too shabby. For Danny, believing in the mission of HATCH and finding a purpose that matched his passion made it impossible to walk away.
Danny Leckie:
So HATCH had a six-year history really evolving. We have different eras that we talk about within HATCH, and we had the beginning era where we were working with Kroger. We said, "For every medium dozen eggs that was sold at a Kroger, Kroger would donate an egg to HATCH." That didn't last very long. As you could imagine, a lot of people don't buy medium eggs, but it also gave us this catalyst and this ability to say, "Okay, well, this is an opportunity for us and it's an opportunity for our partners," at the time and still are today, Rose Acre Farms and MPS Egg Farms, who said, "Hey, we have medium eggs. It's not a great market for us. We'll donate them to you and then you can help get them delivered to food banks and food pantries across the country and in other states where they have farms."
And so that evolved from 5,000 dozen donated eggs, to 25,000, to now nearly 80,000 dozen eggs a month that are provided to HATCH from our beginning partners, the Russ family, the Kraus family, phenomenal people who believe in this mission to help feed people and make sure that they have access to high-quality eggs.
And so that's where this started and that really evolved us from 2015 to more donations all the way to '21 when we said we wanted to start to expand, and that's when we started to build this purchase model because we said, "Okay, donations aren't sustainable because they could come and go." By the grace of God, they haven't, right? Our partners have been spared through bird flu and other things, and we've been able to maintain this great partnership that we've had, but in order for us to grow nationally, Greg, we had to start buying eggs.
Greg Schonefeld:
This mission started with one simple but powerful fact. Outside of diapers, eggs and chicken are the most requested items at food pantries. They're essential proteins but difficult to source, expensive, and require special storage, leaving many food-insecure families without access to fresh protein. For the team at HATCH, it wasn't enough to fill shelves with shelf-stable items. They saw an opportunity to shift from temporary hunger relief to lasting nutrition security, ensuring families get those complete proteins that keep them fuller longer and support health at every stage of life.
But meeting this need hasn't come without challenges. Protein prices fluctuate, especially egg prices, creating a roller coaster effect that makes it tough for food banks to manage their budgets. What many don't realize is that food banks now have significant buying power. They can make choices and procure items that best serve their communities. So as more funds became available, especially post-COVID, HATCH focused on helping food banks use those resources to secure nutrient-rich proteins like eggs and chicken, moving away from processed foods towards choices that better serve families and change kids' eating habits for the better.
Danny Leckie:
The primary source of our revenue and our income is through the purchase and selling of the proteins. We do, as a nonprofit, receive a very generous discount from many of our partners. That's on the egg side and on the protein, the chicken, the Tysons of the world side. We get a discount and then we only mark it up to cover the freight and the operations of our team. There is no additional markup for profit, and that's why we are not-for-profit.
And so we've created considerable value for the food banks and pantries who were wanting these items and buying them directly from brokers and they were paying more money or they were buying them directly from wholesalers. And then we've come into the mix and create a lot of value so that they can use those additional dollars they're saving on other nutritious items so that they can continually have healthy foods on their shelves or invest in cold storage or other things with that savings.
So that's the value that we create. We are, I'd say, somewhat of a broker with a mission, right? Because we're not in this to make money. This is truly a venture to create nutrition security, be the most efficient provider, be a low-cost provider, and help make sure that we're a reliable source of animal proteins for our partners.
Greg Schonefeld:
You mentioned that you were able to do like 75 million dozen and was it like 7 cents a dozen? How did you do that?
Danny Leckie:
I think it was $75,000 a million dozen.
Greg Schonefeld:
Yep, $75,000, and you turned that into a million dozen, which is like 7 cents a dozen.
Danny Leckie:
Yeah, there you go. I mean, so what we did was we just started to subsidize the eggs a little bit at a time. So if it was a penny or if it was two pennies, we would do that to where it would fit within the budget of the food bank to where they could continue to buy six truckloads a month instead of five, or four instead of three. And so we utilized that money.
I think conventional nonprofits would probably say, "Okay, I have $75,000. I'll go get two truckloads of eggs and it's done. I can get 50,000 dozen eggs," and it's over. That was it. But I said I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make this go as far as I could, whether it was $1,000 off a truckload, $500 off, whatever it took to get within the budget that they had set for themselves is what we were going to do.
