Speaker 1: I mean, I showed up with my camera because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'll document this. Hey, maybe we'll end up on the
Speaker 1: local news. We can use it to help raise a
Speaker 1: bit more money or something. And I remember the guy
Speaker 1: who works at the egg ranch comes over to me
Speaker 1: and he whispers, He's like, you really shouldn't be filming this.
Speaker 2: You need a refrigerated truck. Like you can't put eggs
Speaker 2: in a U haul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whoops.
Speaker 4: And I was like, hush, obviously that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I kept I kept filming, and we put the we
Speaker 1: put the eggs in there, and you know, it's pretty heavy.
Speaker 2: You're not supposed to fill you haul with that much weight.
Speaker 5: And we're driving up the four h five.
Speaker 1: We're in the left lane, like the fastest lane where
Speaker 1: people drive one hundred miles an hour, and we're going
Speaker 1: ten fifteen.
Speaker 5: Miles an hour. It's like, might not make it up
Speaker 5: the hill.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we got it to the food bank, and
Speaker 1: the people there were so wonderful and lovely and grateful
Speaker 1: that we were able to bring.
Speaker 5: It to them.
Speaker 2: And we were like, if we did.
Speaker 1: This again, would you want more food than they were
Speaker 1: like absolutely, And that gave us a lot of confirmation
Speaker 1: that we should keep going.
Speaker 3: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 3: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur,
Speaker 3: and I've been a football coach in Inner City Memphis.
Speaker 3: And the last part it unintentionally led to an oscar
Speaker 3: for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. Guys,
Speaker 3: I believe our country's problems will never be solved by
Speaker 3: a bunch of fancy people and nice suits talking big
Speaker 3: words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather
Speaker 3: an army of normal folks, US just you and me deciding, Hey,
Speaker 3: you know what I can help. That's what Ben Collier
Speaker 3: and Owen Dubeck, the voices we just heard, have done.
Speaker 3: The COVID pandemic led to two problems that strangely existed
Speaker 3: at the exact same time. Millions of Americans were going
Speaker 3: hungry after losing their jobs, and yet thousands of commercial
Speaker 3: farmers were literally dumping their food when customers such as
Speaker 3: restaurants and schools shut down. This didn't make any sense
Speaker 3: to Ben Andoan and their ragtag group of college frooms,
Speaker 3: so they decided to become the link between those two worlds.
Speaker 3: Apparently no adults are going to do it. And today
Speaker 3: the farm Link Project has delivered get this, one hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty five million pounds of food to people who
Speaker 3: didn't have it. I cannot wait for you to meet
Speaker 3: Ben and Oen right after these brief messages from our
Speaker 3: general sponsors. Ben and Owen, welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3: That was the flight.
Speaker 4: Got emergency row.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not bad, especially for a guy with long
Speaker 3: legs like you. Right.
Speaker 4: A woman checking me in said you're too tall to
Speaker 4: somewhere else for free?
Speaker 3: Everybody. Ben Callier and Owen du Beck Am I saying that? Right?
Speaker 3: All right? Owen du Bec are from LA and they
Speaker 3: have a really interesting story that I first learned about
Speaker 3: in Nashville. Is where we met.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nashville a few months ago at the summit.
Speaker 3: Ironlight Labs Nashville Summit, which is basically a collection of
Speaker 3: dadgum do goods.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: And they're all telling their stories, right yeap, yeah, and
Speaker 3: you told yours.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was sitting in the front row with Alex
Speaker 3: wondering why I was dragged to this summit of do goods.
Speaker 3: And once I started hearing the stories. I was so
Speaker 3: inspired and when I specifically heard you, I turned to
Speaker 3: Alex I said, I really want to do a podcast
Speaker 3: on those guys. And so here we are. Ben and
Speaker 3: Owen have flown in from LA late last night here
Speaker 3: in Memphis with me, and after this, hopefully they're going
Speaker 3: to go to the National Civil Rights Museum and see
Speaker 3: a few things in Memphis before they they bow out
Speaker 3: of here. And Ben and Owen started this thing called
Speaker 3: the farm Link Project that we are going to get to.
Speaker 3: But first, first, would you grow up?
Speaker 4: Who are these guys? I grew up in Connecticut, so
Speaker 4: born and raised in the Northeast and then ended up
Speaker 4: in LA after college.
Speaker 3: You're a Yankee.
Speaker 4: I am a Yankee. I'm a Mets fan Yankee.
Speaker 3: But yes, that's weird, isn't that weird? I mean I
Speaker 3: thought everybody liked the Yankees and the Mets were the
Speaker 3: other team.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's easy to cheer for the good teams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so you're you just you just you just
Speaker 3: dig your heels in on.
Speaker 4: Dig my heels in with the Mets, Jets and Knicks.
Speaker 4: Which and you went to Brown I did go to Brown. Yes,
Speaker 4: so you're dumb I'm dumb. Yeah, they're only dumb people
Speaker 4: go to Brown, right. Well, I got in. I ended
Speaker 4: up playing sports, But really I was a tennis player.
Speaker 3: No kidding, you say it was. You're still probably pretty good.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty good. Had a pretty big surgery right before
Speaker 3: the pandemic and farm like golf started, so not the same,
Speaker 3: but I could still swing around full reconstructive leg and
Speaker 3: ankle surgery. Absolutely, how'd that happen?
Speaker 4: I've had this neurological thing going on with my legs
Speaker 4: since I was like fifteen, kept playing on it, and
Speaker 4: it just gave out junior year.
Speaker 3: So that kind of sucks.
Speaker 4: There's nothing they could do but break it all and
Speaker 4: put it back together.
Speaker 3: Really. Oh yeah, and so you were playing college tennis
Speaker 3: and then they had to do all that to your leg.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they just offerred like three or four years before
Speaker 4: this gave out. I just strapped it into a really
Speaker 4: tight ankle brace and it was definitely on. You knew
Speaker 4: that was the trajectory it was going.
Speaker 3: I'm a three to five. Could I even stay on
Speaker 3: the court with you? No?
Speaker 2: You can't even see this guy, sir. Baseball my whole life.
Speaker 1: I'd rather get hit by a ninety mile per hour
Speaker 1: fastball on the shoulder than return to this sky's serf.
Speaker 3: It's is it a.
Speaker 4: I could? All right, if we're talking about serves, I'm
Speaker 4: here for this podcast now, I could. I could do all.
Speaker 4: My serf was my best part of my game. When
Speaker 4: you're this tall and this slow, you got to have
Speaker 4: a good serve.
