The Building of J.T.M Food Group with One of the Original Titans of Commodity Processing, Brian Hofmeier, VP of J.T.M Food Group

Nick: 00:00:02

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one.

On the Titans of Food Service podcast, I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it.

Welcome back to another episode of Titans of Food Service. I'm your host, Nick Portillo. Thank you for joining me again here on another episode.

Please, before we get into the episode, if you enjoy the show, if you can leave me a five star review on Spotify or Apple podcast, or please engage with my content on YouTube or LinkedIn, that would mean a lot to me. That helps with my reach and getting more people to learn about food service is an incredible industry and I just want to spread the word.

Now today I'm sitting down with someone who's truly shaped the landscape of food service.

Brian: 00:00:58

Brian Hofmeier.

Nick: 00:00:58

He's the vice president of JTM Food Group. Brian has been with JTM for over 36 years. And his fingerprints, well, they're all over the growth of the company. When he first started at JTM, 10%.

Yes, 10% of their total sales were food service. Now over three decades later, 95%. Huge transformation. Brian's story, though, it starts even before he got to jtm.

He, he was working in his family's restaurants before joining the company where he's been at the forefront of innovation ever since he joined. He pioneered JTM's commodity processing program for the K12 sector.

Actually introducing, pioneering the commodity processing program for the entire country. And we talk a little bit about that on the episode and I think you're really going to like it. It's pretty cool.

It's a very much a historical, very significant event in the history of our industry. From taco meat and cheese sauce to cherry burgers, Mac and cheese and about 500 products between.

Brian has been a catalyst for the growth, the explosive growth of jtm. And we're going to map through and walk through some of that here on this episode.

Now, without further ado, let me go ahead and welcome a true titan of our industry, Brian Hoffmeier. All right, Brian, welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join me.

Brian: 00:02:17

Well, thank you for having me on today.

Nick: 00:02:19

Yeah.

And I know we're talking a little bit off camera that you're an Ohio man and I know a little bit about Ohio, not much, but I looked up on your LinkedIn, you went to Miami, Ohio.

Brian: 00:02:30

Correct.

Nick: 00:02:31

And the fraternity I was in in.

Brian: 00:02:33

College started at Miami.

Nick: 00:02:35

a Theta. It started, like, in: 1800

Brian: 00:02:46

You just named mine Beta Phase. Yeah, I was a Beta. Yeah.

Nick: 00:02:51

Okay, Nice.

Brian: 00:02:52

Was. Sorry, is R am a Beta? You never know.

Nick: 00:02:59

I think they called it the Miami Triad or something like that. It was part of our.

Brian: 00:03:03

Our.

Nick: 00:03:03

Like, I remember we had, like, a booklet when we first joined. I can't remember the name of that thing, but, yeah, I think in there, it had all the history and whatnot. And our founding fathers.

You know, looking at those guys, the founding father, I mean, they had these long beards. I'm like, you guys are 18.

Brian: 00:03:18

This is insane. Yeah, they almost like every Civil War picture you've ever seen. Same with the guys. Same with the guys that founded Beta. I mean. Oh, really?

The same thing? They all. They all look like. Yeah, they all look like they walked off a Civil War battlefield with big. Giant beards and the big chopper sideburns.

Right? Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. When I went there, it was Polos and Polos, Izots and short haircuts. So.

Nick: 00:03:46

Yeah.

Brian: 00:03:47

Yeah, I think we had sweaters you'd tie around your neck back then. Back in the late.

Nick: 00:03:52

Late. Probably late 80s, right?

Brian: 00:03:54

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure, Nick. I'm sure. I'm older than you.

Nick: 00:03:59

Yeah, maybe.

Brian: 00:04:00

I graduated college in 88, so, yeah, I was.

Nick: 00:04:03

Yeah, I graduated in: 2015

Brian: 00:04:05

Yeah, right.

Nick: 00:04:06

So I graduated 10 years ago, and.

Brian: 00:04:08

I got here, and I came to work at JTM in 89.

Nick: 00:04:12

So how'd you get into that food business?

Brian: 00:04:15

Actually, interesting thing is my family's in the restaurant business my whole life. And it just so happened that I was going to Miami University. Once I graduated, I was actually headed to law school.

Syracuse Law School had been accepted, took my lsat, and was going to be the family lawyer.

Graduated, walked down the steps, walked up to my dad and went, you know, I'm really tired of studying, and being poor isn't very much fun, so why don't I come to work with you? So that's what happened. I went to work for. My father, was a GM of one of our restaurants called El Coyote.

Not the one in California, one back, different direction. And my family had a chain of Tex Mex restaurants. So I started running. Running the one we had here in Cincinnati.

We soon had, I think, four more in Cincinnati. But what happened Was is I actually got to know the Jack Moss, who actually was one of the founders and owners of jtm.

And I remember we were just talking one day, and he's like, you know, if you'd ever like to. If you ever want to get into the sales, you know, sales business, I'm hiring a food service salesperson. I talked to my dad.

My dad said, you know, that'd be good. You could go get a job working there. You could learn how to read. Cisco was our distributor at the time.

