EXPERIENCE 146 | Non-Profit Food Rescue with Nathan Shaw and Ben Jewell of Vindeket Foods

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Nathan Shaw is the Executive Director and Founder of Vindicate Foods in Fort Collins, and Benjamin Jewell is the Chairman of the Board. Vindicate is a non profit organization that was originally founded under the umbrella of Serve 6. 8, a ministry aligned with the Timberline Church. Vindicate is a food rescue. They take in near expired and after best buy packaged foods, as well as small or non standard fruits and vegetables from grocers, food pantries, farmers, and distributors, and distribute it through their retail location and network of non profits. Forty percent of all food created is wasted in the United States and Nathan is on a mission to structurally change the food system and rescue more and more food from landfills. The Vindica story started over ten years ago when Nathan began dumpster diving as a way to stretch his budget. He was soon overwhelmed with the quality and quantity of food that was being destined for the landfill, and he hosted community dinners and filled friends freezers to try to divert this channel that was turning food into waste. Not long after, Nathan connected with Ben, who carries a strong business background, and together the pair, along with a small board, minimal staffing, and maximal volunteers, over 150, have grown the operation to rescue nearly 2 million pounds of food in 2023. This is an inspiring journey already, and it seems certain to unfold into something far greater as the seasons go by. Vindicant has recently launched a campaign called Rootbound, seeking funding and skills and connections in the pursuit of their next and larger location. We love to talk about the win win win win solution at Loco Think Tank, and Ben and Nathan share the same everybody wins mentality. This was a super interesting topic that I knew very little about, and you're sure to be inspired, as I was, by my conversation with Nathan Shaw and Ben Jewell of Vindicant Foods. Welcome Back to Loco Experience Podcast. I'm honored today to be joined by Ben Jewell and Nathan Shaw. And Ben is the chairman of the board at Vindicant Foods and Nathan is the founder and executive director. So, welcome gentlemen. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Well, I think founder's honors. Describe Vindicant Foods for me a bit, if you would, Nathan. Uh, just as it's, as it currently is today. We'll jump back in the time machine and talk about your garage in a little bit. All right. Uh, well, yep. 20, uh, almost into 2023 now. We've been operating as our own nonprofit for Yeah. Almost What? Almost four years, right? Yeah. Okay. In early 2020, we, we Like pre COVID 2020? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we actually started in 2017, but, uh, we'll get back to that in a little bit. Um, but we just rock and rolling nonprofit food rescue. We, um, work with lots of grocery stores, restaurants, um, farms, um, all sorts of food distributors, um, shipping companies, you name it. Anyone that has food that, you know, might. Be going bad or they have too much of or surplus past expiration date even if it's not going bad all that type of stuff and We pick up seven days a week and we have it all organized at our little small warehouse off the link lane area Then we're open to the public three days a week people come at no cost come shop for For all these different foods that we've picked up and organized and stored properly and then they just Take whatever they want and don't pay for it. Yep. Yeah, no cost market. Okay. I mean people can donate so our Kind of revenue model is is people from the community With all shapes and sizes amounts anything. So it's like the focal cafe Kind of. Pay what you can if you want to. You don't even have to. Don't even have to pay anything. And a lot of people probably don't pay anything. Right. And then a lot of people do. So it's kind of a mixed bag. But that's how we want it to be. Community sustained. And then the other cool thing is that we're all volunteer run. So not only Oh wow. Is it, you know, you know, uh, no cost marketplace where people can donate whatever they want or not at all, but then also you can sign up to, to join the food rescue process as a volunteer and unloading trucks and working the market. And so we have about 150 really, really. Committed volunteers. And that number is always changing and we always need more. Uh, and, and, and where's your space at work? Um, yeah, it's off of a Webster Avenue next to a citizen printing or BG automotive. So kind of Northeast Fort Collins for those that might be outside of the region here. Yep. Yeah. Pretty much walking biking distance from, from downtown, you know, obviously right along 14 behind the Walmart, you know, so we have a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of foot traffic, pretty small parking lot. Right now. Um, but we rock and roll probably 40, 50, 000 pounds of food a week out of that place, uh, coming and going and, you know, upwards of sometimes 2, 500 people coming through a week. And then we also serve about five to six different nonprofits that load up food for their individual, you know, constituents. So they're like your wholesale accounts. Sort of. Yeah. So, um, is all the food donated? Yep. Yep. All the food is donated to us from, from private companies or, you know, bigger companies. But you still got to put gas in the trucks to go get it and stuff. Right. I reckon. Right. And that's where the, the community sustained part comes in where people make, you know, a 25 cent donation or 250 donation or nothing. And, and it's pretty cool how that's been able to pay the, pay the bills for years. And we're obviously very conscious with our. with our finances and very careful when it's stewarding people's money that they donate and in good faith, believing in what we're doing. And so we're able to, you know, provide this service to the community and keep our doors open, keep our lights on, keep the trucks rolling. Uh, it does take a village, we like to say, you know, so we encourage people from the community to get involved, like no matter what your reasoning is, if you're wanting to serve your neighbor or rescue food or, um, yeah, that's what I was wondering if the purpose is more. Uh, for stopping food from being wasted, or if it's for feeding people, and I guess it's a double headed thing, right? Well, yeah, I mean, when I first But the big thing is stopping it from being wasted. Exactly. When I first started, I saw just a lot of waste. Um, you know, obviously, the United States and Really, the world kind of wants perfection and wants really good stuff. And so as soon as apples get bruised or tomatoes get a little soft or whatever it is, people like to not buy those at the store. So thus the stores have a lot of waste and a lot of excess. And that's where we come into play. And then, and then obviously we do help a lot of people. Distributor orders bananas and they weren't as big as they. Promised and now nobody wants to buy those bananas. Or they came in at a, you know, you know, a little bit more ripened state. And so they don't, they're to go, they can't sell'em, you know?'cause they start getting speckled and start browning. And right now that's what we have right now, about 50 or 60 cases of bananas, you know, about four. So, so can you push certain products and stuff? Be like, oh, they're everywhere. When you go in tomorrow, every cap, it's like banana. You'll smell it when you go in. It just smells like a banana farm. So, I want to give Ben a little air time. Ben, you've been, uh, it sounded like you were part of kind of helping Vindica become a non profit and like really execute the vision at a bigger scale. Uh, tell me what, what that looked like or how you got involved. Yeah, it started off, I was just a volunteer like anybody else that came in. Um, shopped, got food, volunteered. Um, I have three daughters and I would bring all three of my daughters in. And, uh, we'd unload trucks together and you know, I, I'm not a, I'm not a huge fan of being in the, in the big crowded space that is like the normal shop hours, so usually I would, uh, kind of come in when it was still open but, you know, unload trucks and stuff. Yeah. Um. and got to know Nathan a little bit better and saw that the organization was growing. Um, you know, we, we said a little bit when I first got here, but, um, yeah, I kind of grew up around the nonprofit world, um, and did a lot of volunteering and grew up in a family that did a fair amount of volunteering. And to be quite honest with you, when I first got involved, I was a little standoffish. I'd heard about Vindicant like a lot of people for a long time before I. before I even went and checked it out. Um, but then once I saw, uh, some of the differences that the people that, you know, interacted with vindicated and were around vindicated, then also Nathan and kind of what his goals were. That's when I started to get a lot more interested. And I thought, man, I think some of the things I've learned in business and in startups and in turnarounds. Uh, we can put to practice here and, um, the idea of a nonprofit that behaved like a business that had to constantly justify its existence to its consumer to stay in business was really interesting to me because a lot of nonprofits lose that pretty quickly once they get good funding. Well, and, and. Your source of funding mostly is donated food. Right. I'm sure, I mean, those aren't dollars, but as far as value. Yeah. Injected in, and that's what gives you the opportunity to create all the other. we deal with a lot of different types of generosity, right? We deal with in kind generosity and then capital generosity, people giving us actual money. But you know, we get a lot of, a lot of other forms of, uh, of capital. We get intellectual capital from our volunteers. We get time, we get so much time. And, um, so I think When you look at it, when you look at it that way, we do kind of operate like a business. Um, our resources extend though to the people who you might call like your constituents. Um, we really, and this was the thing I think that really sealed the deal for my involvement was, um, you know, Nate has always really painted the picture for us as an organization that we want to, um, Break down the barriers of sort of the giver and the receiver, or like the people that are in the position to, you know, uh, give other people the haves and the have nots, so to speak. And, and breaking that down. Well, it's so good for everybody to give. Sure. Something. Sure. And when you see, when we see the people who come. And shop and then maybe two weeks later they come in and they're loading up boxes. Um, but it puts them in a position to be looked at as a resource rather than as somebody who is a, um, uh, more of a strain, a resource strain. Yeah. Yeah. You look at, you know, a lot of nonprofits look at, you know, the people who they service as, uh, something they have to account resources for. We actually look at everybody in, in the, uh, nonprofit or the food rescue, uh, chain as a resource. So even those people that come in that might be normally looked at as, uh, you know, a person who would be receiving services. Right? We see them as a resource, because if they're not there and that food isn't going out the door in their hands and then eventually into their bellies, we don't exist anymore. They're your hands and feet of rescuing food. Absolutely. Has to get all the way to the end line. Yeah. Yeah. So, I want to maybe just talk about, can we take me on a, like a, a food journey? Mmm. A customer journey kind of thing to really paint what the, the operational entity looks like. And I know there's so many different sources of food, but, uh, can, I don't know, whoever feels best about that, probably Nathan. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm going to, we're, as you, as you both know, we're going to delve. All the way into, you know, those startups and turnarounds that you've been involved with. Ben, I want to hear some of where you built your business chops and, and, and how that vision goes out. But yeah, talk to me about like the, how many, how many pounds of food a week? Did you say? Or was it a month? 40 to 60, anywhere really in there, 60, 000 a week. I mean, we'll do almost 2 million pounds of food this year. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So we're easily hitting, you know, 150, 200, 000 a month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a couple of, that's probably like three or four semi loads. Oh yeah. At least. Yeah. It's, it's crazy. Sometimes my drivers, you know, or, you know, our volunteer drivers come in and they were there last week on a Tuesday and they come in the next Tuesday. All of the food that they sold in on that Tuesday has been totally replaced by completely new food. They're like, wait, where's all the, the brownies that I brought in? I brought in two pallet fulls, you know, 4, 000 pounds of brownies and now I'm going to have one left. It's like, well, we made room for all the bananas this week, you know. Um, but, but yeah, it, it's pretty remarkable and, and, you know, we, we kind of, Not that we say no or have to, but you know, we just, there's just so much, sometimes so much. You can't say yes to everything. Let's offer it. Yeah, we don't say exactly yes to everything, but we pretty much do. Yeah, we do. Like it's, it's, it's for the most part, that's, we want our, our donors and start, you know, uh, shipping companies and farms and places if they have. Four pallets of peppers, like we want to be able to take them all to, to, so they don't have to compost them, they don't have to throw them away. That's, uh, this, I was involved with the Matthews House for a long time, and that organization has always been, you know, kind of trying to put itself out of business. Yeah. And that's what you're doing, too. Like, if you can actually decrease the flow of available supply, Uh, that's, you're actually winning. Right. In some ways. Or, you know, expand your footprint to do this in more regions. Is all of it local sourced, I guess, is one big question I had on the journey. Yeah, we had a, you know, some of y'all might have heard of some listeners out there. Farm Link Project, they're a really neat, uh, group. You know, college kind of nonprofit startup, a bunch of college kids during COVID started contacting big farms and said, Hey, we want to get this out to, to nonprofits across the nation. So they've actually linked some trucks from us from clear across North Carolina with the sweet potatoes a couple of weeks ago to, to cucumbers from Canada, you know? And, um, so that's something we don't even, they'll just hit us up. We got a truckload of cucumbers. Do you guys want it? And we're like, Oh man, I mean, yeah. And then that's where some of these other nonprofits that we come in. You know, come in handy and obviously our market, we move a lot there as well, but, but yeah, most of our push that out, like create the demand almost by saying, Hey, we've got a lot of cucumbers. So most of our sources are, you know, like the box grocery stores here in town or Northern Colorado, um, you know, some farms out east or local farms around here when they, you know, grew too many beets or, or, you know, maybe the, you know, Like the color is just a little soft or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. All sorts of reasons. And we, we, we like to kind of tell people we're kind of, you know, Not bottom of the barrel, but sort of like, Hey, we're kind of like your last resort, you know, we want, obviously the, the sellers and the growers to, to, you know, sell what they can, but they don't want you to, you don't want them to gift food that they could or should sell because it's hard enough being a farmer or a distribution company or whatever else, or if they had another nonprofit in mind, like, you know, donate to them first and then utilize this as kind of like your last resort. And, you know, Obviously as a 501c3, we're able to offer tax deduction, which is really cool. But you're probably in an enterprise zone there too, huh? What's that? Are you in an enterprise zone where your location is? Hmm. Not really sure what that, you should check into that chairman of the board.'cause there's certain regions and I think that airpark might be one of them where it's like a redevelopment zone and you get like an extra tax credit. Credit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's a big deal. That up where that applies. I don't know if it would, I don't know if it affects us too much as a 5 0 1 C3, but I. Well, it affects your donors. That's what I'm saying. So they get extra juice on their donations. Only if we can extend it. But we already can extend an accelerated depreciation. Or enhanced. I had the word wrong. Tax deduction. Yeah. Enhanced tax deduction. Yeah. Um, for that. So, um. So. The thing though that, you know, when you talk about the story, I think the thing that's really interesting is that, um, you know. The, sometimes the food we get comes from places like ashes. Right. So they're, they're buying overstock stuff anyway. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes the food that we get comes from places like the food bank. Sometimes it comes from the grocery stores. Sometimes it comes from stalls at the, the farmer's market where they don't move enough and they don't want to have to take it all back with them. Yeah, this little bit back. Yeah. Or the convenience store down the street from you. We picked up there. Right. Whoever it is, give us, give us a call whether it's scheduled or on call. Yeah. The thing is that there's, there's so much. you know, what, what looks like unplanned waste. Now, well, we could get into the, the data behind it that would suggest otherwise, but, but in terms of the, the stores and the people working in the stores, it's, it's unplanned, right? They need, they're either going to throw it away. Right. Or they're going to, uh, give it to a place like us. Right, right. And so, um. Well, if they throw it away, then the trash company charges them more. Because they need more bigger dumpsters and regular pickups and all that. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But I mean, the. I think that the story is, is that there's, there's plenty of waste, uh, what, what's perceived as waste that's not waste, you know? Yeah, well, I want to get into the first controversial thing I just heard you say is that, like, this sounds like a conspiracy that there's like a planned waste intention and, uh, maybe you don't want to go there. No, I mean, I think, I mean, that, that's probably, that's probably, our food system produces more food than we need because we throw 35 or 40 percent of it away, right? I mean, it's interesting. I mean, you can, you can go on to the USDA or go into any government site and you'll see the acknowledgement of that, right? And you'll see that the government acknowledges it, state governments acknowledge it, and they want to, um, they want to remedy it. But they're trying to balance that with, you know, farm subsidies and price controls on certain things. So there's, there's a lot of nuance that creates that waste. And, um, I don't think it's nearly as. As a cavalier as maybe it was 30 or 40 years ago when the only focus was on, you know, let's make sure that what happened during the Great Depression with farms never happens again. Right. And now that is that I think now is more balanced with a Hey, we also don't want to waste problem. We also don't want all these other issues. But again, it's it's hard. It's definitely difficult. There's there's not one One answer for it, but I think the one thing that I can say with with certainty is that food rescues like Vindicate are, um, are an answer that needs to be accompanied with those other things because there is so much waste and that waste can feed a lot of people. And the, the, the statistics that is the, the one statistic, I think that would have been enough for, to convince me to be involved with Vindicate. And it's usually the one. That I tell people when I can hear them sort of hemming and hawing about it is when you look at the, um, uh, food hunger statistics, right? So there's, there's, there's two types of hunger. You know, you basically have, you basically have, um, you know, people who are, who are going hungry and then people who have. food insecurity. So it's food insecurity and food insecurity with hunger. Those are the sort of two types of insecurity. Okay. Um, when you look at how that has grown over the last 50 years, according to most of the statistics that are available, that you can Google them and find them and you'll see them on feeding America and things like that. And then you also see, see statistics about food waste growth. Like food that's destroyed, food that's thrown away, and the percentage in terms of the total amount of food that's being produced, what you see is over the last 30 or 40 years, both of those numbers are continually going up. And so when you see that, when you're, when, when somebody like me sees that, um, then I think, well, There must be something else that needs to be done. Some kind of a perversive There has to be some other supplementary source, or some other solution, or some other angle that we have to look at because clearly both of these two things are going up at the similar rates. Right, the market should fix that. Absolutely. If it's behaving properly and I think there's Like, a behavioral economist would probably say there's a certain level of, apples get bruised and people don't like to buy bruised apples or whatever, right, but, but I think you're probably right. There's, there's something broken. And I think even the regulatory mechanism, right, like the, the requirements of expiration dates and different things like that, that almost creates this waste environment and increases it. Yeah, absolutely. I was just, I was actually just in Canada a couple of weeks ago. Um, And I walked into, um, I walked into a, uh, coffee shop that also had like a small market and they had a piece of paper up that explained what expiration and best by dates mean. So that people will encourage, they were trying to encourage customers to understand that they don't need to forego that stuff. And then they actually said on the piece of paper, and we've even, even though we don't need to, we've gone so far to even discount these a little bit, just to incentivize them, even though they're perfectly okay. Yeah. You know, and if you think about it, you know, I've, I've told a few other people, like. If this is something that you would see in a prepper's, you know, cave, you know, then probably you're, you don't need to worry about it that much. Yeah, refried beans a year past the extension expiration. They're just getting good. Totally. Totally. Um. I'm going to actually take a quick break here because my camera light went off and I'm going to figure out why. Oh, you bet. So, Ben, you have a day job. I want to hear about that real quick. Uh, and then we're going to talk more about the future of Indicate and where you're going. Yeah, no, uh, my day job is I am a, uh, product manager. Okay. Um, for a company called Wiesman, V I E S S M A N N. Okay. And, uh, we're a German manufacturing company. Sounds like a good German company. Yeah, it is a good German company. Um, we were a, yeah, family owned company for 105 years. That's cool. Like a typical German company, but actually we're in the, in the, um, stages of right now being acquired by a huge American publicly traded company. terrible. So by January of next year, um, um, I'll be All your incentives will be terrible. I'll be with them. Um, but yeah, with proper retention bonuses and things like that. All that good stuff. But no, uh, yeah. So, I mean, um, I started off, you know, 24 ish years ago going into the trades and then kind of with some real weird situations, got into, uh, got into some management opportunities that sort of fell in my lap. And, um, then ended up going from Iowa, where I'm originally from, to the East Coast and, um, went to two different places in the East Coast and did lots of continuing education and made lots of mistakes and got to go to some, you know, I went to some Companies that needed to be turned around and went to some companies that were growing faster than they knew how to control in a startup situation and I got to experience all those things and worked with manufacturers all over the world and, um, you know, traveled way too much and, and then eventually found myself in Colorado. Um, because my wife is smarter than me and said, let's go to, let's get out of the east coast and go to Colorado, which turns out was an amazing idea. Well, I'll, I'll, that was a good synopsis. That was like nice 90 second overview, but we go slower than that on that, on that life story thing. Um, but what's, what's your current job mean you do like, good question. So yeah, so product manager basically is, you know, I, I own the product lines. Okay. Thanks. Um, which are boilers, and heat pumps, and co gen, and solar, thermal, and all sorts of mechanical stuff. Okay. And, um. You own those lines? I own those lines, yeah. So you have to like oversee incremental improvements, and pricing, and different things like that? So it's kind of like, think of it like you're your own little entrepreneur in a big business. You've got, you know, you know, 50 or 60 products, and you have to. You know, behave just like you would if you were Yeah. Try to find people to buy that if you were a CEO. Exactly. Like you, you know, I work, I work with marketing people and finance people, and logistics people and manufacturing and engineering. And we, you know, I, we, I go and I do a lot of little listening tours. We have to go and talk to, to customers or distributors or wholesalers or people who might install it and, and, uh, home or homeowners, business owners, and then. You know, basically cradle to cradle, cradle to grave, you know, product management. I've seen that title around a lot of times, product manager, and I've never really understood what that really meant. But just even that term, a mini CEO, you know, you've got this scope of understanding that needs to happen. Sure. You've got a lot of resources, right? Like if you've got legal challenges or different HR, different things like that, you've got resources in the larger company. Sure. But as far as the revenue drive and the people associated that's that's on you. Yeah. Yeah, if the product fails, it's pretty much your fault So you'll get a different job then yeah Cool okay. Well, that seems like that is like brilliant Capabilities to add into what's ultimately a logistics company, right? Like that's what vinegar food is in large part, it's a communications, obviously, building this community of people, but like getting the physical stuff, uh, is a significant burden, significant and getting it back out the door. I think the logistics part is huge, but Nate, I mean, I think the question that I would say to you, which is, you know, describe what you have to do to convince people to do all this. Cause he said 150, but I mean, it's really more like. You know, you're trying to manage three or four hundred people any given week. So, I mean, he's got to convince three hundred volunteers to do what he says and all get along. Yeah, and the donors and stuff as well. Yeah, yeah. Community, um, management and, and, um, kind of winning, you