Speaker 3: I'll love it, all right. And so owen you are from.
Speaker 1: I'm from New York originally so New York. Grew up
Speaker 1: in the suburbs for a little bit, had a somewhat
Speaker 1: normal childhood with a front yard. Backyard situation in New
Speaker 1: York is in state or a little outside of.
Speaker 2: The city, and then we moved into the city later on.
Speaker 3: So did you grow were able to grow up in
Speaker 3: the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of cool. It was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: middle school, high school in the city, which is interesting,
Speaker 2: thirtieth floor of an apartment building like uptown.
Speaker 1: My mom. My mom day traded so she raised us
Speaker 1: and just like traded stocks all day. She's a total,
Speaker 1: total wizard. She's like, you know, she'll text me at
Speaker 1: two in the morning and be like, sell everything, and
Speaker 1: then there will be a text at seven am that
Speaker 1: says don't sell it went back up. That's uh, that's
Speaker 1: what my mom was up to and my dad. My
Speaker 1: dad was involved in finance. He just kind of did
Speaker 1: what what everyone was doing in Manhattan.
Speaker 5: But it worked all the time.
Speaker 3: It's as a high school to grow up in the city,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was cool. Like starting at thirteen, you have
Speaker 1: full independence. You can kind of build your own world,
Speaker 1: your own community. Like your parents don't really know where
Speaker 1: you are. So it's like, you know, you're playing baseball
Speaker 1: in the park one moment and you're hanging out downtown
Speaker 1: with a bunch of people, and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a little a little adventure.
Speaker 3: That's pretty awesome. Y Okay. So then you end up
Speaker 3: at in school at Claremont McKenna.
Speaker 2: Claremont McKenna and that's east of l A.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like, what are you doing going all
Speaker 3: the way there from New York?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I had surfed growing up in New York.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in New York.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's the most California New Yorker you'll ever. I
Speaker 4: did not like growing up.
Speaker 5: I hated growing up in New York.
Speaker 3: How do you in New York?
Speaker 1: So I took the a train two hours to South
Speaker 1: Brooklyn and there's a place called Rockaway Beach where you
Speaker 1: can surf, and there's a little community there, and they're
Speaker 1: actually really good.
Speaker 2: Waves a few days of the year, but in the.
Speaker 1: Winter, right, Yeah, But the trick is in the fall
Speaker 1: and winter that's when the waves are actually good.
Speaker 3: So so what do you wet a mink?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you look like a seal.
Speaker 1: You have the taketeer, you have the hood, gloves, boots like.
Speaker 3: You don't we love surfing To do that, to take
Speaker 3: a train two hours and dress like a seal to
Speaker 3: surf off Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And then in the in the summers it would be
Speaker 1: warmer and we would go out to Long Island and
Speaker 1: that was a little easier. But I always knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to do that. So my entire college list was
Speaker 1: a California. I was like, I'm not going anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And Claremont McKenna was just this really beautiful community. It
Speaker 1: was a three hundred person per class school where it
Speaker 1: seemed like they give you a ton of agency to
Speaker 1: pursue your passions and what you wanted to do.
Speaker 3: And this thing is I think you said outside Fontana
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like sixty miles east of downtown.
Speaker 4: So what's that big pitch they say at all the
Speaker 4: Claremont schools, they're like, you can ski and surf in
Speaker 4: the same day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can see your because you could have gotten
Speaker 3: a Big Bear and go snow skiing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, even closer than Big Bear, there was Mount Baldy,
Speaker 1: a tiny local mountain twenty minutes away.
Speaker 2: You could be skiing.
Speaker 1: You just drive straight up like the steepest canyon road,
Speaker 1: and then you could go surfing that same day an hour.
Speaker 5: So I was sold on that pitch.
Speaker 3: So Ben, what was your first year of college?
Speaker 4: My first year of college, Oh, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Twenty seventeen, and Owen mine was twenty sixteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Okay, so from the at you guys listening, understand, these
Speaker 3: are still young men and they're in college about to
Speaker 3: do the college thing, playing tennis, surfing, assume considering going
Speaker 3: to class fairly regularly, and yeah, trying to make your grades,
Speaker 3: do the right thing, and you're going to learn and
Speaker 3: study and go be you. Right, then, people in your
Speaker 3: generation dealt with this thing called COVID. So what were
Speaker 3: where were you guys in school COVID time where in like,
Speaker 3: were you junior?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: How do what you want to go first? Because you're still.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was a junior. I just had the
Speaker 4: surgery though, and so I was the first couple of
Speaker 4: months of twenty twenty, I was taking twelve percosets a day,
Speaker 4: still in ten out of ten pain, and so I
Speaker 4: was already looking ahead at the next couple of years,
Speaker 4: thinking my whole community is really getting shaken up. And
Speaker 4: then the pandemic starts, and suddenly someone else is in
Speaker 4: the exact same position. And so in a way, COVID
Speaker 4: made it almost easier for me to be where I was,
Speaker 4: because I couldn't already be anywhere else. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: was back home by the end of March or early April,
Speaker 4: or I think maybe even before then.
Speaker 3: And this is twenty nineteen, This is twenty twenty, twenty twenty, yeah,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: And Owen, Yeah, I had just graduated from college.
Speaker 1: So I'm a little bit older than Ben and most
Speaker 1: of the people at Farmlink, and I was working as
Speaker 1: a documentary filmmaker in LA doing like all the grunt
Speaker 1: work for.
Speaker 2: The Creator projects, which means.
Speaker 1: Starting to death, not making any money, just like still surfing,
Speaker 1: filming weird commercials like whatever will come my way to
Speaker 1: pay the bills, and all of a sudden, COVID hits.
Speaker 1: All the work drives up, and a few of my
Speaker 1: friends call me with the big idea. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was itching to get outside. I was itching to
Speaker 1: talk to people have community, the same kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But we're all we I mean, I remember it too. Everybody.
