So, that kind of really influenced me more than anything. In terms of brands that I think about, it’s like Apple®. If Steve Jobs were to enter the beef category—may he rest in peace, so that’s never going to happen—but he might take a similar approach, which is design a product from the consumer and focus on a consumer experience that is so definitively superior that just builds tremendous brand loyalty.

Gary Nowacki: Yeah, that’s a good analogy because he was obviously a big design aficionado. So, we’ve talked a lot about the package, and kudos to you and to Pre Brands for some really compelling differentiating packaging. 

But let’s talk about what’s in the package now. It’s different from a lot of products out there. It’s all grass-fed, right?

Lenny Lebovich: Yeah, so it is grass-fed. One of the things that a lot of people don’t necessarily understand is that the global supply of beef is almost entirely grass-fed. And I would say that the supply of beef is—north of 80% of the beef in the world is grass-fed. 

In the United States, it is about 98% grain-fed. And if you were to rewind 10 years ago, it was 99%-plus grain-fed. All beef was grass-fed. All animals are raised on grass for a time. But in the United States we changed our beef supply chain to become more of a grain-fed supply chain because we’re really good at producing grain. 

Grain produces weight on animals more quickly and more predictably than grass does. So we converted our supply chain into a grain-fed supply chain, where I would say there aren’t too many arguments against us. We’re the best producers in the world of that. But we moved away from grass-fed production. 

The rest of the world didn’t have those same incentives. They weren’t as efficient grain producers. They had more land and maybe the right environments in terms of kind of climate, sun, rain, all that, good soil. So, they stayed on a grass-fed system. The problem with grass-fed is that similar to wines and similar to kind of any natural products is that you’re a product of your environment and the environment changes.

And there are times that the grapes in Sonoma and Napa aren’t that good, and the vintages aren’t that good. And consumers want to make sure if they’re really kind of wine aficionados, they buy the right vintages from the right vineyards at the right times. 

Well, the same kind of stuff applies to beef. It’s like you want to make sure that you are buying beef from the right places in the world, from the right animals that were in the right environments at the right times. And there are ways scientifically to measure that. 

And what we learned is that across the world that there had been a lot of investment in science to make sure that—to identify what makes great grass-fed beef. And how they thought about that was, the eating experience is a function of three major attributes: taste, tenderness, and juiciness. And if you think about kind of eating a steak or a burger, those are kind of the key components. 

And can you apply science to measure for that? And we leveraged that investment. It was like probably nearly $100 million investment in Australia to do that out of hundreds of thousands of animals over a number of years across the world. So you kind of got to get a sense for different taste profiles of consumers across the world.

And we leverage that science, and we use that to put specifications on our suppliers. And we basically said, “We realize you produce grass-fed beef. We don’t want to buy grass-fed beef. We want to buy beef that is grass-fed, but also has these other attributes.” 

Because we think that the opportunity to create a large business is going to be more a function of delivering taste with health versus health with taste compromise.

Gary Nowacki: So that all sounds terrific, great taste and great health and all that. But can you get a little more detail? What are the attributes and the special occasion?

Lenny Lebovich: It’s things like, so breed of animal. In the United States, Angus is celebrated. I’d say that that’s kind of—they’ve gone a little bit too far with that. But in general, there are breeds of cattle that deliver particularly positive eating expenses and Angus happened to be one of them. 

Angus is a British breed. Hereford is another type of British breed. So, we would specify British breeds only. So, that would be one attribute. We would specify things like pH level of the animals. So, there’s body chemistry in the animal. That pH level is going to determine basically how well that animal is treated, what life it’s had, and that life is going to contribute to kind of the tenderness of that meat. 

We would specify size of the animal. So we knew that consumers ultimately wanted, let’s say, a steak that was a certain thickness that they would be able to prepare in the same way every time. And that is proportionate to the size of the animal because a ribeye, let’s call it a 1200-pound Angus steer is going to be very different sizewise than a ribeye and a 1500-pound Angus steer. So, we wanted to make sure we can deliver that consistently.

It was things like meat color. There’s variations of that. Well, consumers want a certain color. And if they’re used to buying something, people buy with their eyes. So how do you deliver consistent color of meat, consistent color of fat? 

Marbling actually matters. It’s not everything, but you want to have certain levels of marbling. So, you can get grass-fed beef that’s super lean and it has all the health in the world because it has no fat in it, but people aren’t going to really want to eat that very regularly. 