know, winning people over to the cause. Yeah, yeah. Uh, also a big part of Vindicant is education. Uh, I just came from a tour of some high school students that are in the culinary program. They came and did a tour to learn about Vindicant, learn more about food, how to, you know, educate people. preparation and storage. So there's a lot of that. That's, I mean, that's a big part of what we're trying to put ourselves out of a job is to convince people that this food is still okay. Change the buying that's happening all around basically the world. Uh, and if people could have better standards and then stores could potentially sell more blemish things, right. You know, there's a lot of, um, kind of this philosophy around food that a lot of people being potentially scared or, you know, Wanting perfection. I mean, so there's a whole arm of indica. That's there's a lot of ignorance so that you have to overcome Yeah, yeah, by the way, you've got a back selder bug on your arm. There's no way. Yeah, it's true Yeah, I don't know they've been rough this this year and I don't know how they get in there's one right there in the wall for listeners sake I was in the Uh, a podcast a few weeks ago, there was a live action Buxelder attack that I did nothing to prevent. So that's the time I felt obligated. Jake, if you're listening, uh, Jake Dorgovan, uh, and if you want to hear Jake kind of freak out on a podcast, then I'd recommend you dip into that episode. Yeah. Um, anyway, so yeah, that's interesting. I didn't really imagine like you, you said like that 300, yeah, there's 150 volunteers for Vindicant, but like every warehouse manager. Sure. Donor of food, all those people are doing it of their own volition as well and it's going to take You know, it would be easier to just throw it in the dumpster in some cases. For sure. But it takes a lot of people from, you know, like you said, that food journey is, we get the call or say it's a scheduled pickup and it's, you know, just a small mom and pop shop and it could be a few boxes that we pick up. Like we picked up a couple of boxes of eggs over there at Beaver's and all fresh foods the other day and all the way to Costco had a full truckload of bananas and flowers for us on Sunday. And then, you know, we have a volunteer driver out there picking it up. And. that, you know, communicating with the, with what timing and all this kind of stuff, then bringing it back to the shop. Then we need an unload crew that we need to, you know, a crew that's stocking it for the market. Then we have a crew that's working it for the market. Then then the people come in and then they're part of the food rescue cycle is they take it home and actually consume it. And that's what Ben was talking about earlier, that it takes a whole community from start to finish to To, you know, do this good thing, you know. The capital requirements are not insignificant either, right? Like, you gotta keep that, the coolers, and the warehouse space. How many trucks, uh Always working on getting another truck, or one's in the shop. How many trucks do we have now? Well, we only have three box trucks. We're about to get a fourth, but you know, it's, it's constant, you know, in and out of the shops and one's got a reefer problem. One's got a AC problem. Another one needs a new, right now we need, it's going to be like 2, 000 for this exhaust leak that we're trying to figure out, you know, should I do that myself or should we Yeah, yeah. Does somebody on our volunteer squad have the knowledge to fix this? Some, we do a little bit of that. We definitely, we're down to have a few more, you know, mechanics on the squad. Is there anybody else paid? I assume you're paid at this point? Yeah, off and on over the years. It's mainly been me, sometimes part time help. We finally, this past year, have had capacity to have an operations manager. Okay. Um, so that's, they're like the backup to everything running the market, helping allows you to use your voice to advocate change, connect with new relationships, et cetera. Yeah, that's the idea. Yeah. Sometimes it just means we get more food. We have more reach and more capacity to more forklift operators and whatever, you know, so fair enough. Fair enough. So. What kind of square footage, uh, do you have over there now? And what's the dream? Like, what do you want to, so what's your next step? Yeah. A little 2, 400 square foot building, but then we have two semi trailers and two walk in cooler freezers outside. And there are three box trucks, which sometimes we have to store food in there. Those refrigeration systems. So I forget what it is. Total counting all those, the infrastructure outside our building, Right, so it's like eight. Maybe 80 80 feet by 10 feet or something. Yeah, 50 feet by 50 feet by eight. Okay, so 400 square feet in each of those Yeah, so by six, that's another 2400. But yeah, we've been in the butt though. You rotate that stuff so quickly So the dream is at least double what we have We need to pray need to be in at least 5, 000 square foot or hopefully closer to 10 We're shooting we're shooting for eight right now. We're hoping to find eight unless we So you're actually looking right now. Oh, we've been actively looking. We've actually made some offers. Okay. Yeah, so we are, we are in the middle of, of, um, Well, I shouldn't say we're in the middle. We, we did sort of a feasibility study. Um, and then when was the Vindicate dinner? Uh, just this past October. So this past October we had our, we do an annual dinner every year. Okay. Do you use food from the market? Yeah, we do. And local chefs. And they do like a four or five course meal and just knock it out of the park. This year we did it out at, um, uh, Sweetwater Brewery. Oh, great. Um, we've done it at Tap and Handle. Um, we've done it, um Very cool. I'm so embarrassed not to have gotten engaged in your community yet, because I've known about it for years. Um, and it's just like out of my normal traffic pattern. I think this is a really good segue though, cause I think the thing that has caused Vindicate to be successful is the unexpected outcome of rescuing food. Most people have, don't, they don't think about it and they don't know what to expect. And they just assume that they're going to be giving something to someone else or someone's going to be giving something to them. So they're, they're either saying, okay, am I the type of person that wants to be, you know, be, you know, be, be the us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or, or do I, or be given to, or do I want to be the giver or do I want to be the person who's, who's receiving this? And so they think like, am I that type of person? Right. But what they, what they miss out on and what I think a lot of people discover, including myself, is that it's really just, A whole bunch of people in the community getting together just to do like one good work together, right? Working together to rescue food. Yeah, and it and it's you know, it's like this you know if you see people who get together to pick up trash along the highway or you see people who Get together to you know, you know build build a house like for habitat for humanity Sure, or even just like simple things like, you know When a storm comes through and all of a sudden you have neighbors or people that come together and they help each other out I think there's a There is a, um, community, you know, almost like a, a rugged individualism, I think, that when people experience together, um, is, is, like, really satisfying and transformative, and I think we've just forgotten that, you know, I mean, uh, um. Yeah, like when they used to do barn raisings. Like, everybody was there, the rich guys and the poor guys and stuff, and that was the community coming together to do something important that needed to get done. Sure. And, uh, you know, the rich guys built bigger barns, so it was harder, but everybody still did it. Yeah. Anyway, I like that. Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't that long ago. But, um, yeah, no, man, I'm totally, yeah, totally. But I think, you know, it's crazy. We, we just made a promo video and it's on our website, so everybody should go check it out. That's Vindicat, right? V I N D E K E T? Dot org. Dot org. Just Vindicat. org? Or Vindicatfoods. org. Or Vindicatfoods. org. Oh, sweet. We're redirecting in every which way. 6. 99 a year to have that extra. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty nice. That's right. Cyber Monday. Oh yeah, coming right up. 99 cents. Yeah. Get that cheap renewal. Is it dot net or 99 cents right now? I thought about getting it. Ah, should've. Probably should, yeah. It's only 99 cents. Good call. Um, where were you going, Ben? No, I was just saying that it's, um, we were making this promo video and we had so many people say, You know, I'd heard about it for, you know, six months or a year or two years, or I've known about it for a really long time and people around me have been a part of it. And there's this, always this, just this like delay of activity. And then they're just so upset with themselves after they get involved, right? Yeah. And it's because, um, It's just, it's, this is such an old idea and it's, it's crazy'cause it does feel like it's, it's just out of like vogue or just not practiced anymore, but it's still just as good of an idea as it was, you know? Yeah. 400 years, 300, 200, a hundred years ago, 50 years ago. You know, people have been doing this for a long time and, and it is also really, I think the thing that's most transformative about it is that, you know, it's. Um, you know, a good work does not care about the person that does it, so you don't have to bring an agenda or an ideology or, you know, a certain identity or a certain type of person or a certain have to come with a certain, with a certain bumper sticker. We don't care and neither does the food, right? Yeah. And, you know, so I think at the end of the day, it's awesome for us to say, you know, we, we, we've identified our board, Nate. You know, he identified clearly something that was just wrong in the world, which is we're throwing away almost half of the food that we produce. That's crazy, right? It's crazy. And, and people are also needing resources more than they ever have. At least that's what the data. tells us. So you look at that and you say, okay, there, there, there must be something that's not right. So then when you get everybody together and then you realize, Hey, this is actually a super easy problem to solve. And. The, the sort of surprise benefit to all of this is it makes everyone really happy, right? People just generally are really happy to be around doing this. And it's not the fact that, you know, maybe somebody who has a lot goes there and then is like feeling so good about themselves giving, you know, giving food to other people or that somebody who maybe really is in need comes in and gets food. It's not even that. It's when you generally talk to people, which we do, we interview and we do lots of surveys. What we find out is people just feel really good about rescuing food. Actually, I have a story. Well, my wife and I have chickens. We've got five chickens and last night I was cleaning out the fridge. Uh, and there was, um, a little bit of turkey noodle soup, just like maybe about a half a pint. Uh, a similar amount of Italian wedding soup that didn't get eaten, and a couple more things. But I was, I was effectively bragging to her about how that's pretty good. Like I'm, out of all the food we ate over the course of about the last 10 12 days, like I'm Giving to the chickens only about, you know, ten cups full of food, or eight cups full of food, or something like that. And they'll eat it right up and turn it into eggs. Right. So, like, that's actually gets me more excited about, like, I love that I barely throw any food in my trash can. Um, and that at least when I do fail to act aggressively on or appropriately time, the chickens will process it for me. Yeah, that's good. So, anyway, I digress. You're a very efficient human being. I'm a, I'm, I'm a quite efficient. I, I live only a mile and a half from my work. You know, I walk to work once a week, try to, and, and just, Try to not have too much waste in my world. Sounds like Vindicant would be a national place for sure. Yeah, well, uh, I'll definitely be there. Yeah, everybody starts, come, bring your bag or you can use one of our boxes and come shop first. Yeah. Like, I think that's the thing that we try to get everybody to do first because, um, you'll come and you'll, they'll probably be a line, but that's okay. And you'll talk to everyone that's there and you will be amazed by just the sheer, um, you know, diverse population that is there. I mean, you'll see. Probably see people that you know, you'll meet people that you didn't know. You'll see people in all different situations of their life, you know, and it's really cool. Um, I want to bounce back to the next chapter a little bit. So you're, you're actively looking for locations, you've got, I guess, the, the supportive base and revenue base that you could kind of make a bigger place work and put that capital campaign together. Uh, I guess. Yeah. Is it a work to do? I presume. Yeah, too, because that's. It's the nonprofit life, right? Yeah. We could get into that. I want to. Yeah. I mean, I think the money aspect, I mean, it's exciting for me because I come from the private business world. And so, you know, we all know cash is king and, and we, we sort of obsess over our books and how we spend our money. And we, you know, early on, you know, Nate was very quick to say, listen, I don't want to be a nonprofit that just walks around with our sort of hat in our hand all the time. Yeah. And I said, listen, I, I, we can do this. Like