Speaker 3: Everybody has their own COVID reality story. But I mean
Speaker 3: I remember the board games. I remember creating things to
Speaker 3: do at home, and I cannot imagine being a junior
Speaker 3: in college or a recent graduate trying to start off
Speaker 3: life in the world shut down on you. My son,
Speaker 3: my third child, first son, Will was about to be
Speaker 3: a senior at Ole miss And you know, I mean
Speaker 3: this is people died and everything, so this is small,
Speaker 3: but you know, his formal was robbed from him. Kids,
Speaker 3: high school football games were robbed from him. It we
Speaker 3: need to be reminded. It for a year and a half,
Speaker 3: shut down the world, and for kids that hadn't finished
Speaker 3: college or just getting out of college or in high school,
Speaker 3: it really had a profound effect because at the most
Speaker 3: social time in your lives. You were now told you
Speaker 3: cannot be social. So that's kind of your reality and
Speaker 3: your generation experienced that reality, right, And who was it
Speaker 3: that was first watching TV hearing about hungry people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know we were all, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: relate this back to my mom. My mom had always
Speaker 1: said it's in moment of crisis that there's the most
Speaker 1: opportunity for growth, for learning her stocks, that she's investig in,
Speaker 1: like all that stuff.
Speaker 5: It's like when everyone is.
Speaker 3: A day trader would understand right.
Speaker 1: When she was like, when everyone is fearful, that is
Speaker 1: the time you want to look around and do your
Speaker 1: own research and see like where there's opportunity. And it
Speaker 1: felt like as a documentary filmmaker, this was a similar
Speaker 1: a similar situation. You know, normalcy, there's there's not much
Speaker 1: interesting nuance or people's personal stories in a normal day.
Speaker 1: But when all the rules of the world change, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: How do people react, how do people shift their lives?
Speaker 1: And so in the beginning of the pandemic, that's really
Speaker 1: what we were looking towards. It was like, what can
Speaker 1: we do to help other people? What's here that's missing?
Speaker 1: Where's this major gap? And I started calling James and Aiden,
Speaker 1: who you see in the film, and then they called
Speaker 1: Ben and we were all spitballing ideas like what.
Speaker 5: Can we do here? Kind of ask question, Yeah, why why?
Speaker 3: Go ahead?
Speaker 1: I think because you know, for me, my why was
Speaker 1: I was working on a documentary on an undocumented kid
Speaker 1: my age was living in San Francisco, and I saw
Speaker 1: everyone get a relief check except for him, and I
Speaker 1: saw him lose's apartment and I was like, that's messed up.
Speaker 1: And there are millions of people in this situation right now.
Speaker 1: And I'm privileged enough that I'm gonna be okay. I
Speaker 1: have a little money saved up from college. I can
Speaker 1: go a little while without income.
Speaker 3: And let's less be candid. You have parents that could
Speaker 3: support you if.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it, if it, if it all goes to ship,
Speaker 1: they can give me a couple thousand dollars to get
Speaker 1: through that month's rent. And I have that safety net
Speaker 1: and I'm so lucky for that, and I want to
Speaker 1: use every ounce of that privilege to help other people
Speaker 1: because we can. There's there's so much that we can do.
Speaker 1: And even though we hadn't built anything that actually worked before,
Speaker 1: there there's always been this feeling amongst our friends that like,
Speaker 1: we can actually make a big impact here, and we
Speaker 1: want to start something and we want to like think
Speaker 1: of these bigger eye It's fun to think of these
Speaker 1: big ideas and what if this worked, what if that worked?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I threw around some ideas that were like
Speaker 1: pretty bad in hindsight.
Speaker 4: We're never going to work.
Speaker 5: And then that's a luxury, isn't it?
Speaker 3: Being young, stupid and.
Speaker 5: Broke, right totally?
Speaker 3: So what if you mess up? Yeah, young stupid broke
Speaker 3: at that point, right.
Speaker 5: Totally, Yeah, you and fall back on us.
Speaker 3: But you're saying you just felt a call to do something.
Speaker 3: You felt an urge or a sense that there's we're
Speaker 3: in a crisis. There's got to be a way we
Speaker 3: can do something. There's this feeling of restlessness. I mean, no,
Speaker 3: that's interesting.
Speaker 4: I think when you acknowledge once that privilege of safety
Speaker 4: is there, we're home, we're locked up. In many ways,
Speaker 4: things aren't going to change. I think you had hundreds
Speaker 4: and thousands of students and young people who, for the
Speaker 4: first time in their lives, had no outlet to direct
Speaker 4: that whether their previous outlet was something social or productive
Speaker 4: or academic or entrepreneurial or just drinking. There was almost
Speaker 4: none of that, and so I think it was all
Speaker 4: of these different experiences that were leading so many students
Speaker 4: to the similar place of I will pour myself into
Speaker 4: something if given the opportunity, just.
Speaker 3: Give me something today I mean restlessness. That is so
Speaker 3: that's interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Well, at the start of the pandemic, you're like, this
Speaker 4: is a vacation, and then you and then then after
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks, this sucks.
Speaker 3: My mom.
Speaker 4: To tie it back to our moms, my mom saw
Speaker 4: all this ppe shortage and she just started taking all
Speaker 4: of our old, old T shirts and sewing them into
Speaker 4: masks and so at the same time, do something, do anything.
Speaker 4: And she would see all these articles because right at
Speaker 4: the beginning of the pandemic they highlighted these food shortages
Speaker 4: quite a lot, farmers facing huge surpluses as the commercial
Speaker 4: food industry shut down, and then food banks facing these
Speaker 4: long lines as school lunch programs and so many other
Speaker 4: things became less accessible. My mom would cut these out
Speaker 4: and just leave them outside of me and my brother's door.
Speaker 4: We'd joke like some humanitarian serial killer just with these
Speaker 4: ransom notes. But we'd wake up and we'd just read
Speaker 4: we'd read these articles, and I think that it wasn't
Speaker 4: one student. I mean everybody was seeing this. And so
Speaker 4: when we started to come together and think, all right,
Speaker 4: let's just learn more, let's just do a little more,
Speaker 4: one step more, I think that was all that was
Speaker 4: really needed for us to then get that ball roll.
Speaker 3: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
Speaker 3: I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium member of the
Speaker 3: Army at Normalfolks dot us. By becoming one for ten
Speaker 3: bucks a month or one thousand dollars a year, you
Speaker 3: can get access to cool benefits like bonus episodes, a
Speaker 3: yearly group call, and even a one on one call
Speaker 3: with me. Frankly, guys, Premium memberships also help us to
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Speaker 3: So I hope you'll think about it. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: I think a little background for our listeners on some
Speaker 3: things I really didn't consider think about. But do you know,
Speaker 3: I think you probably know the numbers, but how many
Speaker 3: kids in the United States are fed lunch by a
Speaker 3: school that, if they weren't in school, would not eat.
Speaker 3: Do you know that number.
Speaker 2: I don't know the exact numbers, but I think, do
Speaker 2: you know the exact number?