So, we wanted to kind of make sure we were able to calibrate all the factors that we understood from consumers would deliver the combination of taste, tenderness, and juiciness. And those were largely the factors. There are some others, but those were the kind of the most important ones, and we were able to do that at some scale. 

You can create specifications that get you down to the point where there’s one animal in the world that meets all those requirements. So, you kind of have to calibrate what’s called perfect world from a consumer perspective with real world and just kind of find the balance where you can deliver something reliably and at some scale, to turn it into a viable business.

Gary Nowacki: Okay. So, anecdotes coming back from consumers, what are you hearing out there? 

Is it, “Oh, I’d never tried grass-fed meat and now I tried Pre and I like it better than grain-fed,” or is it, “I tried grass-fed and it was dry and chewy and I didn’t like it, but Pre is not like that?” What are the stories coming back from consumers?

Lenny Lebovich: So what we heard, and we probably interacted with hundreds of thousands of consumers, we built the brand a lot through experiential marketing. So we’re literally doing demos and stores events where we’re touching and putting food into hundred to hundreds of consumers miles in a short period of time.

Gary Nowacki: As you’re experimenting or post-launch?

Lenny Lebovich: Well, we did some of that. Probably, we touched hundreds of consumers in terms of initial kind of research before we launch. And then once we launched, we were touching probably thousands of consumers on a weekly basis. And we were constantly getting feedback and learning and figuring out what we can improve upon, how we kind of position the information differently or whatever the communication is. 

So, one of the things that we learned early on is that while grass-fed had kind of gotten a lot of buzz, there was such poor execution of grass-fed to date. You had kind of a commodity industry that kind of said, “Okay. Well, we can check the box of grass-fed. This is grass-fed, let’s send this to market.” 

There was such an inconsistency in eating experience amongst consumers. A lot of consumers didn’t really trust that grass-fed was going to be able to deliver a great piece of meat. So many people kind of dismissed and said, “Yeah. It’s healthier for you, but when I have steak, I want a prime—”

Gary Nowacki: I want to indulge.

Lenny Lebovich: “—a prime great steak.” What I’m imagining, I want something great. 

So, in many ways, grass-fed was a liability because people perceived it to be an infuriating experience and something that didn’t want to repeat again. So over time, we ended up kind of actually taking grass-fed to become a smaller and smaller part of the brand communication, and really made the brand communication about what the brand represented, which is really around taste and health. 

And by the way, it has claims like grass-fed, like non-GMO, like no hormones, no antibiotics. But we really needed to figure that out from consumers to understand what’s in their heads and how do I think that they call it communication architecture. We really had to think through that brand and communication architecture to make sure we’re saying the right things with the right strength and in the right order to resonate with consumers and be believable.

Gary Nowacki: So you curated the heck out of this product. You took a commodity and you can even think of grass-fed as becoming a commodity now. But you said, “No. No. No. Not all grass-fed is alike.”

Lenny Lebovich: That’s correct.

Gary Nowacki: Is anybody else doing that in this category? Would you say you’re the leaders?

Lenny Lebovich: So I would say that, I mean, we were, for over three years, the fastest growing company in the United States in the category according to Nielsen. And we were seeing much better success in terms of measures like dollars per point of distribution, dollars per point of ACV. 

I mean, we are very kind of data-driven, metric-driven company. And kind of repeat loyalty, exclusive repeat, all these different metrics that brands, I think, look at and retailers look at, we were crushing it on. 

So, I would say I don’t know that anybody was doing quite what we were doing, and I would say that that was a function of just being built differently.

And one of the things that I decided early on was that we pretty much wouldn’t work with people. We didn’t hire any employees. And I think employees are ultimately the heart of any business. We wouldn’t hire anybody that really came from the industry. And the reason is not that people in the industry are bad. It’s just that people that have worked in the industry a long time, they just have a certain lens, and you start to look at things through that lens.

And it’s kind of like they say, to every surgeon, a solution involves a knife. Well, it’s like you just have kind of embedded in you a certain point of view, and that changes where you end up in terms of your decision-making. 

And I kind of said, “Just like this business is built from a clean slate, I want people with a clean slate. I want people that understand consumer and trying to build businesses from the consumer’s perspective, but I don’t want people of the industry.” 

I use the same example. I’m like, “It’s not like Tesla’s hiring engineers from Ford and GM.” The reverse may be true that Fords and GMs might want to hire the Tesla engineers. But if you’re going to get to a different answer, you kind of have to come from a different place and look at things holistically.