w w you know, we, we have enough community members who come on a regular basis, who will, who donate, who want to donate and want us to continue. Let's figure out how to be sustained on that. And this is why we talk a lot about being community sustained. So we sat down and we said, okay, like what are, we know we're a food rescue. Okay. That's what we are. Check. What are our core purposes? So we, we have really, you know, succinct core purposes. You know, we, we distribute food to other nonprofits. We have a, a, a no cost market or like grocery store where we, this food goes out the door. Um, we offer people opportunity to, to learn, you know, learn how to drive a truck, learn how to, you know, manage other people, work with other volunteers. Your insurance agent must love you. Yeah. Anyway. They are very properly trained before they go. Nate, Nate can test this because he does it himself, but we have every safety known to man. But thanks for bringing that up. Lots of testing. Um, and then, and then the, the, uh, uh, the fourth thing is the education piece that Nate was talking about. So, um, those are our priorities. That's what we, that's what we want to do. Uh, we have to rescue for food first and foremost, and you know, the, we call them participants volunteers will slip out of our mouth from time to time, but it's important for us in our organization for everybody that sees vindicate to realize that. That you cannot rescue food if you do not have somebody who's willing to eat it. You know, and it sounds stupid, but it's like from the business world. We know yeah, you can make products all day long But if nobody wants to buy them, you're not gonna be around for very long, you know So demand creation is right part of your sure But the fact of the matter is, is that a lot of nonprofits, they can go out and sell a mission or an idea and get a lot of funding from big sources. And then they're, you know, you know, to use a business term, their KPIs, so to speak, might not have really anything to do with their core mission, because as long as their doors are open and they have enough money. Right. They must be doing the right thing. Well, and that's kind of the perverse incentive, like, even in cities like Denver, or even worse, San Francisco, they pour all this money into homelessness, and it creates like this flock of 100, 000 city employees that work on homelessness, and if they actually fix it, they'll run themselves out of a job. Sure. And so, there's just this incentive to make the problem worse, almost, or allow it to be worse, because then I get a bigger department. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There's I'm a big Thomas Sowell fan. So there's, there's several good books that are all just about the fact that the program generally benefits the program ers more than it does the people. But not to get into that too much, but I think from, from our perspective, um, you know, we look at. The amount of food that that we can bring in safely and organized safely and the amount of food that can go out the door. We look at how many people we can get in the door to take that food home and eat it. Um, and we have a pretty good idea of the relationship between that and what people might be willing to donate. Um, we don't sell anything. We don't require any money. We don't require any. Buddy to come and volunteer. People do that on their own accord because they, they, they want to see us to continue to rescue food. Right. And they want to, to allow us to be able to grow. You got a bug on you. I don't care about bugs. I'm from Iowa, but, um, um, You know, it's interesting though, because, because of that, though, you know, we, we can budget like a normal business would, we, we kind of look at our operating revenue as the donations that come because we have this food service, right? We have a market. And, and in the future, when we get into a bigger space, people may donate because, you know, we're educating big groups of people or because we have a, a community. Well, you'd be able to just flow that much more food, which will increase your Absolutely. Overall. And so we, we operate when we talk about trucks or employees or, you know, any kind of resource capital resource that we might need, we first look at what we're able to do, not what we're able to go get from a grant or to donate. So we really look at like. big donors and big grants as our ability to grow faster or grow out ahead, like from a resource standpoint, get our resources out ahead from where we're going. So with this new space, especially, you know, we, we probably could operate out of a 4500 or a 5, 000 square foot building today. And in two years, based on our trajectory, we would have to go find another 2000 square feet. So we're really looking in that eight to 10 range so that we're good for say the next four or five years. We think as we. Just like a typical grocery store, we think we can be, start to really focus on efficiencies once we max out the next space. But right now, I mean, we've maxed out every, and Nate can speak to this, but he has maxed out every efficiency that he can, that he can max out. And so we're the, we're to the point now where really. Um, the next step is only to, has to be, it's gotta be more room at this, um, and I've heard before that sometimes if you donate a property to a nonprofit, you can get all kinds of good tax benefits there too, right? We would gladly, God bless the soul that donates a property in Fort Collins, man. If you're sitting on an extra 8, 000 square feet in a decent location, we, we got a, we got a user for you. It'll make you feel good. All the time. It will make you feel good. All right. Nathan, I want to, uh, Do I want to jump to the founding? I don't think I want to jump to the founding story now. I think I want to take us all three back in the time machine. You're going to Iowa somewhere, Ben. And, uh, Nathan, where, where did you, uh, get your start in life? Say, uh, five years old, where were you? Uh, yeah, born and raised, uh, Corpus Christi, Texas, till I went to college. Uh, so 18 years of my life, Corpus Christi, Texas. Tell me about Corpus Christi. We're not gonna flash fly it. We'll, we'll, we'll go fairly quickly. But we're gonna take our time a little bit and learn who, how you became fascinated by food rescue, right? Like that's the beginning of the story in some ways. Um, but is Corpus Christi a border town almost? Kind of. Yeah, we're about two and a half hours from the border. Um, we're on the coast, which is cool. I was just telling Ben and actually last night, a nice little evening sesh, a little, little storm came through, shaped up the surf. So I grew up a little surfer in Texas, which a lot of people are like, what? But we, we get pretty good waves there. And, uh, so I, I kind of grew up with my dad. Uh, you know, we like to use sometimes word hustle and not really, but we were like, you know, buy a beat up surfboard at a pawn shop, do ding repairs, you know, fix it and then flip it, you know, and make some money. And you know what, we didn't, we didn't, yeah, we didn't, we didn't grow up with too much money. So you had to, you know, helping my dad with side projects and side hustles, honestly, to pay. And, uh, so it kind of grew up with that keen eye to things on the side of the road. Well, where is add value, you know, um, uh, old, uh, you know, shelving unit or a dresser, you know, that we could sand paint and resell on Craigslist. I grew up that, you know, when I had going to estate sales and getting some good scores and 200 bucks to my name in college, I knew how to make, you know, an extra buck. So I could pay my bills. Yeah. But we don't talk about that too much on podcasts. Yeah. I mean, that's, basically every consumer is also a peddler, just about, like, you buy an ounce so that you can smoke a quarter and sell three quarters, and, you know, you smoke a quarter for free that way. Duh. Yeah. Anyway, I won't make you talk about it more. Your expression isn't off the cameras off, by the way, now, so. Oh, jeez. Yeah. Well, I always like to refer to the good old breaking bad. Uh, what did he say? He was like, never a user. But, uh, yeah, so I always had a kind of a keen eye for stuff on the, on the, on the outskirts of society a little bit. And so I did a little bit of dumpster diving in college and. when freshmen would move out of the dorms and they'd throw their mini fridge in the trash or whatever and I was like oh my goodness I just had to store that until next fall and I could sell it for 80 bucks or even right away at the pawn shop if you want to flip them all real fast or if you want to put them on Craigslist 100 bucks, yeah and so I had some friends when I moved actually to Fort Collins that took me dumpster diving and my mind was pretty Um, open and I was like, Oh my word, you know, there's just cases of lettuce, everything. Yeah. You can imagine and not nasty either, you know, like, uh, in original packaging or in boxes with other things and not nasty, you know? And so I always like to try to tell people dumpster diving doesn't mean I'm like swimming in dumpster filth. It's literally like picking things out. Case of, uh, Canino's sausages right there, which just expired yesterday. Exactly. Hell yeah. And, uh, things still cold in the, in the trash or, you know, whatever. And so it really kind of, um, you know, kind of got me thinking and, and, And what'd you go to school for? Uh, actually to Texas A& M for geology, so, Oh. I have a little bit of that kind of earth sciences background, and, and, uh, You could be working in the oil field now for big money. Exactly, yeah, I did, I did a little bit. Okay. Yep. Uh, We'll get there. Oil field, environmental field. Okay. And so I, I really, you know, off and on throughout the years from probably about 2012 or 2010, Um, for, you know, 5, 6, 7 years there, I, I was off and on kind of dumpster diving or doing some Um, you know, at various food service kind of places and restaurants and grocery stores and just around all that developing the green thumb, all these kind of things kind of, yeah, as you're doing geology type job was my background. And that I really was like, huh, I really want to do something that's meaningful for the world. And so when I started dumpster diving, I started really doing a lot more. I was like, man, there's so much. And I started storing it in my garage and had these You know, like fridges and freezers and racking and had your word of mouth with friends. Hey, come shop out of my garage. Yeah. Started a free sale. Yeah. It started floating that idea to some local nonprofits of like, Hey, what, you know, what if we did a food rescue? A few of them were down and actually served 6. 8. Um, I floated my idea to them and they gave me like the keys of their building and their truck really, really, really kind of them and started working with a few different stores and, um, working kind of alongside the food bank to see when, you know, certain days that they weren't picking up or stores that they weren't and really just started, you know. With a couple of stores and just, just growing, growing, growing to this day where, you know, obviously it's not dumpster diving. It's official partnerships with stores. Yeah. Pre dumpster dive. Yeah. Yeah. So basically securing. Yeah. That's when I teamed up with surf 6. 8 from 2017 to 2020 to have that nonprofit endorsement to say, Hey, you know, we'll give you a tax deduction. If we look, you know, food, you know, and then in 2020, we're able to incorporate it as our own nonprofit. And, um, so really just simpler for everybody. Yeah. That I just say the inspiration was in a dumpster and, and, and, you know, stores don't want to throw it away either. Nobody wants to, how did you connect with serve six, eight? Like, were you part of that community or just learned about it? I think our, our, uh, our pastor, Ben and I actually met at, uh. Uh, Timberline Old Town Church, uh, our pastor. Everyday Joe's there? Yep. Um, now Commonplace. Uh, Darren, actually one of our founding board members, I think connected me to a lot of different people in the community and connected us with Surge 6. 8. to kind of help us, you know, run their food program and also help, help me kind of live out a dream of rescuing this food officially, not in the dumpsters and working on real relationships with stores and farms and places. So taking it all the way. Yeah, it's pretty cool. You know, how, how things work out and you just always tell people one, one step at a time. It's funny to think back where we were, where I was and that all that inspiration and kind of that. You know, look into the outskirts of society and then now it's like a almost, almost a common household name, I think. What do you think that was, um, like a lot of people are going to listen to this and be like, you know, it sounds like he left like a 80, 000 a year career to go make no money moving food around first serve 6. 8 for a while. I never made 80, 000 but, um, but yeah, I, I really, I was working in an environmental job here in town actually after the oil fields and, and I really just didn't think. impact was that meaningful, uh, at least for in that industry. But, uh, yeah, I think just seeing the, the sheer amount of more sheer, sheer amount of waste and emptying hold dumpsters. Somebody's going to do something about this. Yeah. I was like, this, this is real impact, you know, this is when, and now I can stand behind and say how proud of this organization that we're all able to rescue almost 2 million pounds of food. This year is we're on track to write a 1. 