And there was weeks where we didn't have to pull from it, but then there was weeks where we had to pull more from it, and all of a sudden, that grew two truckloads a month to three to four. Then the food bank started buying six because we started to help offset some of those costs. And between the food banks in Minneapolis and Chicago, it equated to a million dozen eggs being provided to them that year through that funding-
Greg Schonefeld:
Wow.
Danny Leckie:
... which was just incredible.
Greg Schonefeld:
Yeah, that's a very innovative approach. In other words, if you were just barely outside their budget, you were able to supplement that. Where it would've been a flat no, it then turns into a yes on a significant number of eggs. Okay.
Danny Leckie:
Yes, absolutely.
Greg Schonefeld:
Wow.
But just as HATCH scaled up purchasing, avian flu hit, causing egg prices to spike dramatically. Danny recalls feeling like it was "the worst decision" of his career, but they kept going meeting demand, even through the crisis.
Danny Leckie:
A funny story about shifting to purchasing, I don't suggest it in the middle of bird flu outbreak. When avian influenza hit, we were ready to go forward with purchasing on a large scale, lining up partners in the egg industry. We still hadn't shifted to other proteins at this time, and I can remember sitting down at dinner with our founder and chairman and saying, "I don't know how we can do this." Right? The world seemed like it was ending. There were no eggs. The eggs were $5, $6, $7 a dozen overnight, it felt like. But we grew 500% that year in 2022, and a lot of that had to do with very generous donors here in Indianapolis that helped raise money so that we could subsidize the cost of the eggs.
We also had partners who created ceilings for us. So we had large egg producers who still believed that, hey, even if it was challenging to get eggs on the shelves of grocery stores, they still had to make sure there was something for the food banks and pantries, and they created ceilings for us that allowed us to still purchase eggs within a lot of the budgets of the food banks that we were working with.
And we kicked this off, and we grew from 80,000 dozen donated to 40,000 purchased to 150,000 purchased to half a million purchased, to now a million purchased in a month. We've had months bigger than we did in our first five years of existence. The scale, I could have never imagined. The opportunities, I couldn't have imagined. And the simple fact that we launched, during bird flu, this new model to go national to provide eggs to food banks, that's where our partners really came through and that's helped us grow. And that was 5 million dozen delivered the year of bird flu. The prior year was a million. Last year, it was 11 million. This year it'll probably be 12 to 13 million dozen eggs delivered.
Getting through that moment of avian influenza helped us get to where we are today. I can't thank enough the industry for quite frankly forgoing profits to help ensure that food-insecure people had high-quality food available, sacrificing, truly.
Greg Schonefeld:
And with egg producers behind them, there's a simple yet profound ethos that drives HATCH.
Danny Leckie:
Everybody is a consumer, whether they're buying it at the store or they're getting it for free at a food pantry, they're a consumer. They're consuming their product, and we're all about creating equal access for all communities and all people to have access to that protein, and that belief of them being a consumer, I think is what's truly propelled us. That's what farmers were meant to do. They were meant to feed the world and feed consumers. I don't think they quite see a difference between somebody who can pay for it and somebody who can't today.
Greg Schonefeld:
As HATCH continued to grow, they realized that logistics were key. Partnering with some of the country's largest food banks, they shifted from handling deliveries themselves to relying on food banks as distribution centers, getting eggs directly to the pantries, which they equipped with cold storage. This streamlined approach led HATCH to focus on supporting pantries that lacked refrigeration, one of the most critical needs when it comes to food distribution. To address this, HATCH partnered with the American Egg Board, delivering 36 coolers to pantries across 17 states.
Danny Leckie:
Those 36 coolers are impacting 107,000 unique individuals every month that visit those pantries.
Greg Schonefeld:
Wow.
Danny Leckie:
So each cooler can hold 2,000 pounds of food. You put 36 out there. Now you've increased the cold storage holding capacity by 72,000 pounds as many times as they want to turn that over, and that's supporting 107,000 people, roughly 35,000 families, which is just phenomenal.
Greg Schonefeld:
Yeah. It goes back to what you're saying about creating value.