Speaker 4: I know? I know about one in five kids has
Speaker 4: inadequate food access in this country. Say that again, about
Speaker 4: one in five kids has inadequate food access.
Speaker 3: That's twenty percent of the United States. Twenty percent of
Speaker 3: the kids in the United States have inadequate food access.
Speaker 3: So I think the number I've read is seven million
Speaker 3: kids in the country, if they did not have school
Speaker 3: provided lunch, would go hungry that day. Oftentimes that is
Speaker 3: the meal, and in some districts they get breakfast and
Speaker 3: launch and without those meals they would not eat well.
Speaker 3: COVID happens, and these kids aren't in school, so where
Speaker 3: do they eat. That's one of the things that struck
Speaker 3: me when I really thought about your guys story, is
Speaker 3: we literally had kids starving. They weren't dying of COVID,
Speaker 3: but they were hungry and restless and hungry.
Speaker 1: I think what struck us too was how slow. You know,
Speaker 1: they're billion dollar organizations in this space, they're massive government programs,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be working on this, and they weren't
Speaker 1: agile enough to anticipate that quickly.
Speaker 3: I've heard you say that before. I think it might
Speaker 3: have been on the documentary. I'm not sure I agree
Speaker 3: with that. I think maybe they weren't creative enough. It'd
Speaker 3: be too I think maybe it took a twenty one,
Speaker 3: twenty two twenty year old mind to say why not?
Speaker 3: And can't we do it differently?
Speaker 4: That question is something we talk about a lot. We
Speaker 4: just revisited our values. You know, what are the things
Speaker 4: that really drive us? And that question of why or
Speaker 4: why not is everything at the beginning. I think that
Speaker 4: you talk about creativity so many times we asked questions
Speaker 4: at at those beginning ones because we knew nothing, and
Speaker 4: why was the leading question, and wherever someone said that's
Speaker 4: the way it's always been, those were the areas where
Speaker 4: we were able to do something the most innovative or creative.
Speaker 3: Do you know the final words of a dying organization?
Speaker 3: Because that's the way we've all done it. You have
Speaker 3: to constantly ask why, you have to constantly reinvent, and
Speaker 3: you have to constantly find creativity in any organization. I
Speaker 3: own a business that I started in two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: and every couple of years I create a crisis. And
Speaker 3: what I mean by that is, I don't actually go
Speaker 3: into my own company and destroy anything. But we get
Speaker 3: together as a leadership team and we say, what if
Speaker 3: this happened, what would our response be? And if we
Speaker 3: can't come up with an atticate response to that crisis,
Speaker 3: we have work to do because we haven't asked the
Speaker 3: wise and we haven't been creative, and I think nobody
Speaker 3: asked the question in our country among these large organizations.
Speaker 3: As you talk about what happens if a pandemic happens,
Speaker 3: what will our response be? You're right, government has tons
Speaker 3: of organizations, tons of money. There's all these large NGOs.
Speaker 3: But as you guys learned and pointed out that you're
Speaker 3: now going to share with our audience, we had millions
Speaker 3: upon means of food being thrown away, while we had
Speaker 3: means upon means of kids and families starving, and there
Speaker 3: was no organization to figure out how to quote them,
Speaker 3: which is what a bunch of college kids with some creativity,
Speaker 3: some initiative, some restlessness, some time on their hands ultimately
Speaker 3: figured out. So tell me about Pittsburgh and tell me
Speaker 3: about how it happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Pittsburgh was on the news. There was this visual.
Speaker 1: It's a helicopter shot of a mile long line for
Speaker 1: food banks, a bunch of cars honking at each other.
Speaker 3: And literally literally on the off ramp. It was backed
Speaker 3: up that far.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's it's overflowing, and people were waiting
Speaker 1: in line for twelve hours only to get to the
Speaker 1: front and the food bank to tell them we just
Speaker 1: ran out of food. I could not imagine having two
Speaker 1: three kids in the car in the United States and
Speaker 1: not being able to get that to get that food assistance.
Speaker 1: So I think when we saw that became more personal,
Speaker 1: you felt it in your stomach, and I remember James
Speaker 1: said to me, let's just do one small thing to help.
Speaker 1: Let's do one delivery. We're not going to solve this
Speaker 1: whole crisis. There was no thought of an organization or
Speaker 1: a documentary or anything like that. It was let's call
Speaker 1: as many farms as we can, let's find one, and
Speaker 1: let's drive it to our local food bank. Where we're
Speaker 1: seeing similar things happen.
Speaker 3: Because also on the news, you're also seeing these pictures
Speaker 3: of these farms that now that restaurants are shut down
Speaker 3: and schools are shut down, they have nowhere to sell
Speaker 3: their food, so they're literally throwing food away.
Speaker 1: Right, billions of pounds of bananas being thrown in the dump,
Speaker 1: watermelons being smashed, there's milk being poured in drains like,
Speaker 1: there's beautiful edible food being thrown away all over the country.
Speaker 3: Because there's no outlet for the farmers to go with
Speaker 3: it again, because the schools are shut down so we
Speaker 3: don't need school lunches, and all the restaurants are shut down.
Speaker 3: And so you guys say, let's help our food bank
Speaker 3: because all we got to do call these farmers are
Speaker 3: throwing the food away and get it to them.
Speaker 4: That's what your thought is exactly, And it was just
Speaker 4: there's one spot with so much food nowhere to go.
Speaker 4: There's another spot that can't possibly get enough food through
Speaker 4: its doores. Why and what is going to connect those two?
Speaker 3: So you started calling farmers.
Speaker 4: No problem, right, We've said let's find every farmer that
Speaker 4: has been written about in local news, national news.
Speaker 3: Where are we right now? We're in April, where logistically,
Speaker 3: where's the food bank are going to help?
Speaker 4: Well? I think we The intention was Los Angeles from
Speaker 4: from James and Aiden and Owen being over there. We're
Speaker 4: calling people everywhere and call.
Speaker 3: But that idea was we're going to help our one
Speaker 3: food bank, and that one food bank was a food
Speaker 3: bank in La Yeah, is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And but very quickly it proved difficult. We weren't
Speaker 1: getting the reception from farmers that we expected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 1: It was dozens of rounds of rejection. It was like,
Speaker 1: this is a scam. I don't believe you. You're in college,
Speaker 1: hang up, like, and.