9 is. I think really, obviously very impactful. And most people would agree that like, you know, not to mention the food, but the, the packaging making, you know, all these people who grew the food and transported the food and spent all this time, all their time. All their efforts. I mean, literally blood, sweat and tears, you know, think about all the migrant workers time, there's so much that goes into food, uh, whole people's livelihood and, and everything, you know, I mean, this is the most common thing that humans need and everybody needs to eat. I liked what Ben said that everyone's the same and everybody digest food the same and, you know, it doesn't matter if you've got it at a. You know, the nicest restaurant in town, or if you literally got it, it all comes out the same, it all comes. So it's a pretty common thing that everybody can get around a pretty basic part of life. And yeah, I think it, it holds a lot of value. Not to mention, there's a lot of connection with people sitting around a table or, or being around a truck, unloading it together and, and consuming food together. And that's where, you know, um, Just has a lot of fulfillment from behind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Knowing that you can bring I mean, that's we just went through Thanksgiving weekend Exactly that that that gratitude and bringing together of sometimes disparate Beliefs and people and opinion which sounds like part of your DNA. Mm hmm as well. Oh, yeah Um, I want to jump in the time machine with you now been Where in Iowa or was that you were when you were five? Uh, yeah, Southeastern Iowa. Southeastern, okay. So Is that where Des Moines is over there? No, that's right in the middle. Okay. Yeah. Like Quad Cities? No, that's northern. That's northern, yeah. So I don't know what's southeastern. So, Iowa City, where the University of Iowa is. Okay. So, straight south of that, about an hour, is where I grew up. I was born in a town between those two towns, um, called Crawfordsville, which is where my father still has his business today. Okay. Which is? Uh, it's called Prescription Feeds and it's sort of like a, uh, um, like a grain elevator without the elevator. Yeah. Because mostly he does like custom pre mixes. Yeah, exactly. Makes sense. Yep. And, uh, he does a lot with, uh. My chicken eggs are too brittle. Yes. I need more calcium. Exactly. And he does a lot with probiotics and, uh, Cool. All sorts of cool stuff. Science y stuff. Science y stuff, yeah. Our dogs live off of it. Is that right? Yeah, he makes a dog food that's stellar. On the brand? Is it on the shelf? It's a brand name? No, he sells it to breeders, but he bags it up. And I get the bags. I'll take a bag. I got one in my car. Actually, I just was back in Iowa. Well, when did I get back? Yesterday. I got back yesterday. So I brought six bags back. Only six? Well, I'll get some more around. We all need it. There's a bug. There's a big friend group of ours that all, that all I like non labeled product, man. That's the best. It's got a label so you can see what the ingredients are. Okay. Non branded. Yeah. Non branded. Like, yeah. To know I'm getting the insider hookup in some fashion. That's, that's my, it makes my heart content. Yeah, that's good. Well, we have that in common. So you grew up in an entrepreneurial family. Yeah. Both my parents are entrepreneurs. Oh, well. Started their own businesses. Um, And actually I'm on both sides of my family, my upstream from there too. Yeah. Yeah. Upstream from there. So definitely, um, entrepreneurial. Um, I don't, yeah, you know, it's, it's crazy for me. I've always thought someday, Oh, I'll probably have my own business someday or start a business. But I really, you know, I grew up seeing entrepreneurs and, um, And I don't know if the, the path that I've chosen is necessarily any less stressful, but I just like, I'm the kind of person that really likes to, um, to take a step back and look at it from just a really common sense, pragmatic standpoint. And I think if I. Was my own, uh, you know, was an owner operator. I think I'd be my own worst enemy. Yeah. Um, but I'm, but I'm a good friend and to a lot of entrepreneurs and, and when I grew up in Iowa, um, you know, I was working at the feed store when I was a little kid or working at my mom's shop. And what was her business? Uh, she had a secondhand clothing store. Okay. And, um, and then she, she helped, uh, kind of in the same vein of clothing rescue, clothing rescue. Exactly. But, uh, you know, I grew up in the same way in the sense that like. You know, I love really nice things, but I like, but I, but I would never spend that kind of money. Yeah, yeah. So, I love to find things that, you know, were super, super nice. Yeah. And, uh, and make them nice again, right? I've got a, I've got a pair of Armani pants, uh, that I got from Beaver Creek one year that, uh, like they were 300, then they were 150, and I got them for 75 kind of deal. Yeah. And I wore them, they're actually not I don't have many more, but I wore'em for like 10 years and wore the snot on'em and they were my favorites. Yeah.'cause they were$300 pants. Yeah. And I would never buy a pair of 300 pants. Mm. So I love a good deal and uh Same as you. Yeah. And I can be super patient actually. These shoes. Yeah. My Arc TerraX shoes. Oh, I like'em. I got vibrant soles. Yeah. They're great. And I need to sit and wait for another pair so I knew. I had, uh, I was hoping that these would show up at Sierra Trading Post cause I, you know, done my logistics research and seen that probably that brand would at some point. And sure enough, they did, but they were still, you know, these were like 300 over 300 shoes. I think when Arc'teryx first sold them and I waited and they got to Sierra Trading Post and my wife was like, you should just get them. They're like half off. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So, I just waited, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and I paid sixty bucks for him. And what size are you? Uh, I'm thirteen. Oh. Yeah, see, I'm a ten. I'm a ten and a half. And they always sell ten and a half. But the thirteens, you can find those babies laying around sometimes. Yeah, but they don't, they don't stock a lot, you know. Well, yeah. So, once they get in there, you know, you may have to pull some tricks like move them over to like the size six section. Oh. You know. I don't do that. You don't do that. Oh. Alright. That's across the line for me. But anyway, but my, but I I think I got it most probably from my mom's. father, my grandfather, who's still alive. He's 90 How old are you grandpa? 93 I think now. Wow. And, uh, oh, where's he? Yeah, 93. And, uh, he's one of those guys who had a barn full of stuff. And, uh, so I don't have the, the flipping mentality. I've had to like learn that. You're a buy and hold. I'm a buy and hold kind of guy, you know, like I want to appreciate just for myself. I don't need to make any money off of it. You know, my, my wife looks at me probably like a goldfish. We live in a small house. I would love to be in a big house. I would love to live outside of town. I want multiple outbuildings and she's like, there's no way I'm putting you up all that into that situation. It's never going to happen. I would organize it really well though, you know, but, um, But yeah, no, so I grew up in that and, um, uh, graduated high school, went to school at the University of Iowa, which is the one that's right there. Yeah, right there. Um, failed miserably dropped out, went into trade school, became an electrician, started working as an electrician in southeastern Iowa. And, um, Uh, happened to also get into HVAC at the same time and got a couple of journeyman's licenses in Iowa. And then I had an opportunity, it was kind of weird, this, this business that knew about me because of my grandfather. So I was living in Iowa City at the time. And, um, This business reached out to me. I think they reached out. I don't think I reached out to them. I think they reached out to me. They were looking for an electrician. The electrician they had was, was retiring. Okay. They were a restoration company. Oh, yeah. And this, um, and I don't, the story kind of makes them, puts them in a bad light, but they're still around and doing awesome. But I mean, it is their, it is their story. So, but um, I got there and as an electrician and I was there for, I don't know, maybe just weeks. And, um, uh, in a fairly high up employee, wasn't in the ownership family. Um, and one other person got busted for, um, trying to, to embezzle money. Oh, they did. They embezzled, embezzled and got busted. They embezzled a ton of money and it put the, the, the business that had been around for 50, 60 years in the community and had, you know, over a hundred employees in a, in a spot where they were likely to go under and, uh, Various things happened over the course of that, but it basically ended up where, where at one point I was kind of like, Man, if I don't start giving myself something to do here and, uh, you know, I'm just going to come in and sit around until somebody fires me. I mean, nobody was really doing anything, you know, and, uh, so I started kind of doing that and I sort of found myself in a position where I was kind of managing others, even though, you know, I was 23 or whatever, well, it's probably a little, it couldn't help trying to lead them into a better functioning. Yeah, it was weird. Well, certainly if you've got a bunch of people sitting around that. Don't know what they're supposed to do and you're still paying them. It's going to not work very good. And people did, right? People were still working, but it was just a really weird, weird place to be. Um, and then the owner got more involved in the business. You know, he was, yeah, he was probably kind of more retirement age anyway, but he, he stepped back in and he befriended a gentleman, um, who to this day, I still consider one of my greatest mentors. His name was Sennin Herrera. So shout out to you, Sennin. And, um, he, uh, had worked for World Bank, um, in, in Southeast Asia. He's a, he's, uh, from the Philippines. And, um, then he'd come over to the U S and he'd worked for, well, he worked for GM, I think also in Asia. I think this is your story, not his though. So it doesn't matter. But, um, but anyway, so they, he brought him on, this guy's brilliant. He's an auditor and a banker and a million other things. And he basically gave me like an MBA education. And, uh, I found myself standing in front of, um, the entire company one morning. We, this company was cool because most mornings they all ate breakfast together. So they'd come in at like five o'clock in the morning, eat breakfast, and then they'd all go, go out to work. Wow. Um, so I, I'm standing in front of them all one morning. And, uh, the owner gets up there and says, Uh, everybody, I want to get your attention. Um, uh, I think most of you know, uh, you know, that Ben Jewell, you know, Doc Jewell, who is my grandfather's grandson. And everyone's like, uh, and he's like, Well, you know, he's been over at McCoy, kind of running things over there. And, uh, you know, I've decided he's gonna, he's gonna be the manager over there of, uh, McCoy Plumbing and Heating. And, uh, you know, he's wiping his ass with his left hand. So everybody give him a break and maybe, maybe take care of him a little bit. That was my introduction as he didn't tell you about this. No, he didn't tell me that. He told me that now he was like, Hey, I'm going to say something. I don't even remember how it went. I was. Flabbergasted by that, you know, flustered, but that was basically my intro into management because I'd never managed a single person or really been in charge of anything up to that point. Right. I've always been a little bossy, but I never really had true responsibilities. So I went from, you know, thinking I was going to get a job as an electrician to basically then having to figure out, um, how to work with all these people and turn this company around. Sure. And, um, so long story short, that guy, uh, You know, he, he sent in basically changed my life and put me on a, uh, a totally different path. And that's when I really started falling in love with, you know, sort of optimizing, just bringing good comments involved with other startups. And yeah, so it was that one. And then I went out east and I kind of jumped around a little bit and I, and I got into product management and, but I always just had this, like, I've always had a heart for finding something that's, you know, good, a neck for business and just wanted to, you know, wanted to, to, uh, Leverage the people and the resources there, but it's, it's always, it's always more fun and a lot easier. When the people involved like really love it. Yeah, and so I think I've always like gotten bored at places when I realize okay This now this is just like a boring business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know those 5 a. m breakfast and 150 volunteers driving trucks around before they're trained properly and You found somebody who's passionate and yeah, you'd sat down could build community and whatever and we just Spent like two hours writing down all the things that I wanted to get better, and then Ben kind of wrote up a plan. And honestly, the rest was history. One day after and the next, I kept bothering him, kept calling him. Nathan, how did you make your way to Fort Collins from Texas? What was that, what was that draw, or how did you, just a job, or a girl, or? Yeah, actually both, yeah. I wanted to get a job out here from, uh, I went to school, yeah, at Texas A& M. Yeah. Had a college girlfriend at the time that was a RAF guide out here and really wanted to live out here and do that thing and, and, um, Yeah, I first got a job in the oil field out of Denver and then I found kind of a dream job at the time in Fort Collins because I visited Fort Collins. My cousin was going to school here, fell in love