Gary Nowacki: So that’s obviously counterintuitive but yeah, very clever. And it ties into how you built your company and how you built your culture. 

But you need a lot of breathing room for that. How did you get all the breathing room? Because a lot of companies would say, “Hey, we’re burning daylight. Our investors are giving us pressure. Let’s go hire some experts, and let’s launch.”

Lenny Lebovich: So I think that a number of things happened. You kind of have to marry kind of proof of concept with capital at the right times. 

I’d say what was helpful was that we were, one, founded, in my case, by someone who had experience in the business and had credibility kind of with investors and had the ability to kind of convince them that what I’d done before can now be leveraged to do this bigger and better another time. And just understanding the capital raising process, I think, is really helpful. Building a team, I mean, it’s just basically getting the right people together and attacking a problem that matters. 

So, one of the things that, I think, investors look at is things like I guess they call TAM, total addressable market. How big a market is this? And when you kind of think about part of the reason that the Beyond Meats of the world that’s not public are valued so highly is because they’re going after a massive, massive market. 

And you can basically say to yourself like, “Hey, if these guys just get a couple of percent of that market, that alone will be big enough to reward all of us for kind of taking this risk and making the investment.” So I think that that’s helpful. 

Gary Nowacki: It sounds like you had a good conflux of things going on. You had your background in finance. You were successful previously with a meat company. You knew how to pitch investors. A lot of people trying to launch in a category like this, they’re not going to—they’re not going to have that kind of background. 

What kind of advice would you have for mere mortals trying to move into a new food category? 

Lenny Lebovich: I think that this keeps being kind of a theme in this conversation in my life, but I would say just surround yourself with great people early. I would often say to investors and they’d kind of look at me funny. I’d say, “I hope I’m the dumbest person in this room.” And I kind of believe that. 

I think that it’s not important as the founder that you’re the smartest or the best. What’s important is that you’re able to recruit people that are the smartest and the best to attack difficult problems. So, I would say that make sure that you get the right people involved. And I think that if you get the right people involved, you give yourself a shot at being successful.

Gary Nowacki: Yeah. And it’s always spot-on advice, hire great people. But how did you do that? What was your pitch to get the best and the brightest to join Pre Brands?

Lenny Lebovich: Well, I mean really not a lot different than kind of pitching investors is that I think people are compelled by kind of what’s called big ideas going after big markets. So, size of prize matters to investors. I think it matters to prospective employees. 

One of the things that I kind of believed from the very beginning and will do any business I build down the line is equity is a really kind of important incentive. We’re building something. Are we all sharing in the rewards of the effort? So, I made every single person that was involved in the business an equity holder.

And then another thing that I did is I made their equity exactly like mine. And I thought that was really important because I didn’t want to sit in a room where people are like, “Well, what’s the founder’s incentive versus my incentive, and how are they different? Can he win while I lose?” those kinds of things. Those are I think really kind of like—those are cancerous almost to the potential of a team to do something great. 

So, I basically said to everybody, “Look, everyone’s equity is identical. We’re baking one cake. Yes, there are different slices of that cake but it’s one cake. And if we’re really successful and we bake that cake and it comes out delicious, we’re all going to be eating from that same cake.” And I think that was really, really important.

Gary Nowacki: What kind of response did you get from people when you explained that?

Lenny Lebovich: I mean it was—I mean it was awesome. I think that people really respected it. And it was like you attracted the right kind of people. 

I think that one of the things I found is that not everybody is comfortable with risk in this world. And one of the things that I did was you can hire away people, pay them as what they’re getting paid before, potentially more, give them equity on top of it, and of course, they’re going to be excited about it. 

But one of the other principles I had is I wanted kind of people to invest a little bit into what we were doing. And I wanted to give them out-sized rewards if we’re successful. So let’s just say, hypothetically, to keep the numbers simple, you are making a $100,000 a year, yeah, you’d easily come over if I pay you more than that, and give you equity. But I wouldn’t. 

I’d kind of say, “Hey, well, how about $90,000 and I’ll give you this equity? And if that equity works, the $10,000 a year that you’re basically effectively investing in the business could pay you 20, 30, 50 times that.” And if somebody was excited about that, that told me that there was a good chance that they were the right kind of mindset for doing something like this. 

And if somebody was kind of all around, all about salary, then I’m like, “It’s not kind of the risk-taking mindset.” And the upside, kind of let’s do this altogether mindset I wanted.