Speaker 4: There's a pandemic going on. What do you expect? These
Speaker 4: guys are getting called by people that admit at the jump,
Speaker 4: we don't know anything about this. We're just trying to
Speaker 4: help the like, well, we got bigger fish to fry
Speaker 4: right now. So there was this rejection.
Speaker 3: So how many farmers do you think you called that
Speaker 3: first week or whatever? I think it was like two hundred,
Speaker 3: and all of them were just like, leave me alone. Well,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of voicemails because we're not even going
Speaker 3: to get through to begin with. And those we did
Speaker 3: get through with we couldn't speak the language at the time,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, it was it was a whole lot
Speaker 3: of rejection.
Speaker 1: So and eventually we landed on we landed on two farms.
Speaker 1: There was one farm in right outside of La. It
Speaker 1: was like an egg.
Speaker 3: Ranch and the farms are having to euthanize their chickens.
Speaker 4: They literally couldn't possibly figure out where to get all
Speaker 4: of this, these eggs that they were creating.
Speaker 3: They were euphanizing their chickens.
Speaker 4: I mean, this was happening all over the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll let you find an egg ranch.
Speaker 1: That's what they were called. It's Trafficana egg ranch is
Speaker 1: what it's called north of La like in the valley,
Speaker 1: not that far away distance. He answers our call. He says, sure,
Speaker 1: you can pick up these eggs and transport them to
Speaker 1: the foods. We talk about it. It was like forty
Speaker 1: thousand eggs, eggs, eggs.
Speaker 4: We picked up eleven thousand of them. To put that
Speaker 4: into perspective, it filled a U haul. That's how you rip.
Speaker 5: So we rented a U haul and I remember.
Speaker 3: Needs to get this picture. These college kids, restless asking why,
Speaker 3: seeing stuff on the news, decide we're going to help
Speaker 3: our food bank. And you call all over the place,
Speaker 3: you get told no, and you finally find happy egg
Speaker 3: farmer who gives you eleven thousand eggs, and you like,
Speaker 3: how are we going to get them? There? Are you haul?
Speaker 4: How do you move your how do your college dorm.
Speaker 3: Went to you? So you go, you show up at
Speaker 3: an egg ranch in a U haul and you leave
Speaker 3: with eleven thousand eggs pounder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I remember. I mean I showed up
Speaker 1: with my camera because I'm like, I'll document this. Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll end up on the local news. We can
Speaker 1: use it to help raise a bit more money or something.
Speaker 1: And I remember the guy who works at the egg
Speaker 1: ranch comes over to me and he whispers, He's like,
Speaker 1: you really shouldn't be filming this.
Speaker 2: You need a refrigerated truck. Like you can't put eggs
Speaker 2: in a U haul?
Speaker 3: Yeah whoops. And I was like, uh, obviously that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I kept I kept filming, and we put the we
Speaker 1: put the eggs in there, and you know, it's pretty heavy.
Speaker 2: You're not supposed to fill you haul with that much weight.
Speaker 5: And we're driving up the four h five.
Speaker 1: We're in the left lane, like the fastest lane where
Speaker 1: people drive like one hundred miles an hour, and we're
Speaker 1: going ten fifteen.
Speaker 5: Miles an hour. It's like, might not make it up
Speaker 5: the hill.
Speaker 1: And like I had met Aiden once before, like we
Speaker 1: weren't close for I was close friends with James, so
Speaker 1: Aidan and I are like meeting for the first time
Speaker 1: and bonding over this shared experience of like trying not
Speaker 1: to blow it with all these eggs in the back.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we got it to the food bank and
Speaker 1: the people there were so wonderful and lovely and grateful
Speaker 1: that we were able to bring it to them. And
Speaker 1: we were like, if we did this again, would you
Speaker 1: want more food? And they were like absolutely, And that
Speaker 1: gave us a lot of confirmation that we should keep going.
Speaker 1: Oh and the other thing which needs to be said
Speaker 1: is that James had the idea to paint a banner
Speaker 1: that said Farmlink and strap it to the side of
Speaker 1: the U haul like a bed sheet, like an eight
Speaker 1: foot long bed sheet taped to the U haul.
Speaker 5: And Eden was like, this is a horrible idea.
Speaker 1: It's gonna fly off, it's gonna hit someone's windshield, they're
Speaker 1: gonna crash. The whole thing's gonna be done. They're gonna
Speaker 1: hurt someone, crash the name of the thing we're starting
Speaker 1: just directly implicating us. But it turned out to be
Speaker 1: the most important element because a bunch of kids standing
Speaker 1: in front of that banner looked like the beginnings of
Speaker 1: a movement, and that's what new local news and eventually
Speaker 1: national news gravitated towards. I think that's what people all
Speaker 1: over the country saw as a symbol of hope. And
Speaker 1: I never thought that the bedsheet still the banner. It
Speaker 1: was not this professionally printed out thing. It was this
Speaker 1: painted like slanted thing that said farm link with a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids standing in front of a rented U
Speaker 1: haul filled with food.
Speaker 3: It felt like eleven thousand eggs.
Speaker 5: Filled eleven thousand eggs.
Speaker 1: It felt like the scrappiness that I don't know, in
Speaker 1: some ways provided hope or the country felt like we
Speaker 1: needed at that time.
Speaker 4: There's two disclaimers to share. The first is the eggs
Speaker 4: arrived in good condition and they were well received, and
Speaker 4: the second is that we don't have kids drive our
Speaker 4: fruit around in you hauls anymore. So both of those things.
Speaker 3: There were some more U haulwork very well.
Speaker 4: The second these truckloads were happening at the same time,
Speaker 4: but right when these guys were going to pick up
Speaker 4: these eggs. We'd also spoken with this onion farmer. His
Speaker 4: name was Shay, and he had a much larger onion
Speaker 4: operation in Idaho, and he had just been written about
Speaker 4: in the New York Times for having a pile of
Speaker 4: millions of pounds of onions with nowhere to go. And
Speaker 4: it was at the point where he was literally digging
Speaker 4: a ditch in his farm and just burying millions of onions.
Speaker 4: And there's this visual of more onions than I have
Speaker 4: ever could could ever possibly imagine. And we get on
Speaker 4: the phone with him and he says, well, if you
Speaker 4: get a truck here, you can take whatever you can.
Speaker 4: And so as these.
Speaker 3: Hell onions riden at u haul, well.
Speaker 4: Those went in a forty foot long truck that fit
Speaker 4: forty thousand pounds of onions. And so just as these
Speaker 4: eggs are being picked up, we have the world's biggest
Speaker 4: omelet coming together.