with this little town, came in on tour to FAD in September. It was perfect. Everything was perfect and, and, uh, yeah, I wanted to get a job up here and kind of. I mean, honestly, I don't know. Well, I, I think now maybe we could do Vindicate somewhere else, but this is the perfect type of community to do Vindicate or local think tank. Yeah, exactly. These type of really neat community minded organizations that really people have the same mindset to jump behind. Yeah, I dig it. So Ben, how did you land, uh, in Northern Colorado? Yeah, I was out east and my wife said she didn't want to live out east anymore. That was easy. Yeah, and so I said, we'll see if you can get a job. And like a week later, she's like, I got a job interview. And then two weeks later, she said, I got a job. And three weeks later, I was telling my boss, hey, I'm not sure if I could still work here because we're moving to Colorado. And so, but it worked out well. When was that? That was, uh. Seven and a half. Oh, no, no, no. I still have my two oldest. Yeah. My, um, uh, youngest. Cora was born here, so seven and a half years ago I think he was removed here. Yeah. It seems like, doesn't seem like that long ago. Fun to see how those passions played out to bring you here and even, uh, the next, uh, chapter when we come back is going to be, uh, you guys getting together because we're going to talk about faith, family, and politics. All right. And, uh, we'll start with faith because it sounds like that's where you met, in the church. It is where we met. So, we'll be right back. So, uh, when we left off, we were just transitioning to really the providence of you guys getting acquainted and getting interested in what one another were doing and capable of. Um, And it was at the Old Town, Everyday Joe's. Was the church a different name than Everyday Joe's Coffee Shop? Well, now Or wasn't that yet? Well, the church was Timberline Old Town that met at Everyday Joe's. Oh, I see. That was just their coffee shop that they kind of serviced to the community. Gotcha. But now they've kind of, uh, I guess incorporated? I don't know. Became their own church called Gotcha. Uh, Commonplace Church, yeah. Yeah, so the, the members of the church Formed another church and now it's called commonplace. Oh really? That church doesn't exist anymore. So you're a breakaway. But that one doesn't exist anymore. Oh, yeah, it's kind of like shut down and the coffee shop shut down. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, so Where do you guys go to church now? Or do you still? Yeah, Commonplace Church. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah. Oh, and that's no longer a coffee shop anymore? Commonplace is a church that shares an actual church building with another church. Oh, so that was your transition season, kind of, through there. Well, transition season, that was a long time, though. They were there for How many years are there? 15 years or something there? Oh yeah, almost 20 I think at every day at the coffee shop. Timberline Old Town. Yeah. Okay, so let's back up. Uh, when did you guys first get acquainted? Was it at Vindicate? There or at the coffee shop maybe? I think we met just during the day at the coffee shop. Yeah. Okay. Somebody said, or you might have been working on something, one of your friends, Stephen's house or something, helping him with some plumbing project. And that's where we first maybe said, Hey, and then I don't remember. Yeah. And then we probably saw each other. It used to, it was such a great community. So, so I, you know, I love resources obviously. And, uh, I like to, I like good, good stewardship of resources and people that know me know that. And so Darren, who is our mutual friend and pastor, he said, Hey, you need to talk to that guy there. You two need to talk to one another. And, and, um, so I said, okay. And he's done that multiple times and it doesn't always result in this. Um, but, but I think that's where we got started. I saw Nate speak once also. Um, and I thought to myself, like, You know what? This, this is interesting. I could tell he was different and. He, I could also tell he was super entrepreneurial and that obviously all interests me immediately because he is very much an entrepreneur. Like if he wasn't doing this, he would need to be doing his own thing. I don't ever see him working for someone else for the rest of his life, you know, especially now that he's like really been bitten and has been able to do this and on his first try to, which I think is amazing because, you know, I've worked for. Um, multiple entrepreneurs that are on their 9th, 10th try. So, um, yeah, I've got, uh, three business failures basically before Loco Think Tank started growing. But my, my mobile food trailer business, my, my banking consulting business eventually turned into Loco Think Tank. Um, and then my financial and investments business with Thrivent in the meantime, so. Yeah, there's three dead carcasses on the road of history along the way to helping, you know, local think tank eventually sprout. You gotta have that though. I mean, and that, and I think that might be why I don't try to do that. Right. Because I don't, I have, I would have a hard time, I think, with that failure. And, um, and so it's easier for me to like I think move from entrepreneur to entrepreneur than it is to be to keep starting over and again. But I think when we met, when we met, um, I had already seen him speak. He might, I don't even know if you knew that, that I had, but I'd seen you speak already. So I knew who you were and what you did. And then when we first started talking. He was kind of telling me a little bit about it and, you know, I like to cut to the chase and you're like, how are you monetizing this? Exactly. No, I didn't say that. I knew, well, I think there at one point or another, and I think that actually might have been a thought that they talked about even before I got there. Um, but. I think from my perspective, I immediately started asking like questions about, you know, how they run, you know, well, how do you make sure that you have enough in trucks to justify that you send a truck out in the first place? And how do you do this or that? So I'm asking all of these questions, thinking about sustainability and, um, you know, Nate's pretty. honest and direct. And I think a lot of it was kind of like, Hey man, I'm just busted my ass. Just trying to get food from here to there, you know? And I appreciated that. And then when I, when, you know, I think from there, it kind of came to me going to Vindicate, volunteering and just checking it out and working a little bit. And, uh, then we got to, I think, be friends and, uh, I could hear, you know, how he wanted to grow and what some of his frustrations and challenges were and, like, I held off for a long time and then I think at some point I was, I was kind of talking to my wife and I'm thinking to myself, you know, I can help, I can help this guy. Your experience fit into that and, and enough distance from the problem? Sure. Like it, your, your, your, your next week's paycheck isn't, doesn't rely on you figuring this out better. Sure. Right. So you can make decisions. So, um, because we're, uh, in our faith family politics segment, I want to turn the conversation to faith. Sure. Uh, were you both raised in faith environments, uh, generally? Was that a? Yeah. Like both were in a Christian home kind of background. Yeah, definitely. And, uh, I was raised in a very evangelical home for sure. Very evangelical, evangelical Christian. Timberline is a very evangelical. Yeah, it is. But Timberline old town, which was why I, you know, I hadn't gone to church in a long time and we moved here and my mom immediately moved out, you know, and had found, you know, scoped out every church in town. And, uh, but I will say that that group of people, um, Was you know, I think it was it was a great introduction to the community because I think it really reflected the community But it also, you know, I was very much had church fatigue for probably the previous ten years Yeah, yeah, and I I'm Darren's probably listening to this right now going, I haven't seen you in, you know, eight weeks. Um, and I'm not like what I would consider to be a real, uh, avid participant. I still listen to all of the podcast, Darren, in case you're listening. But, um, um, but I think for me, like I'm, I'm just a person who likes to, you know, solve problems and make things better. And so when, uh, well, you know, uh, the Bible will help you with that. Sure. Yeah. You bet. Use it right. But, but yeah, no, I mean, we both met there and we're still both a part of that. And, and Darren actually has been hugely instrumental with Vindicant. He's, he's no longer on the board. He's cycled off since then, but I mean, he, uh, he's been a great mentor for us. He gives us really good perspective. He's definitely a connector. Um, and so we've been really What's Dara's last name? Fred. Darren Fry. I don't think I know Darren. He's a great guy. You should meet him sometime. Yeah, you should definitely meet him. And he's technically, he's an entrepreneur now because he just started his own church. Oh yeah, for sure. Church planting is about his most entrepreneurial thing there is out there. Yeah, no kidding. I had our church pastors on episode 20 or 30, I think 30 maybe, but uh. Where is that? Uh, the Crossing Church is, is our home church, part of the Mountain View Crossway Network. Yeah. I don't know where that is. Shields, I'll just show you. Yeah, Shields and Horsetooth, yeah. But, but about as, you know, the, the least tradition and dogma, uh, And the least kind of centralized, authoritarian, I'm a, I'm an anti power concentration warrior. So any organization that, yeah, if you're a soul fan, you probably can. And so whatever doesn't have these just corruptible power structures, uh, those are the kind of organizations I tend to be. Tell me about that faith walk for you a little bit, Nathan. Yeah. And by the way, I didn't even ask, but were you in a big family? Was it just you and your folks? Yeah, medium size. I had a brother and a sister, both parents. Yeah, pretty traditional. I grew up in the church, you know, Texas family and yeah, everybody went to the church pretty much except for the real bad families or whatever. Right. It just came on Christmas and Easter. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what they did. There wasn't anybody that didn't ever go. But I think, yeah, probably been since, you know, kind of what, what you're saying, we're attracted to, you know, the way that. You know, Timberland Old Town and now, now Commonplace where it's doing things a little more community focused and kind of, you know, decentralizing faith and making it, you know, a little bit more personal, actually a little more spiritual and, uh, contemplative and, you know, um, versus like, uh, a whole, uh, way of being or a way of thinking. I mean, it is, but, uh, well, a lot of people think of churches being, uh, full of thou shalt nots. Yeah. Well, you know, but if you can make it more about the thou shalt kind of things, what are the actions that you're actually taking to love your neighbor versus a way of just like talking and being and how you vote and what issues you, you know, maybe this whole like subculture, um, was. You know, something that we were kind of, probably both shedding off as we came out here and growing up a little bit and figuring out what, what, what we want to stand up for, what we care about, stuff like that. Fair enough. Um, let's, let's jump into family a little bit. Um, you've got a, a Mrs. I do. At home. What's her name? Uh, Tara. Her name is Tara. Hi Tara. I'm sure you're going to listen. Yeah, she She might actually listen. I might have to play it for her while you're in the car driving. Exactly. We do listen to stuff in the car. So that's a good idea. Actually. Um, yeah, find her along your journey. So I met her in Iowa. She's from Illinois though. And she was there for school. She's a lot smarter than I am. And she is her DNP, which means she has her doctor of nursing practice. So she's an NP. Yeah. But she went for one extra, which is basically means you're as smart as a doctor and it's hard working, but You don't make as much. Only 80 percent as much paid, but you skip two years of medical school. Yeah. Or something. Well, if you get into a specialty, some of them are even a lot more, so. Right. But hopefully, you know, in our case, a lot less debt, which is good. That's a great service career. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, uh, and I have three daughters. Okay. And uh, so 10, 9, and 7. We do a one word description of the children. Uh, so would you like to give a name and uh, one word description of those three? You bet. So, 10 year old Evelyn. Oh, she might be the trickiest one. I should have started from the bottom. Yeah, definitely. First two are easier. Yeah, I would say ownership. She just takes ownership of everything. Cool. Responsible. Um, and let's see. Vera. Okay. And she's next. My fave, I think. Maybe don't let her hear this. Don't, don't say that on the radio. Evelyn will listen to this. Oh no. Vera, uh, she's um, I don't know. She's punched me in the face a couple of times out of nowhere. Perfect. Yeah. She's uh. I see. Yeah, she's Vera is a walking, you know, emotion. She like is her own emotion. Oh, interesting. She's, uh, yeah, that's the one word, you know, emotion, I would say for her, but, but it's even, it's more than that. But not in like an all over the place way, but she, she can be all over the place, but, but she, she can recognize like the you in you better than most adults you'll ever meet. Like you'll sit down and in five minutes, you know, this nine year old will ask you questions that make you feel like you've been listened to. Do you wish your therapist would ask you questions that insensitive? Yeah. Yeah, she's very insightful. Insightful is probably the better. Or empathetic, even, or whatever. Insightful is a nice term. Insightful is a great term. Okay, sounds better than emotion. Yeah, probably, but she's got like her own, she's just so, got a lot of life in her, so. Intuitively has that. Yeah, and Cora, uh, sweet. She's just the sweetest little thing. She, uh, um, well, maybe sweet and strong. Sweet and strong, but she's, she's a great, she's a, um, She's sort of a walking muscle. She's very like She's super strong. She's a rocket. She's like developed her muscle mass doesn't make sense for for a child of like her age. Like, she's just way too strong. She's when you pick her up her density in the face. Yeah, dude, her her punch me in the stomach. Probably her her density makes no sense. You know, you pick up her sister's three inches taller than her. And then you pick her up and you're like this. What's in your pockets? You know, he's smuggling lead bars. Yeah, she's like, Super dense. Um, but, uh, yeah, so those are my three daughters and, and my wife and I have been married for, for, uh, almost 12 years, I guess we've, we've been together for 17, I guess, good Lord. Yeah. Why'd you make her wait all those years? Or did she make you wait? Uh, I think it was maybe a little bit of both of us. I don't know. We were just, you know, we, we both are just kind of people that like. Do and then at some point probably look back and say, wow, look at what we did. Um, you know, we've, we've moved, switched jobs and had a baby at the same time for all three of those kids. And not just, not just move, like move, moved. I guess with Cora we just moved across town, but the other two we moved like huge moves from Iowa to Connecticut. You know, Connecticut to Long Island and then Long Island to Colorado and, and, you know, we were always sort of having kids and switching jobs along the way, so, um, but yeah, we, we've had a great adventure for sure. Why would your, uh, I'm sorry, I forgot your wife's name. Tara. Tara. Why would Tara say that she, uh, decided to go on a second and a third date with you? Hmm. I have no idea. You know, she, uh. Um, she sort of, at least it seemed like she sort of took ownership of me. Was it your hair? Wasn't your hair? I had hair. Oh, you did? Back then. Actually, well, I sort of had it then. I had a mohawk for a while, when I was younger. You still could if you grew that out. Yeah, no kidding. Well, that's just because of the way that it's fallen out now. It's sort of made a quasi mohawk. I need to cut it, though. It's gotten long. I've been on vacation. Um, but. Sorry, I should make hair jokes. That's rude. No, no. I'm the right person to make hair jokes. Okay, good. Um. Uh, I don't know why she would say that. I think we've just had fun. It's just easy. Actually, I think people have said like, what, what was it about it? I think things were just pretty easy and fluid. And, you know, maybe to a fault. Sometimes we, we, in our younger years, we probably weren't serious enough and then eventually had to get serious. But, you know, things have just been pretty easy, I would say. That's cool. I would share the same probably with, with my wife, Jill. It's just that it was never really hard. I mean, we were seven years into marriage before we really had, like, our first, like, Troublespot. Yeah. Wow. I can't relate to that, but. Me neither. Well, it's been all hell since then. No, just kidding. Oh, that's bad. Love you, Joe. No, we just celebrated 20 years, actually. Awesome. Congratulations. Last spring. And so, we're figuring it out. I think we're going to make 40 at least. We'll see. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I know. That's awesome. Family on, on your front, are you, you're not wearing any iron there? Well, not single. Single and available? No, no, no. How many, how many girls are you dating right now? Uh, I have a girlfriend. Okay. Committed girlfriend. Do you want to mention her name? Just kidding. Emily. Hi, Emily. I'm just teasing. Like, well, there's Emily, there's Tara, there's Suzanne. No. All right. Hi, Emily. Uh, what, uh, why did Emily ask, uh, agree to go out with you on that second and third date? Uh, we were actually set up by a mutual friend, which never really works I feel like, so it's pretty cool. At least not when I try to do it. Yeah, yeah. But, but, yeah, dating for about a year and, and, uh, I don't know why she said yes, but I'm glad she still is. So. What, uh, why did you ask her on that second and third date? What was it about her that was your intriguing factor? Um. Just super fun, quirky, positive vibes. Um, beautiful. Yeah. All the good, all the good stuff. Yeah. Very authentic. Very empathetic. I dig it. Very. Yeah. And she's okay with the fact that you run a food rescue. I'm a weirdo. Yeah. You, you have to, I think you'd have to really understand, you'd have to like just go to his place and then you fully understand, you know, he has a house, he owns a house with a buddy of his. They bought it together and they have, you know, a garage full of renters and people in all places and yeah, I mean, it's, it's a boarding house of sorts. So yeah, that's fair. That's a funny way to put it. Yeah. I'd like to, uh, You know, my, like the trailhead is kind of my favorite place to go and just hang out because of such a variety of personalities and perspectives around there. And it has been for 20 years. Kind of, I'm usually next door watching the Iowa game at the stakeout. Yeah. Stakeout's what I want to feel upper crust. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so anything else in the family front that's, um, meaningful to you, you want to give some shout outs to anybody in your family tree that really. Um, shaped your journey. I know Ben mentioned his grandpa was a pretty significant factor in his Yeah, I mean, my family's been pretty great. Your dad teaching you the hustle? Yeah, um, pretty close family. I was just home on Thanksgiving and about 30 something family members all get together. Wow. Yeah. Cousins and aunts and uncles and really blessed to have a good family for sure. Have that background, people backing me. Yeah, yeah. Um Do you, I guess we can shift into politics now, and I've got a question that, that struck me. When I heard about Vindicant Foods and, and even when I was on the website a little bit and stuff, uh, I was like, this is kind of a bleeding heart liberal kind of a cause you would think, but here's a couple of, albeit maybe a progressive church body members or whatever. But, uh, like. What would you, how would you describe, and I'm not saying that you should be, shouldn't be progressive if you attend church, but like, how would you describe your politic of like, what the world should do to work better, right? Cause we've got this big problem, like lots of, lots of big problems, right? So, so tell me about, yeah. Ben, stop me from stealing your thunder here. Oh, Ben's probably more passionate about this. Ben loved, uh, he told me one time, I think, I forget where I was. And he said this really neat thing about how, um, everyone wants to be treating people with equality these days and, and really taking care of the marginalized people and, and, nah, nah, I'm forgetting the, the, the bring it home point, but you said something like, you know, what, the work that we're doing is the most, what was the word you, I have no idea. Like the most underappreciated. Well, just the most equal type of, uh, you know, we're, we're, We don't tell people who can come and participate and vindicate whether you're shopping or volunteering. Yeah, the lever of equality here is like It's the most equal place. We're not even singling out people that, you know, um, may be having a tough time right now. Well, you hinted toward that. Like, you almost can't tell who's giving and who's gaining. Yeah, that's the point. Everybody's a participant. Yeah, I can't remember. He said that he's, he's really good at Putting it in this concise, you know, statement that I usually try to write down. And then apparently forgetting about it. Oh, I'm forgetting it now, but it's one of the most, um, yeah, that starts with an M. Gosh, I can just kind of not remember. Um, but that, that's something we pride ourselves with. Vindicate is just truly a place that, you know, I say run by the community for the community and a place where, where everyone is the same, you know, where there's a spot for everyone. And, um, You know, we're not, we're not That's very counter cultural. I mean, like, there's a lot of organizations, businesses that try to hide their political notions a bit so that they don't offend anybody and whatever, but less common is one like yours, where organizations are like, we Welcome everybody that cares about food rescue and it doesn't matter if you voted for Biden three times Or if you would Trump guy, right, right We don't care if you got a Trump sign in your front yard, you know You are welcome here It sounds like you attract like you've probably got little old ladies working side by side with Tattooed people with big ear thingies whenever they call those right name it. Yeah, we've got definitely Um, but it's, I mean, like you said, it's totally necessary and the good work doesn't really care. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, and you were seated, you know, within the 6. 8 kind of organization was, was Mark Mark orphan involved at that time or he was kind of, I think one of the founding, um, but it was, uh, Mike Walker who gave us the chance to, to really live out the dream, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, And, um, yeah. Yeah, he's a super cool. I actually, uh, I was just remembering, uh, that, uh, I served on a, we did some like covid bucks kind of thing. Like a community funded kind of thing. Oh yeah. Where we would That's cool. Do some, some localized support kind of programs before the PPP and different things like that hit and whatever, but, um, I remember Mike doing a great job of helping to organize that effort. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. So. Um, So, who's your, who's your, uh, choice for president 2024? I have no idea. Do I have to vote for one of these? Yeah, I kind of typically go like third party independent style. Is that right? Yeah, I voted for Ron Perot, or Ross Perot on my first vote, and I've only voted. Third party since yeah, well if you want to consider libertarian third party rather than like fifth party or whatever they Suckers also rams, but whatever So yeah, it's a awkward system Ben I see you as a Big Biden guy for sure. Really? No, not at all I and I don't see you as a Trump guy either necessarily you're uh, I wish there was somebody better Probably, would be my suspicion. Yeah, I mean, that, I feel like that's a very gracious thing to say to any guest. You can put them right in the middle and feel, I feel like I kind of am, am there, I would say. I don't know, I, I get super frustrated with politics in general. I do listen to a lot and read a lot. Um, I don't do a whole lot of fiction, so I find myself, you know, trying to stay abreast of what's going on. Um, but, you know, I Do you use the term uniparty in regular conversation? No, I do not use the I do not use uni as a prefix for a lot of words that I use, actually. But, um It's only slanderous if you talk about our political system with it. Yeah, okay. I don't know, like, I tend to You know, I, I've always told myself, you know, I, I'll listen to and read stuff and I just try to spend as much time on the other side. So, you know, I'll watch a lot of different news channels and, and, uh, but yeah, I mean, in general, I just wish that we could get a, a, a normal human being. But I also understand that you gotta be a little bit of a, uh, a narcissist to be in that position, I guess. But it used to be a servant role. Now it's a power play. I would love it if it was that. But you know, it, and I'm making excuses for something I don't even make need to make excuses for at this point. But I, I would just say in general that I tend to, I would say I tend to be I use the word rugged individualist a lot. I, I tend to be somebody who like, read The Federalist and enjoyed it and thought it was amazing. You know? And, and didn't have to just read it because of school. What did you think of Fountainhead? My, but anyway, so I, I think that I'm caught on my core, on the cords. Okay. Don't want to get hurt. You're safe. I'm good. Uh, no, I don't know. I think in general, I tend to be somebody who, who does want to seek kind of common ground and look for something that, that makes sense and is good for all people. But I definitely believe, and this is, I think something that Nate and I both share, but I'm, I'm definitely some, someone who Who, who wants a person to, to show some sort of desire to want to make it happen. I'm definitely not a person who thinks that the intelligence of the world is, you know, in a small percentage. I really truly believe in the idea that common sense is really evenly distributed. There aren't that many. Elite people like I work with a lot of CEOs. You've worked with some amazing people and they're they're not elite because they were born better Sure, they show up. They work hard They cultivate relationships, trust and integrity. And it's all a trade off too. Like you'll meet people who you're, you might think are a genius, but there's some part of their brain that has had to shut off, you know, you know what I mean? In order to make capacity and energy for that and feed that part of the brain. So yeah, I just, I'm, I'm a big fan of, of, you know, common sense and common knowledge, and I look at politics