Danny Leckie:
Yeah.
Greg Schonefeld:
So then you're shipping this cooler full, and then is it coming back empty or it stays there and then you can keep shipping from there?
Danny Leckie:
They own it, right?
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay.
Danny Leckie:
So they own the cooler. We gift it to them. We had a very tough process for submitting and selecting. We had over 200 pantries submit, just through our food bank partners. They were hand-selected. We chose 36. They have those coolers and now they can receive more eggs, more protein from the food banks, or they can order eggs and protein from us directly and get it delivered to their cooler.
Greg Schonefeld:
One thing I'm curious about is if these food banks do have a budget, you said after diapers, eggs are the number one request, so I guess with them, it's not a hard sell or is there anything to overcome there or just the whole world knows the value of eggs or how does that work?
Danny Leckie:
You know, it's a universal protein, and that's one of the biggest things is that all cultures, all people, they understand the egg, the value of the egg and what they can do with it in the morning, at breakfast, at dinner, to help make cakes. There's not any religious barriers to consuming eggs either. And so they're in high demand at food banks and pantries because it's a universal, culturally appropriate protein, so very quickly adopted and not a lot of pushback. Usually, it's just around price, right? We do our best to make sure that that's a low cost, but we're dealing with a commodity and it can fluctuate from time to time.
Greg Schonefeld:
When it fluctuates, does that affect how many eggs the pantry wants or that kind of gets just into dealing with your partnerships with the farms?
Danny Leckie:
It can fluctuate, and it has. They may skip a week or they may skip a month, but we're lucky enough to have enough partners throughout that we don't typically ever have to say no to a egg producer if they have eggs available. That's the beauty of this partnership that we've created is why do we even exist? Well, part of it was because they couldn't find consistent outlets for the eggs, even with food banks when they're giving them away. And so we're able to take that consistent volume every month from their farm and get it delivered where it needs to go. It may not always be the same place, but we have enough demand that if one food bank skips one week, we just put it to another food bank somewhere else.
And so that's a lot of the power that we're creating and the impact that we're creating is just simply, we're a convener, we're an aggregator of this product, we have great partnerships, and we can get it moved as they need it.
Greg Schonefeld:
In talking to Danny, I began to understand that one of the biggest challenges in getting eggs from farms to families is purely logistics, something most don't see. There are lots of moving parts and HATCH manages it all. They take on the logistical burden so farms don't have to worry about where the trucks are going or scheduling deliveries. When an order comes in, HATCH handles everything from pickup to delivery, making it a smooth process for farmers and creating a fast, reliable supply chain.
Most of the eggs are purchased with only 8% donated, and HATCH coordinates regular pickups across regions like Texas, Indiana, and California to keep the supply steady. By working closely with farms, HATCH ensures eggs move effectively from production to pantries, reaching families who need them the most.
I understand the local farmer can benefit from this, and can you talk some to that, the important connection between supporting farmers and food security?
Danny Leckie:
In terms of supporting the farmers, they're helping us achieve our mission, and we ultimately want to create value for them. We call it shared value. And we want the farmers to be a sustainable partner for us, and one way we do that is through the purchasing of the eggs. They can help create a nutrition-secure future by providing us product. We want to make sure that their lower-demanded SKUs, the ones that are less demanded at the grocery store, are able to be purchased with a consistent P&L, consistent purchasing, they have consistent revenue generation on those items that we want them to keep coming back to us month after month where they say, "Hey, we've got four loads available at this price on these weeks," and then they know they're connected to something.
And we tell them, "This is your organization. It's not my organization, it's not my teams. It's the farmers, it's the processors, it's the egg producers. We're here to exist as a pathway to get their product to people who need it."
Greg Schonefeld:
I guess what I'm hearing is it's got to be a "help me help you" kind of thing. I mean, because if you can be consistent in your demand, that helps the farmer be able to line up their planning and running their operations and those kinds of things. It all is symbiotic.
Danny Leckie:
Yes, absolutely. And it allows them to build their operation around us, right? They no longer have to search for a home for their small eggs if they had to before. We've created an egg carton, it's a HATCH egg carton, they can use it. Same with a medium egg. We have a medium egg carton. No longer is "I don't have egg cartons" a barrier, and we will buy all that they have. And so we've created a very consistent opportunity for them to move those products pretty quickly.