Gary Nowacki: Yeah. Great advice. So, we’ve been having a great conversation here. Lots of fun things your company has been through, packaging, really curating a different kind of product from the producers you work with, hiring best and the brightest, all that kind of stuff.

It all sounds good, but I’m sure there were a lot of bumps. Tell us about the bumps; what were some of the biggest challenges you encountered?

Lenny Lebovich: Well, I’d say that the day-to-day challenge in our business was—and I’d say, as much as I had kind of experience with raising capital—raising capital was a constant kind of challenge within the business. Kind of this whole—prove it, get investors to understand it, kind of get the evaluation in terms that reflect their understanding of that, and then kind of go back and build the business. 

I would say I would probably apply a different capital-raising strategy than I did. I’d say that I was always focused on things like dilution, maintaining control, if you will. And I’d say that if I could do this again, I would probably have raised larger amounts of capital earlier in the business. That may be less attractive theoretical evaluations, but I think we would have gotten further faster if the business didn’t constantly have to worry about capital. 

Another thing that I learned is that—I learned, I mean, a lot, I’d say. Made a lot of mistakes. And I think now I sound smart to some of these entrepreneurs, but I wasn’t that smart a few years ago when I made all these mistakes I’m trying to help them avoid.

And I would say that what I learned is that’s not necessarily kind of the right background to be successful in a startup. Yeah, I’d say that emotional intelligence is more important than kind of raw intelligence. And ideally, you have both, but if you’re simply an intelligent person but you lack emotional intelligence, you’re going to be really, really a challenge to work with in a startup. 

And, also, I’d say that people that don’t have experience in startups—I would never, today, hire anybody in a meaningful role that hadn’t already kind of demonstrated they can be successful in a startup and de-risk that piece of it. 

I had people that I would describe as kind of want-to-preneurs. They came from large companies. They were smart. They had great backgrounds and accomplished incredible things but never really did it in a resource-constrained [way, like]”I have no idea what tomorrow looks like. I don’t have all the information I want to have. I can’t buy all the help I want to buy.”

That’s just a very different skill set. And I’d kind of say to people—I’m like, “Look. If you’re in a big company and you could turn $1 into $10, great. If you could take that $1—do it for 90 cents and turn it into $10, you’re a hero. Well, in a startup, you don’t have $1. So if you’re going to use a dime, you’re in the business of turning dimes into dollars.” 

And that’s just a very, very, very different mindset. I think it takes a different type of person. So, I’d say that on the capital-raising piece and on the people piece, those were probably the biggest mistakes in the development of the business.

Gary Nowacki: Hire from the school of hard knocks versus the Ivy League?

Lenny Lebovich: Yeah. But, look, I mean, I think that it’s good to have people that have those backgrounds. But I would take fire in the belly, as some call it, over kind of high test scores and Ivy League degrees any day.

Gary Nowacki: I’m here with Lenny Lebovich, who is the founder of Pre Brands. Lenny, you talked a little bit about the market research you did in-store. And by the way, kudos to you. 

The very first guest on this podcast, Eric Kiker of The Digestible Brand talks about how he thinks innovators and disruptors—instead of giving away those free samples in stores as a way to drive revenue, what they should really be doing is using that as a way to do on-the-spot consumer research. 

So, sounds like you did some great things there. Anything else you can share with our listeners on other market research you did or other product development research that you did that really mattered?

Lenny Lebovich: I mean we did some—because we had somebody that came from kind of a big CPG background. She had done the entrepreneurial stuff. She had worked in a startup before Johnson & Johnson. She had worked on the agency side with startups even before that. 

We kind of applied some of the CPG tools. So, we did things like qualitative research where we did focus groups. We did some online surveys. We did obviously kind of the ethnography. So, we did a lot of, I think what traditional kind of research does, but we were very involved. 

So, I’d say that oftentimes in large companies you hire somebody that you let them go out and do the work, you get a report. We’re going and watching this consumer. We’re like literally sending in questions like, “Hey, clarify this.” I think a lot of the time there’s a lot more insight to be had, but it has to be kind of the right people that are involved to ask the right questions. So I think that’s the approach we took. 

I mean, we didn’t have all the money in the world. We didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of hours doing stuff, but we probably had 25 to 50 consumers in total across different focus groups.