You could learn how to read those Green Bar books. And he goes, I know there's a clip, B, Kip, C clip, D clip all the clips. So that way we could. I could figure out what was a cheaper price, really.

I mean, that's kind of how the conversation went. And two weeks later, I was.

I was working for jtm and I was their second food service salesman, and I think I was their first food service salesperson that wasn't a family member. So that's how I got here. So incredible.

Nick: 00:06:10

Is El Coyote. Is that still operating today?

Brian: 00:06:13

Absolutely. Yeah. My. My. My brother. My brother and my sister. My brother's the gm, and my sister runs all the back of the house. The, you know, the vendors.

The, you know, the vendors, the books, the, you know, hire fire, all the fun stuff in the restaurant business. Right.

And actually, my father, this past weekend, actually, my father just passed away, who was one of the founders of the restaurant, and he had been. He was 83. Just turned 83, and he had been running the restaurant and GMing the Cincinnati location for. Oh, my goodness. Well, probably since I left.

So, you know, so he just passed on, and my brother just took it. I took over the. The GM spot there. So anyway, but that's how I got into it. You don't get with your.

Once you're in the food business, you never get out of the food business. You just maybe work in different parts of the food business. My brother worked for Kroger, and my sister actually worked for Heinz at one point.

So none of us ever went far from the food business. Yeah, you're.

Nick: 00:07:15

Well, your whole family is well entrenched in the food business in one, whether manufacturing or, you know, working a restaurant or on the grocery side. I mean, that's. That's impressive.

Brian: 00:07:24

Yeah, so, yeah, but that's. That's. We did.

Nick: 00:07:26

When you joined jtm, you said you're the second food service salesperson. Was the majority of the business in retail or what. What the company looked like at that point?

Brian: 00:07:35

The interesting thing about JTM at the time is 90% of our business was retail and 10% of our business was food service. And the whole, you know, the whole plan was to expand the food service business and get more diversified.

And we were doing a retail business in like a 5 or 600 mile radius of our facility food service. We were doing it more a tighter circle in like a hundred mile radius. And one thing led to another. You know, we expanded our food service business.

We ended up finding or founding a K12 division and you know, to now today, you know, as a company, you know, we have a national accounts division and we have a food service division and a college university division and a C store division and a military division and a K12 division. And in a read oh, in a retail division, you Fast forward it 36 years and we are now about 5% retail and we are 95% food service.

So the, the, the, the, the, The Jack Moss Jr dream of diversifying worked very well. It just, it just took, it just took a little longer.

You know, I'm glad I made it all the way through this many years to see us flip it to what he really, really wanted it, you know, really wanted it to be.

Nick: 00:09:01

So, um, what was it over the course of all of these years where it has flipped? Obviously your, your geography is much, much larger than, you know, 500 or 100 miles.

But what was it that propelled the food service business so much greater and you know, food service, I say, as an umbrella for K12, college universities, all of those different segments.

Brian: 00:09:22

You're gonna laugh. What do you think the words taco meat, really, Taco meat?

Back when I first started, there were a couple of people in the country that actually made a fully cooked prepared taco filling. Not many. And we started producing product for Sizzler. Just a bunch of the chains that utilize taco filling.

And that was our bellwether number one item out of the bag, as we all say. And you know, we start making one and the next thing you know, you're making 40 different ones, different flavors, different profiles.

Authentic taco filling, which was their traditional Texas style taco filling, right? Just cooked meat and seasoning basically. And then we expanded, started doing a whole bunch of different chilies around the country.

We were actually the original company that when Buffalo Wild Wings had four locations, we started making their chili. And we have been the ones making their chili all, all along, right?

And that was true with a lot of our, a lot of the national chains, which at the time were small regional chains. And we just grew with Them, you know, and they would want a new product or, you know, we would see something new and suggest it.

And the next thing you know, we're making either a private label for them or would be making just a JTM branded product that they were purchasing. So. But. And then the next product line that we launched is we started a K12 division, right? And I took that over in 94.

And one of the first new products we came out with was cheese sauce. Only because one of the states we dealt with, I entered this business at the. I would say the birth of commodity processing, right?

It was something that happened, but all of us were backing up to a school's warehouse and picking up product and bringing it back to your plant, producing it.

Well, there was a number of us that went to Washington and had a long discussion with USDA AMs and AMs and FNs about, you know, this would work a lot better if you would just send the material to us and then we could just manufacture it into a finished good and then return it to the schools. And they were in agreement. They thought that sounded like a pretty good idea. It was Gail from.

And this is some old timers, probably you don't even know the names. Gail from Tyson, Valerie Fairbanks from Pierre, as well as Gene Harris. Right.

From Pierre, soon to be advanced Pierre, soon to be Tyson, soon to be myself. And I can't remember another person.

And that's really where National Commodity Processing came from, was just that meeting where we all had a meeting of the minds. This would be a little more efficient. So, so we started the process and goes back to cheese. My, my.

One of my customers, state of Michigan, actually had a bunch of cheddar cheese in their freezer block. Cheddar. And they were getting ready to start the new diversion program for things. So he asked me if we could make a cheese sauce.