Greg Schonefeld:
Is it unique to be partnering so closely with farms like you guys are?
Danny Leckie:
Not necessarily. I think in the protein space, absolutely. A lot of food banks do it on the produce side where they may rescue produce, or pay to have the farmer at least just pull it out of the ground if the farmer was going to not harvest that crop, or even just pay to have it shipped across the country. There's a lot of connections to farmers on the produce side, and that's where a lot of the abundance is, right? It's typically not in the animal protein side of the industry. We're one of the first to really do it on the animal protein side with these close connections, ear to the ground, getting product out the door pretty quickly to food banks.
Greg Schonefeld:
And it probably has to be like that, just the nature of the product?
Danny Leckie:
Absolutely, yeah. We certainly hear it from our partners if the eggs have less than 20 days and they're used to getting 45 days of the eggs. We want to be very diligent and respectful of making sure that they receive a product that has got a long shelf life, as long as we can give them.
Greg Schonefeld:
You mentioned the carton. I actually heard you talk about that in another interview you did, that you're thinking, "Okay, if I knew I couldn't fail, what would I do?" And you mentioned the egg carton was one of those. Why was the carton necessary or why was that important?
Danny Leckie:
I never thought I'd launch an egg carton, that's for sure. But part of me is like, "I just don't know what that entails. What legal jargon do we need? How is it regulated in certain states?" I just didn't even know where to get started. And then we found a phenomenal partner at Dalko who works with a lot of the partners that we have relationships with, and they helped us create a carton, design a carton, and get it out there.
But I think that mentality of, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" I do believe that most people would've just stopped and said, "You know what? This is just too much of a burden." But for me, it wasn't that I wanted to prove to myself I could do it's that it was stopping people from getting eggs because the number of producers that we had that said, "Well, I don't have enough cartons. Let me go count my cartons. Let me see if I can help you tomorrow morning when I can get to the warehouse and see how many cartons I have," or, "I can't sell you smalls because they go somewhere else."
And so now I can say, "Hang on, we have an egg carton and it's in partnership with the American Egg Board, and it's a beautiful carton that champions you and the work you do, and it's going to cost you the same amount that your foam carton costs you today. Will you take it?" And it's created opportunities for us we just didn't have before.
Greg Schonefeld:
It sounds like it just solved that practical problem, but I feel like just having that out there as a marketing tool, I would think does some good too.
Danny Leckie:
It does, yeah, for sure. And there's QR codes on it. They can go to a special website where the consumers can go to a website and see recipes. They can learn about the farmers. It's something that we did in joint partnership with the American Egg Board. So it is somewhat of a marketing tool, but it's a barrier-buster for us, for sure.
Greg Schonefeld:
I'd love to know where you guys are today. What does the future look like? What are your biggest problems or what are your biggest needs today?
Danny Leckie:
Yeah. Well-
Greg Schonefeld:
And I know, again, as a business person, I know that could be a long list, but maybe a couple keys. Yeah.
Danny Leckie:
Where are we at today? We're looking to grow to the next phase. We really are looking to diversify our protein offerings so that we aren't so reliant on eggs. Eggs have gotten us to where we are today, they're our core, but as we've seen over the last couple years, they're highly volatile when it comes to different environmental factors or pandemics and even influenza that can impact them. And so we're trying to find ways to continue to make sure that we're sustainable, but then we also have a diverse offering for our protein partners at our food banks.
And so what's next for HATCH? We're really looking to get deeper into chicken and turkey and beef and pork so that we can better serve and be the protein offering, the protein arm, we call it, of food banks and pantries in the US. We also want to increase our investment in cold storage, and we're also looking to increase access to rural America. I mean, rural communities, the vast majority of them are already food deserts by definition, but they don't have the access to cold storage. They don't have the funding that urban areas and metro areas have. And so one thing you'll see us do is start to focus on regions of the US that don't get the same opportunities as other parts.