We did a few hundred consumers online asking questions and we had done a number of surveys. We put kind of key things in front of consumers like, “Hey, what do you think about this brand? What do you think about this positioning and story? What do you think about the packaging? What do you think about everything else that’s happening in the category? What comes to mind as you look at these other folks?” 

We really, really wanted to get as deep down into what’s in the psyche as possible because I’d say that the consumers and—Steve Jobs I think, always said this—if you ask consumers what they wanted 100 years ago, they would have told you another horse and buggy. 

Gary Nowacki: Yeah, and they’ll fib to you too, right? They’ll say, “I’m not going to eat a lot of junk food every day, right?” But maybe they do eat a fair amount of junk food every day or what have you.

Lenny Lebovich: I would say yeah. There are many instances where what people say and the data of what they actually did, there’s a lot of daylight between those two and they often say, “Judge people not by what they say, but what they do.” And I think that is absolutely true.

Gary Nowacki: So, let’s talk about the category, the whole protein and animal protein category. So you touched on it. We have Beyond [Meat}, Impossible™, many other plant-based startups. 

Cultivated meat is still in the R&D phase, but it seems to be getting closer in terms of economies of scale. You’ve got the big companies like Hormel and Tyson and Smithfield and others taking their stab at new and innovative products. So what’s Pre’s strategy to continually have a nice niche carved out in this market?

Lenny Lebovich: So I think that what’s happening—and I remember Steve McDonnell, who was the founder of Applegate, so I have to kind of give him credit for this, he said this more than a decade ago.

Gary Nowacki: Great brand.

Lenny Lebovich: Yeah, he said, “The future of meat is less meat, but better.” And I think that’s what’s happening for the majority of consumers is that the reality is that consumers are really concerned about their health. They’re concerned about the environment, and animal welfare, etc. 

So, meat is for many people becoming kind of almost like a kind of a guilty pleasure. And when consumers make the choice to eat meat, they want to make sure that they’re checking a number of boxes for themselves to feel good about it. 

So I would say that Pre is positioning itself to be the very best possible option. So it’s great beef. It has to be more than anything, it has to deliver that, and then, okay, it has to check some emotional boxes for you, like it’s pasture-raised or grass-fed. So the animals are in a great environment. It doesn’t have hormones in a box. It doesn’t have GMOs, things of that sort.

So, we want to be the very best possible option to a consumer that’s choosing to eat meat more selectively. And then there’s going to be a variety of other options. So, the reality is that the majority of people don’t have the luxury of worrying about all these things. They’re just trying to feed their families. The average consumer in this country is kind of living paycheck to paycheck. So, this premium stuff doesn’t necessarily apply to everybody, but we’re trying to make that as accessible as possible for more people.

But I think that even people that are kind of struggling paycheck to paycheck, I think that they’re going to eat less meat, and they’re going to probably buy better stuff when they do. 

And then there’s the folks that kind of want a non-meat alternative. And I would say that the size of that market is going to be proportionate to the quality of the product and the kind of nutrition of the product. And I’d say that so long as there are great options like Pre out there that deliver great meat, and the alternatives don’t quite deliver that experience, I think that those alternatives will have a more limited kind of, let’s call market size than they’d like to have.

And then to the extent that those alternatives are extremely processed and viewed as less helpful, I think that will further kind of impair their opportunity. So, I’m really interested to see kind of how the plant-based options evolve. Can they kind of make them less processed? Do we need to have a 20-plus ingredient kind of processed alternative to a single ingredient natural item? I think I’m probably more optimistic on the lab-based piece because—

Gary Nowacki: Cultivated.

Lenny Lebovich: —yeah, theoretically, they can basically create meat. They can create the same steak, the same ground beef that you’re getting from a living, breathing animal in a lab. And if they can do that, and it’s a single ingredient product, I think that it has huge potential, then it’s a question of whether consumers are comfortable with the science and the health impacts of that science and then the cost. So yeah. 

But I think that—look, there’s just different segments. There’s the vegetarian segment, there’s the vegan segment. It’s just a huge market. So, there’s really, I think, a significant opportunity for anybody that’s actually listening to consumers has identified a segment of consumers that they want to be relevant to and then just focuses on delivering something great for that segment.

Gary Nowacki: I like your niche because flexitarians, we all know that’s a trend. And so even if I’m not a wealthy consumer, if I’ve decided, hey, I’m not going to eat beef three or four times a week, and rather than eat inexpensive beef three or four times a week, I’m going to eat a really good steak once a week and really indulge. And that sounds like a great opportunity for Pre.