the exact same way. And the, the one thing that I will say, like, Hey, I, I. The thing I might be most political about is food, right? Now that I've been involved with Vindicant. So I would say the politics that go into food I'm really interested in. Yeah. And I think that How about that? Like, Ag programs and farm battles and stuff. Yeah, sure, right? I grew up in Iowa, right? So, I mean, I grew up, you know, sort of Gravy for all those farmers. Exactly. Oh, I mean the people that own the land. Right. Rent seeking from them. Otherwise, uh, it doesn't really help the farmer much. It just makes it more expensive to rent the land. Sure. But I would say that, you know, growing up in that and seeing all that and, and, you know, I'm starting to understand more how, how our government over time has tried to adapt to, you know, uh, things in the market and environmental situations that have been made. And there's always the best of intentions, which is maybe the problem, right? Yeah. So, you know, I think from my perspective that that might be from a political standpoint, the thing I have the most interest in is, is just, you know, Any common sense person that is willing to actually think about resources as a scarcity and actually take care of them. And that's what we're trying to do. Stewardship. Exactly. And I look for people like that. I really don't care what their label is in terms of party. I'm more interested in that. If we could fill our government with stewards. Uh, rather than power brokers, uh, we would be eminently better off regardless of who is in power. One, one hundred percent. One hundred percent. We've got two local experiences, unless they're shared, but the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our listeners. Does anybody know what their, what their experience is? My lifetime? Yeah, it could be a moment, a day, a week, a month. Maybe that staff meeting where you were introduced as the new manager. I don't know. Yeah, no kidding. Uh, but yeah, just any kind of a crazy experience. It could be, yeah, like I said, uh, just a moment. I mean, I worked in construction. Okay. In, in Connecticut. Okay. On the Gold Coast. Which means that I've been in all tons of famous people's houses and hedge fund managers and owners and fa super famous people who are probably. I'm not even allowed to talk about still. I don't know. I remember signing something when I left. So you see, you see all kinds of crazy stuff, you know, in the, in those houses, like golden toilets and not golden toilets, but like, you know, I, I, we, I walked into one house and in the foyer of the house when you first walked in was literally like a 15 foot tall painting of this woman, um, totally naked. And, um, and I don't know if I'd get in trouble if I haven't been gone so long. So I'll give you a hint. It was a super famous actress who was in a music video on a car that you probably will know of if you ever watch music videos. No. Is that right? Aerosmith had one with a motorcycle. No. Not a motorcycle. You'll do your homework after this. I'll have chat GPT look it up for me. Awesome. Uh, by the way, have you seen the picture of, uh, Bill Clinton in a blue dress that Jeffrey Epstein had in his house? No. Really? I was never at Jeffrey Epstein's house. Look up this clip on Joe Rogan. He was talking with his buddy about it and he's like, why would he have that? And Joe Rogan was like, well, that's a, I got you bitch. Yeah. Like, I own you, uh, to the president. Uh, yeah, dig that clip up on Rogan. Uh, it's probably from about six or eight months ago. It's pretty fascinating. And it's well documented that Jeffrey Epstein had a commissioned portrait of Bill Clinton in a blue dress in his house. Anyway, I digress, but do look it up. Your loco experience, mister? I mean, I feel like I have a bunch, but the one that keeps popping up is, uh, not to be super somber here, but I was like involved on a river accident. I know, I feel like such a buzzkiller, but, uh, involved in a river accident here in town a few years ago. Across the scene of a, of a guy kind of half submerged in the water and our group tried to like rescue him and got him loose and at that time he was pretty much pretty gone and, and, uh, really amazing guy around town. We've, we've heard the stories of him and just getting to be a part of that and trying to do. You know, CPR and life lighted out and he, we had a heartbeat, but he didn't make it, didn't make it the next morning and they were trying everything. It was pretty nerve wracking to do that with a bunch of friends and getting to see life. Um, you know, people that deal with trauma and first responders see this all the time. But for a normal citizen like me, I have only a few near death experiences. I shared that with like my sister and brother and a bunch of close friends. And, you know, um, it kind of helped me put life in perspective. Was this before or after Vindicate? Oh, this is in the middle. This was in, uh, So it was already going. 18 or 29. I could see how that could be a prompt though to just like Let's make this real, you know, like everyday come and, and, and, and work hard and play hard, see the world, you know, make more meaningful experiences, um, take life slower, but also faster in a way too, which is kind of weird. Yeah. So it's affected some of the ways that I look at life and, and, um, I'm sorry, that couldn't have been a more. Happy ending story. Yeah, especially if I didn't know that I wouldn't have led off with a 15 foot tall Car music video something I would have tried to be a little bit give you more of a lead up if I would have known Well, no, it's your experience and his experience and I can see how that could be Do you want to share our near death experience? You have any near death? I do. Oh Let's hear it. Let's all three share one. Uh, which one, who wants to go first? I want to hear yours. Um, on my first anniversary weekend, My wife and I went to down by Durango, Uray. Yeah. And we had an 88 Jeep Cherokee. And, um, we went over Engineer Pass. Oh, man. And, uh, we actually didn't go all the way over to Uray. I think it was that it went down into because there was an avalanche. Oh, man. And we, we saved a guy that had a Jeep Wrangler that was trying to cross it with his kid. And we let him tie back up to our Jeep to get back because he had to abandon it because it was stupid what he was trying to do, um, but before that, uh, at the very tippy top, when you're like a thousand feet above tree line, I didn't, I had it in low gear, but not low range. And it was like 32 degrees. And we had this. Big turn and I'm all of a sudden I'm sliding and I'm not gonna it's not gonna work and so I hit the gas and Drifted like a 270 degree curve on this kind of banked trail and Jill didn't have years later only did Jill like know how close we were but we would have almost certainly died because it was No trees and a long ways down and it was just right there. And then I put it in low range and we made our way down to this place and then I had to turn around and go all the way back to Lake City, but um, anyway that was a pretty intense one that's got my Um, arm hair on end a little bit. I bet. I didn't even think they'd open it till all the snow was melting, huh? No, it's open all the time. If you want to try to make it, you can kind of try to make it. Yeah, well, I think, I don't know. I did it in the summer, no, no, uh, no snow. Yeah, this was May, uh, end of May is our anniversary. Brutal. Yeah, it was scary. Um, and I learned something, you know. So, low ranges for, for one. And, antelope brakes are good. Yeah. Also. I have a car story like that, but I'm not going to tell it because it. I have a different one that's better, but it made me think of that because I almost stranded my entire family up in the mountains when I thought it was a good idea to do a little off roading in the Yukon. Oh boy. Oh, my wife was super excited about that one. I was like, you could have killed us all. Yeah. Yep. Um, no, actually, when I was a kid, though, I got ran over by a, uh, ski doo. Like, hit by a ski doo. I was, I was behind a boat. And I was water skiing or tubing or something. I was on Table Rock Lake in Missouri and it was with my mom and my aunt, some cousins and, and, uh, I fell off the tube and then I was, had my arms up in the air. I was waving them. They had the flag out. They were coming back around and these two guys were just flying on, on, on, on sea deuce. And they were just flying and they come came through and they're waving and I'm waving and I see him coming right at me and I kind of threw my hands up and put my head down and I just felt the bottom of the sea to just go hit my life jacket and just push me straight. Wow. And then I, I don't, you know, I don't think I was under for very long, but I, when I popped up, you know, they were both already stopped. My mom was screaming and freaking out. I thought she was going to jump out and kill that person. And my aunt as well. I mean she was, uh, she was zeroed in on him as well. But no, I survived with more or less, not escape, but I mean just right on the life jacket. Hit me right on the back of the life jacket. It was super scary. I just felt it go right over my head. Well, and head off if you hadn't of Move probably and yeah, I mean it was all accidental. I mean accidental survival. I guess I had no idea what I was doing Right. Well instinct matters That's a good. How old were you? Good question. I don't know. That's probably 11. Yeah, did you have the the life jacket? That was kind of right above your head that old one old school ones Um, the orange one. No, it would have been like a ski life jacket. Yeah. Yeah. A little nice thick. It wouldn't have been like the orange school, the orange. Yeah. Like old school. No. Yeah, no, I definitely did. I feel like I've had a fair amount of experiences where I've looked back and gone. That's good. I could have died. Yeah. No, I've got more than I would care to have. I don't need any more. I'm I'm they're they're coming on a lower slower pace now. Yeah, I'm thinking about a couple times I've been like what they call a cap rocked or whatever when you can't climb up or you can't climb down like without ropes back when I was like a wild wild college kid You You know, um, those were kind of scary. What a terrifying thing. I've done some outdoor track climbing and just like, Yeah, it's bad. You're just like, okay, I'm running out of muscles now. I have to do something different and I don't know what to do. But, no, I think the one, because of Kurt, what you said about the car thing, I, uh, it was, uh, it might have been March or May or April. Spring day skiing in the mountains, so, you know, the sun came out. It made the roads, you know, dried up, even, you know, melted snow, wet, then dried. But I just came around a bank, coming off of a berth that passed with my best friend. You saw the Tacoma after this. A shady spot. A shady spot, and there was just a, just enough amount of snow, actually a pretty long amount of snow and ice. And I just kept turning around the corner, and luckily You think God I slammed into the mountainside not the cliffside right and Wrecked the whole side of my truck and almost killed my best friend was all the glass and the doors on that side Blasted I didn't know you had another person in the car when you did that there by yourself. Mm hmm So I slid on and pissed if I did a 180 And slammed into all the rocks on like the mountain side. Luckily, again, it stopped me versus taking a, uh, a right hand turn and coming off. Yeah, I can imagine some of those turns were just like this. Yeah, and you just, you kept sliding and, and just nuts. Yeah. We were able to drive out of there pretty banged up, but. Wow. But that was scary, yeah. Yeah, that road is, uh, both exhilarating and terrible at the same time, which is what a good road is, I suppose. Yep. So, thankful to be alive after that one. We both had pretty sore backs and both had our, like, avalanche transceivers on, so I think we both slammed those into, like, the dash and, like, the steering wheel into our stomach, or into our chest. We had an insane day of skiing, you know, that day, and, man. There's glass and M& M's everywhere. It's crazy. Yeah, it was nuts. We got the two pound value back for the white hole. Vindicate, V I N D E K E T dot O R G is the website. You guys have all the social channels out there and stuff too. Instagram. What's your favorite? Yeah, for Instagram. It's kind of where we A lot of visual stuff. Generate stuff. Could show us a lot of bananas and stuff. Oh yeah, definitely. Show off what we got. Yeah, 40, 000 pounds of sweet potatoes. Yeah, I like it. Guys, it's been fun. And I will be by, uh, before the new year. Great. When are you open? Are you open to the public? What hours? Pretty weird hours. Usually, again, we're all, you know, ran by community members. And so, it's, uh, um, Or participants, service participants. We're open Sundays 12 to 3, Tuesdays 2 to 7, and Thursdays 9 to 1. So you're going to want to go to our website. That was fast. I should say that again. Go to our website because you'll never remember that. Um, but Sundays 12 to 3, Tuesdays 2 to 7, and Thursdays 9 to 1. Um, one or both or either of you should come to my Rotary Club sometime. Oh yeah. We do, uh, Food Bank is a big volunteer effort of our club. And so I know there'd be some resonant hearts in there. I'm talking with somebody from one of the Rotary clubs right now. Okay, good. Is it the Wednesday one? Uh, we're the Thursday morning. Okay, yeah. Yeah, ours is the best one. Okay. Uh, breakfast. Breakfast, Rotary. Till next time, guys. Take that lunch, Rotary. Enjoy the conversation. Thanks for having us, Garrett. Appreciate it. Godspeed. See you next time. Thanks, bye.