And a lot of times that is going to be your northern plains, as well as, I'd say, between the Midwest and the PNW, those the states that fall there. You've got Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, states like that that just don't have the same access to a lot of these proteins. And so that's going to be something we focus in on as well as states in the South. And so that's where we're looking to expand. That's where we're looking to help support.
Constraints are just really what is the next era of proteins look like? Are we going to have access? Are there going to be more exports? What are the pricing constraints going to be? What do the funding cycles look like for food banks and pantries for this work to continue? We're completely beholden to the utilization of their budgets, and so the only thing we can hope to do is be the best low-cost provider that we can and serve our mission and our impact. And hopefully from there, we'll continue to grow and scale and elevate the work we're doing and help create a nutrition-secure future for all with eggs at the core of everything that we do.
Greg Schonefeld:
And is there a way that the average person could get involved or help in your mission? So you've got these great partnerships with the farms and the food banks, and is there something the common person can do?
Danny Leckie:
So we don't have direct volunteer opportunities, but we can help direct anybody who comes to our website, we'd love to direct them to a food bank in their area, a pantry in their area, get them involved. I think there's so much to be known about the truly tremendous and innovative work that so many pantries and food banks are doing that it would be eye-opening for most. To see that, to feel it, and to get involved, take action, visit your local pantry and see what you can do to support them.
And you can do that by going to www.HATCHforhunger.com or you can learn more just about the industry, the producers we're working with, the food banks we're working with on our podcast, Solving for Why. Those would be the two areas I'd push people to go visit to just learn more about HATCH, our mission, and our partners.
Greg Schonefeld:
That's great. I'm glad you brought up the podcast because that was the next place I wanted to go in thinking about the future. What inspired starting that podcast and what do you hope it accomplish?
Danny Leckie:
Yeah, so that podcast is something actually I said earlier is that where passion meets purpose, right? We want to understand the why behind the decisions that people make. Why do business leaders get into nonprofits? Why do farmers work with nonprofits and help feed people and forgo profits, right? Why does that matter? Why is it important?
And so that podcast was launched to give a platform for those who are supporting the food-insecure. There's not really one that does that today. The focus is truly around feeding the world, and it's around you'll see some more food bank partners on there as well. I felt like being involved in this industry, there wasn't really a platform for food banks and pantries to get the word out about the great work that they're doing, and I've learned so much about the work that they're doing, that they're probably more sophisticated and complex than most businesses, quite frankly. And so I want to share that, and I want to share the work that they're doing and the whole idea is where passion meets purpose, and I think we're serving that statement well.
Greg Schonefeld:
HATCH for Hunger's story highlights the importance of eggs in America, especially for the hungry who often have scarce opportunity to add enough protein to their diets. It also highlights people like Danny, his team, and the partner farms they work with who have a deep passion for helping feed the world and act generously to that end.
HATCH for Hunger's journey shows the kind of innovation that passion can bring as you can see the way Danny and his team have created impact by rethinking tough problems. By reshaping logistics, from creating a custom egg carton to building strong farm partnerships and stretching every dollar gained from subsidies, HATCH is helping food banks turn complex challenges into opportunities. This approach goes beyond traditional donations, ensuring that quality proteins reach communities across the country, even when it means tackling logistical hurdles others might avoid.
If you'd like to learn more or get involved, visit HATCH's website at HATCHforhunger.com or check out Danny's podcast, Solving for Why, to explore the mission and the people making it happen.
Big thanks to Danny Leckie for giving us a look inside the world of HATCH for Hunger, and sharing how he's helping make quality protein accessible to those in need. Thank you as always for tuning into Eggheads and a big happy Thanksgiving to all our eggheads out there. We hope you have a great time filled with family, turkey, and football, and maybe you can fit a few eggs into your holiday too.
If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And if you're a true Egghead, show your support by leaving us a five-star rating. It means a lot to us. Until next time, I'm Greg Schonefeld. See you soon.
Last question, Danny, how do you like your eggs prepared?
Danny Leckie:
Scrambled with cheese. Yeah, for sure.
Greg Schonefeld:
Ooh. You know, I was on a kick of that for a while and kind of got away from it, but I think I need to bring that back.
Danny Leckie:
It's a solid win every time.
Greg Schonefeld:
I'm on board with that.