Speaker 3: And that was are you taking these onions to that
Speaker 3: light thing? Still?
Speaker 1: The one yeah we took I think they went to
Speaker 1: We sent one truck to San Francisco and we sent
Speaker 1: one truck to La I'm pretty sure how'd.
Speaker 3: You get some money for the truck?
Speaker 4: That was our first fundraise. I mean, to this day,
Speaker 4: trucks are the main expense we have. But we just said,
Speaker 4: all right, we need nine hundred dollars. Let's just reach
Speaker 4: out to whoever we can, or some friends and family.
Speaker 4: And that was the proof of concept. That was how
Speaker 4: we got started. And I think that New York Times
Speaker 4: article is particularly important because now we've moved eleven thousand eggs,
Speaker 4: a full truckload of tens of thousands of pounds of onions,
Speaker 4: we still don't really know what we're trying to do.
Speaker 4: And one of our early teammates, Jeordie, reaches back out
Speaker 4: to that New York Times writer who just written this article.
Speaker 4: It says, hey, we're a bunch of college students. Here's
Speaker 4: what we did with this, just so you know, they
Speaker 4: want a follow up piece. And so three weeks into Farmlink,
Speaker 4: we barely even have a website, and suddenly we're featured
Speaker 4: in the New York Times, and that accelerated the trajectory
Speaker 4: that we were on immediately.
Speaker 3: That's I'm believe we'll be right back. I got to
Speaker 3: tell you a quick story. You might find it funny.
Speaker 3: There's the supplements called juice plus. All right, your parents
Speaker 3: may have taken them. I bet your parents know what
Speaker 3: they are. But they're little pills. The one's a fruit
Speaker 3: and one's a vegetable supplement, and they're good supplements. They've
Speaker 3: got all the vitamins and stuff. It's what old people
Speaker 3: like me to say, Is this an AD? Huh?
Speaker 4: Is this an AD?
Speaker 3: Is it an AD? No? It's funny though it should
Speaker 3: be Jay Martin, the owner of Juice Plus, you need
Speaker 3: to reach out to me because it's just free advertising
Speaker 3: podcasts in U haul. Oddly, it was the reason I
Speaker 3: know about. It was started here, but it's sold worldwide
Speaker 3: and they're little green pharmaceutical looking containers that you've seen them,
Speaker 3: like if you go to gen C or whatever supplements
Speaker 3: vitamins right. Juice Plus, well, it was getting off the
Speaker 3: ground here in Memphis, and the folks were trying to
Speaker 3: figure out Juice Plus. You know, we need a spokesman,
Speaker 3: we need to really get the nationwide and everything else,
Speaker 3: and they thought Juice O. J. Simpson. So they brought
Speaker 3: Oj to Memphis, went to La signed a deal with them.
Speaker 3: We're about to pay him to be their spokesman. And
Speaker 3: three days later he's driving down their state in the
Speaker 3: white Bronco and we's rested. Go back to the picture.
Speaker 3: He's pulled out of the Bronco and he's wearing juice
Speaker 3: plus t shirt and Juice plus went nuts, and they
Speaker 3: never had to pay him because now he's a convict.
Speaker 3: So anyway, what I'm saying is when I hear your
Speaker 3: story about the sheet on the side of the truck,
Speaker 3: it's phenomenal. The right picture of the right thing at
Speaker 3: the right time can do for you. And it's amazing
Speaker 3: to me that in four weeks you guys, are you
Speaker 3: have a janky website. You delivered some eggs and some onions,
Speaker 3: but you're being put into the New York Times.
Speaker 4: I've never in four years of farm Link been compared
Speaker 4: to oj Simpson.
Speaker 3: Well he the juice, it should be. There's a connection there.
Speaker 3: It's more lenk, it's more leak.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: So when that thing happens, did y'all? I remember reading
Speaker 3: somewhere there was a GoFundMe or something and you woke
Speaker 3: up and you're like, hold it, we got one money.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was driving back from Idaho. I had gone
Speaker 1: there to take photos of all the potato the five
Speaker 1: million potatoes in the in the side.
Speaker 3: We hadn't heard about the potatoes. Maybe that was a
Speaker 3: Doug has project.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so yeah, go ahead, no, go for it.
Speaker 4: Well, right after this onion and these eggs, we get
Speaker 4: on a call and we think, all right, we need
Speaker 4: to split into two groups some one group needs to
Speaker 4: focus on the farms. One group needs to focus on
Speaker 4: fundraising and storytelling, because if we're gonna keep doing this,
Speaker 4: we need money.
Speaker 3: And so the way, I'm sorry to interrupt you, the
Speaker 3: storytelling part of this is so integral because not only
Speaker 3: were you doing work to do the work, you have
Speaker 3: to do fundraising and do fundraising. People have to hear
Speaker 3: about you and the fact that you guys had the foresight,
Speaker 3: the creativity, or maybe just the restlessness with the right
Speaker 3: amount of skill set from each individual person involved in this.
Speaker 3: To have not only the work going wrong with the
Speaker 3: storytelling in order to build I think is part of
Speaker 3: the secret.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, James and Aden are great storytellers. Owen
Speaker 4: is the the keystone of that though. And so to
Speaker 4: have people from the start senior praise yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: it just it positioned us to be something that I
Speaker 4: think is I mean, storytelling is such a necessary ingredient
Speaker 4: for systemic change. We didn't even know that at the time.
Speaker 4: We just knew this is a part of who we
Speaker 4: are and how we think this needs to be operated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what I'll say about that is, so I
Speaker 1: was working for two guys who make social impact documentaries
Speaker 1: and they had raised ninety million dollars for Syrian refugees
Speaker 1: and people living in poverty through the stories. And for
Speaker 1: the last two and a half three years, I had
Speaker 1: seen their work. I had seen every step of how
Speaker 1: they put their stories together, how they run impact campaigns.
Speaker 1: They fully took me under their wing and mentored me,
Speaker 1: which I'm so grateful for. So by the time Farming started,
Speaker 1: I was ready to hit the ground running. I was like,
Speaker 1: I know how to do this. I'm young, i haven't
Speaker 1: done this before, but I've seen it work, and that's
Speaker 1: what we tried to replicate. I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a time where everyone's at home. Every news story is
Speaker 1: as negative as it's ever been. Let's give people hope.
Speaker 1: Let's only storytell from the perspective of hope.
Speaker 3: And so you separated in two groups fundraising, storytelling and
Speaker 3: actual production.