Lenny Lebovich: Yup, for sure.

Gary Nowacki: So what can you share with our listeners about Pre’s long-term strategy and where the company might be going next?

Lenny Lebovich: So I mean, today, I mean, Pre is still a fairly limited distribution, so I guess the term is ACV, which is basically distribution share for those that are not quite as familiar with the acronyms like today, I mean, Pre as distribution in roughly maybe to 3% of the market. So, the goal is to scale Pre to be in kind of as much of that market that’s relevant.

Gary Nowacki: How many stores are you in today roughly?

Lenny Lebovich: About 550-600 stores.

Gary Nowacki: All Midwest Chicago?

Lenny Lebovich: Well, yes. So, all of the retail distribution is in the Midwest except recently we launched in the Northeast, in the New York area through Wakefern, which many people out there know it, ShopRite. And then we are available nationally through Amazon Fresh. 

And so, Amazon Fresh, I think, today I would say that they are able to deliver to like 80% of the population. So, we deliver to them on a weekly basis to all their distribution centers, and we do really, really well through Amazon consumers. Love that the reviews are fantastic, so. 

And then additionally, there’s the direct-to-consumer piece. So if consumers want to buy this, they can buy it directly from Pre and we’d ship it to you, and you can have it anywhere in the country. 

But the truth is that most consumers want to buy a product like this in a retail environment. And the big upside opportunity for the company is to get more and more retail distribution. And so working on that.

At the end of the day, retailers have a business, and that is to kind of maximize their opportunity within the square footage they have. And if you can demonstrate through data that you’ll do a better job for them than what they’re doing today, then it’s only a matter of time before I think there’s more acceptance. So that’s the focus. Just expanded distribution, really, west, east, southeast, etc.

Gary Nowacki: It makes total sense because your packaging is such a visual and a tactile experience for consumers, so why not get it in that meat case?

Lenny Lebovich: For sure.

Gary Nowacki: So, Lenny, before we go into wrap-up, is there anything else, any other words of wisdom you’d like to share with our listeners?

Lenny Lebovich: Well, I mean, I consider myself an entrepreneur, and some people may celebrate that, some people may curse it. One of the things that I love doing on the side is I like working with entrepreneurs, younger people. And for me, the big question I end up kind of distilling things down to for people is trying to understand the why around what you’re doing. 

Doing something innovative is really hard. It’s very risky. In all likelihood, you’re going to fail, and that’s hard for kind of people to get their head wrapped around. But I think that if you have the right why—and I think, what is it, Simon Sinek had this big kind of TED Talk about the why.

Gary Nowacki: The Golden Circle

Lenny Lebovich: I think the why is really important. Yeah. The why is important because the why is kind of that fire in the belly. It’s the emotional piece of it that is going to push you forward, help you solve problems, just get through the muck of trying to innovate and do something in the market. 

If it’s about the what, it’s like things like, “Oh, I’m going to have more flexibility,” or, “I’m going to make a ton of money,” or whatever it is where I might—yeah, you’re kidding yourself. So, for me, I would recommend to people, if they’re going to go and try to do something really creative and try to innovate, make sure that you’re doing it for the right reasons.

Gary Nowacki: It’s good advice. Here at our company, when we onboard new employees, we have them all watch that 12- or 15-minute video by Simon Sinek on the why. It’s about being mission-driven, right?

Lenny Lebovich: Yeah. Well, it’s about being mission-driven. I think that society is kind of changing and consumers really appreciate companies that are doing things for reasons that they value. And we no longer can kind of hide behind kind of walls and kind of craft the message. 

One of the things I say is that over time you develop these kind of expressions and say, “We all live in glass houses and some of us believe that,” is that we can no longer control the message. You have to kind of do the right things. And that has to be how you’re built. 

You can’t do the right things because you’re going to be reviewed or evaluated for doing the right things. That just has to be who you are. And if you do those things and you communicate the why behind your business, an increasing segment of consumers will really appreciate it and they value it and that’s really where kind of I think the future is and where the growth is.

Gary Nowacki: Good advice. Good summary. I want to thank my guest today, Lenny Lebovich of Pre Brands. Lenny, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Lenny Lebovich: This is great. I really appreciate it and hope somebody gets some value out of it.

Gary Nowacki: Thanks for listening to C to C where we cover innovation in the food and CPG business from conception to consumption. Just type the letters C-T-O-C, no spaces, to find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, and Google Play.