Speaker 4: And we're calling hundreds of farmers same deal. Now we
Speaker 4: have a little bit of credibility. You know, we did
Speaker 4: this with the Onions. Here's what we did in New
Speaker 4: York Times. We still aren't having much success. But we
Speaker 4: get through to this potato farmer and he's growing potatoes
Speaker 4: that are seed potatoes, so they're not historically sold at stores.
Speaker 4: They're used to grow more potatoes, completely nutritious. And he says,
Speaker 4: I just have potatoes in a pile. And oh, and
Speaker 4: you went and saw it. It's how many feet tall
Speaker 4: was that mountain?
Speaker 2: Fifty foot tall pile of potatoes.
Speaker 4: Millions of potatos, and he's so huge, and they store them.
Speaker 4: That's how they storre them. They can last for a
Speaker 4: year like that.
Speaker 3: They like under a shed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like it's like a shed like some.
Speaker 4: It's like a airplane hangar full of potatoes. And he says,
Speaker 4: I don't have packaging, but if you guys figure that out,
Speaker 4: you can have them. And so this was the first
Speaker 4: time we really figured out all of the logistics of
Speaker 4: making this work. We had a local Idaho packaging company
Speaker 4: donate boxes that they brought to the farm. Then we
Speaker 4: said food banks that we knew we could could receive
Speaker 4: the potatoes. Then we had to coordinate the trucks to
Speaker 4: go pick up the potatoes, the bins to be filled,
Speaker 4: and then all of those to be moved. It was
Speaker 4: our first time doing all of those logistics and it
Speaker 4: was pretty clunky, but I mean it was a way
Speaker 4: for us to learn, and those potatoes were I think
Speaker 4: proof for me that this wasn't just a fluke. And
Speaker 4: this guy was a fifth generation potato farmer. He said,
Speaker 4: no one in my life has ever experienced something like
Speaker 4: this pandemic. The closest thing I can think of is
Speaker 4: what was it like.
Speaker 2: The Spanish This great grandfather during like the Spanish flu?
Speaker 4: And so he's like, we farmers, we know everything about
Speaker 4: this industry. We don't know what's going on right now.
Speaker 4: And he told us, he said, the saddest day in
Speaker 4: a farmer's life is the day all of the food
Speaker 4: you spend your entire livelihood growing is going to waste.
Speaker 4: And we've tried to figure out how to make farm
Speaker 4: link the most financially viable solution for farmers. But that
Speaker 4: was when it also clicked that the real reason they
Speaker 4: wanted to be a part of this at the jump
Speaker 4: was this is what they're here for. They're here to
Speaker 4: feed people, and especially in a moment where so many
Speaker 4: people were hungry, that was what drove them to respond
Speaker 4: to farm Link. More than anything else because we didn't
Speaker 4: have a perfect solution or experience behind us. But I
Speaker 4: think that hope piece really resonated with the farmers too.
Speaker 3: So how many trucks of potatoes did you like that.
Speaker 4: At that time? I think we were covered about one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty thousand pounds of potatoes, and so you're
Speaker 4: looking at like four truckloads, which you know, now we're
Speaker 4: doing deals where we're moving and we're talking, we're talking
Speaker 4: about so much a truckload. When we say a truckload,
Speaker 4: we're talking.
Speaker 2: Two foot truck. It fits twenty two pallettes in there.
Speaker 4: And forty thousand pounds is our unit of measurement for
Speaker 4: a truckload. So forty thousand pounds is enough to fill
Speaker 4: a large room with six feet tall oft produce es.
Speaker 1: To tie it back to what you're saying before, I
Speaker 1: was driving back from that visit of the potatoes and
Speaker 1: we got a call that ABC.
Speaker 2: World News wanted to feature us. They had seen like the.
Speaker 3: GBC World News tonight on ABC. We're like, say about
Speaker 3: thirty Real News David, bigger than the New York Times.
Speaker 1: And they were like, yeah, they had seen the two
Speaker 1: sentences we were featured in in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and they were like, can five of you send videos saying,
Speaker 1: Hey David, I'm here on the potato farm. Hey David,
Speaker 1: I'm here receiving the potatoes at the food bank. And
Speaker 1: I plugged my laptop into the outside of a Dairy
Speaker 1: Queen takeout window and started I started, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: photo of it, and it started sending them all the
Speaker 1: videos like quickly because the news was going on in
Speaker 1: like two and a half hours.
Speaker 3: It's like they didn't can you do this? We want
Speaker 3: to go out with it in two hours.
Speaker 4: If they don't, that's all you get. If if if
Speaker 4: this is going to happen, it's going to happen.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: They were like, this is can you get it to me?
Speaker 1: I have like nine emails from the producer. There's no
Speaker 1: text in the in the body of the email, it's
Speaker 1: all caps in the subject line and that's how they communicate.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, I don't know,
Speaker 1: have a panic attack.
Speaker 3: I got to start da Yeah. Unfortunately, again, yeah, this
Speaker 3: doesn't happen. Had you not understood the power of storytelling
Speaker 3: while you're doing this, because if you hadn't had those
Speaker 3: files on you and already canned and ready to go.
Speaker 3: You couldn't send them content. Your stories never.
Speaker 1: Told right, we had the first delivery and with the
Speaker 1: banner and the U haul, and then we had this
Speaker 1: is starting to happen on a much bigger scale, so
Speaker 1: people could understand what was happening there, and I mean
Speaker 1: I've never seen I mean, we raised like one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand dollars and ten minutes.
Speaker 6: And after right when it as it aired, like as
Speaker 6: it was still playing, it was like our PayPal account
Speaker 6: got shut down for suspicious activity because we had so
Speaker 6: many donations coming in.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't people donating one thousand dollars. It was hey,
Speaker 1: I got ten dollars here, twenty dollars here, thirty dollars here,
Speaker 1: and these long, long messages about what this meant to
Speaker 1: them and how they want their kids to participate, And
Speaker 1: it was people from all over the country.
Speaker 3: There was no and it's a pandemic.
Speaker 2: So during the pandemic home it was a symbol of hope.
Speaker 1: Everyone's at home and it's the only positive news story
Speaker 1: of a nine hour negative news cycle.
Speaker 3: It was literally overnight, you went from raising a little
Speaker 3: bit of money to you one hundred thousand.
Speaker 4: In our friend's bank count, and suddenly we're thinking this
Speaker 4: needs to change.
Speaker 3: I hear that fate was just noping to check it out.
Speaker 4: Credit to one of our co founders, Max Goldman, who
Speaker 4: did not run away that morning.
Speaker 3: All that the quarter million dollars. Did it really happened
Speaker 3: like that quick overnight?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because after the news there is like an hour later,
Speaker 1: it's all it's all gone. Like if you didn't donate
Speaker 1: by then, you forgot about it. You watched the next thing.
Speaker 1: So it all happened at once.
Speaker 3: That's unbelievable. So now you've delivered eleven thousand eggs, you've
Speaker 3: delivered two truckloads of onions, four truckloads of potatoes, you've
Speaker 3: got a short in the New York Times, you've got
Speaker 3: your world news tonight. At this point, you're a few
Speaker 3: months old, I assume.
Speaker 4: Less than we're less than a month.
Speaker 3: A month old, and you've got now how much money,
Speaker 3: and who's was it?
Speaker 4: Call it one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and whose account?
Speaker 3: With maxes and Max's bas you realize how ridiculous it's crazy.
Speaker 3: So in a month, you've delivered onions, potatoes, eggs, let omelet,
Speaker 3: been on New York Times, been on World News tonight,
Speaker 3: and Max wakes up to one hundred and fifty grand
Speaker 3: and y'all got a U haul truck and a bedsheet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's that's a catalog of all the assets
Speaker 1: that does.
Speaker 3: Not happen without some college kids with some creativity and
Speaker 3: some restlessness going why not?
Speaker 4: And we didn't know what we couldn't do. So there
Speaker 4: was this optimism in this naivete that just led it all.
Speaker 4: And I think when we woke up, when we when
Speaker 4: that money was there, we thought, Okay, there is a
Speaker 4: level of responsibility. And we were already so locked in
Speaker 4: and motivated by this, but there was a level of
Speaker 4: responsibility to push from there where we thought, okay, this
Speaker 4: needs to become a step more intentional. What's going to
Speaker 4: happen from here? And so that's when we just continue
Speaker 4: to ramp it up hosting on our social media.
Speaker 3: The first thing you did was actually open a harm
Speaker 3: Link bank account.
Speaker 4: We did. What we started is yeah, was pretty integral
Speaker 4: for getting all that legitimacy lined up. I think he
Speaker 4: was kind of scared, this is much money you're gonna
Speaker 4: go to jail.
Speaker 3: But that's a late where was backs in school at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 4: He was one of my classmates at Browns. I got it,
Speaker 4: and I actually didn't even really know Max. So many
Speaker 4: these people were coming together in a way where it
Speaker 4: was happening so quickly. It was happening so quickly, and
Speaker 4: I think this is when we started to really learn
Speaker 4: that next month about it and help.
Speaker 3: But laugh at you two guys. I'm seeing these two
Speaker 3: college kids wanting to do something good getting involved in
Speaker 3: doing all this. Picking up some paperwork left outside your
Speaker 3: bedroom board by your mom and a dude who likes
Speaker 3: to serve from New York and you put a sheet
Speaker 3: on a U haul and only a month later. I
Speaker 3: mean it had to have been surreal for you. Really,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get in your minds. But a month
Speaker 3: into this it had been exciting, but you had to
Speaker 3: be looking at each other going, what well we.
Speaker 4: Got dunked on so hard right after that, because we're thinking,
Speaker 4: all right, we have this article coming out where the
Speaker 4: talk of the town. Surely we must be moving into
Speaker 4: a center position in this industry. And I'm gonna tell
Speaker 4: this cucumber story real quick. I mean, we then speak
Speaker 4: with a cucumber farmer in Florida. This is all happening
Speaker 4: within the same couple of weeks. He has thirty truckloads
Speaker 4: of cucumbers with nowhere to go, and he's a guy
Speaker 4: who grows cucumbers to turn them into pickles. If your
Speaker 4: audience doesn't know it, calls her cucumbers, Yes they are.
Speaker 4: I actually think a lot of us didn't know that,
Speaker 4: but that's ridiculous. Nobody was pickling anything in May of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty and so we had one point two million
Speaker 4: pounds of cucumbers and we think perfect, we can get
Speaker 4: these to twenty different food banks. And a local food
Speaker 4: bank calls and they say, this is our territory. You
Speaker 4: need to back off. And this is something we didn't
Speaker 4: know existed. And they said, this is our farmer. We're
Speaker 4: going to take five of these truckloads of cucumbers, but
Speaker 4: you're gonna you're in a mess, this whole thing up.
Speaker 4: You can give us money or you can get out
Speaker 4: of here. And we're like, what about the other twenty
Speaker 4: five truckloads, the million pounds of cucumbers. We can find
Speaker 4: homes for them. And they called the farmer with me
Speaker 4: on the phone and said, these kids are scamming you
Speaker 4: and hung up, and the farmer didn't work with us,
Speaker 4: and a million pounds of cucumbers went to waste. And
Speaker 4: so now we're sitting here not really sure what to
Speaker 4: do at all. Because we know this food is there,
Speaker 4: we're starting to talk to more and more people who
Speaker 4: have it, but maybe this industry that we're trying to
Speaker 4: support doesn't actually want us there to begin with, And
Speaker 4: so that kicked off I think a lot of learning
Speaker 4: and asking of questions for us, and that is not
Speaker 4: a reflection of food banking as a whole. But what
Speaker 4: we started to learn was there are hundreds of food
Speaker 4: banks and each one is set up to support their
Speaker 4: local community and they see those people showing up every
Speaker 4: single day needing them, and so it's really easy to
Speaker 4: just focus on preserving and supporting your slice of the pie.
Speaker 4: And what we realized was they're all these food thanks,
Speaker 4: hundreds of them around the country, that in a weird way,
Speaker 4: are not incentivized to support each other. And so that
Speaker 4: became a layer of this that we started to realize,
Speaker 4: if we're going to make some progress at a large
Speaker 4: scale here, we need to address that too. And so
Speaker 4: I think that between the David Muir and all this
Speaker 4: money showing up and then starting to have these conversations
Speaker 4: with these folks in the industry, realizing this is so
Speaker 4: much more nuanced than we maybe gave it credit credit
Speaker 4: for when we started out.
Speaker 3: And that concludes part one of my conversation with Ben
Speaker 3: Collier and Owen do Beck, and you do not want
Speaker 3: to miss part two that's now available to listen to,
Speaker 3: as their fight to link these two worlds is just
Speaker 3: getting started together. Guys, we can change the country, but
Speaker 3: it starts with you. I'll see in part two the