And Jack Moss, who's, you know, my, my senior VP of sales and I are up there for the meeting. We said, sure. We came back and I never forget met with his brother who was the director of ops, right, VP of operations. And we're in a meeting.

He goes, cheese sauce. That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. He went, well, we have grinders, we have cookers. We had, you know, we have. But we can make cheese sauce.

Okay, we'll figure out how to make cheese sauce. Now you fast forward it. I'm not a meat company anymore. I'm a Cheese Company. 57% of all of my business is cheese today.

So we went from the stupidest idea on the face of the earth to. I just built a brand new facility down the street from my office to be able to run a half a million pounds of cheese. Cheese items a year.

Not half a million. I'm sorry, £500 million. Sorry, £500 million. So, right.

Nick: 00:14:05

In my line of work as, as a broker, I have brands that reach out to me all the time and they want me to represent them in food service. And they don't have, a lot of times they don't have business. Right. They're just looking for some sort of start.

Brian: 00:14:19

Yeah.

Nick: 00:14:20

How did you, you know, you start making product for. You mentioned Chili's. You started with the original for Buffalo Wild Wings. And how did you get into that meeting with AMs and FNs?

Brian: 00:14:32

How did you end up there? Sometimes you want to say dumb luck. Just so happened that there's an organization called acta, the American Commodity Distribution association.

But it was not called that back then. I forget what it was called prior to that.

And it just so happened that the president of ACTA was Jim Merton from the state of Michigan and there was a fellow named J.R. green from the state of Ohio and he might have been the vice president of the president elect. And in Indiana, Mike Gill was also involved. So it just so happened that we knew all the people that were in charge at the. For acta, right.

They were on the board and we, and they were close to us from a proximity standpoint. Right. So I mean, Michigan, you know, I get to Columbus, I get up to Lansing or I could get over to Indianapolis.

And honestly, it just came out of discussions with their own frustration on how, how difficult things were in order to do commodity processing.

And these guys back then were doing statewide commodity processing processing where they would put out a bid for the state and then you would make it and they. You would make a product for the whole state. So we were just lucky from a proximity standpoint, we knew the right people.

And number two, most of the quote unquote, statewide processing states were located here in the Midwest. And we just started doing business with them one item at a time and one year at a time.

And you know, and we started the, the whole process of going around the country explaining what commodity processing was and how it worked. And in the early days, there was a guy with Land O' Lakes, Bob Rose. We would, we would all with the, we called it the circus family, all of us.

You know, none of our companies had, when you had a, when you had a K12 division back then, or an education Division. The division usually consisted of one or one to three people. I mean, that was it. So I covered 24 states myself for the first 10 years.

And then we got the business to the point that we hired more and more and more people. I mean, now we cover the United States with 13 dedicated K12 regionals. I have my own chefs. I have my own marketing team. I've got my own R and D team.

So it's just amazing from two guys. The original guy that I worked with was a fellow named Larry Blundred. And it was Larry and I. And then that was it. We just divided up. He.

He got Illinois because he was. His parents were from Chicago. They lived in Oak Brook or Oak Park. So he got Illinois, you know, and I.

Some of the states, I got the Northeast because a lot of my family is from New York. So I'm like, ah, it gives me, you know, when I'm out there, I can, you know, at least be able to visit them. But again, one thing led to another.

I always tell everybody, you couldn't. You couldn't write this in a book. People wouldn't believe you. That all of a sudden the business would have gone from.

And I still remember the first truckload I got. We got. Larry and I were sitting back in our shared cubicle office and we had a phone call from the state of Michigan, and we got a truckload of beef.

And I was going to make raw. Raw 5 to 1 cherry burgers. I was the original company that came out with the raw ground beef and had cherries in it from the state of Michigan.

And the cherries, the acid and the cherries really did do something with the meat when you mixed it with the myosin and made a really juicy burger that sealed the outside of it. I mean, it was really. It was a great product. And that was the first product I sold the state of Michigan. But then it was taco meat right after that.

And then, then cheese sauce. The dumbest item. Item on the idea on the face of the earth. And then we made Mac and cheese, by the way. And that's from the same thing.

State of states around us said, hey, you make cheese sauce? Can you make Mac and cheese? And we came back and same, same ops people. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why are we going to do that?

And I think. I think we sold £200 million of macaroni and cheese last year. So it's just crazy again. But whatever. I mean, it's, it's. It.

It's Been a fabulous ride, and I'm not going anywhere.

Nick: 00:19:30

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun.

Brian: 00:19:32

You know, when you look.

Nick: 00:19:35

When you look back, you know, you were part kind of, in many ways, you know, in the food business, part of a historical event going through commodity processing and pioneering that, you know, now it's. I think anybody in K12 on leasing, the, you know, dietitians or, you know, on the food side understands what it is.

Brian: 00:19:53

Yeah.

Nick: 00:19:54

You know, and you guys were really the original pioneers of that. And kudos for you for jumping in and taking that risk.

On the production side, you know, you've had taco meat, you've had cheese sauce, you've had macaroni and cheese. You have the cherry burgers, which. That sounds interesting. What's it take from the production side to bring on, you know, new lines?

Is that hard to do?

Brian: 00:20:16

It wasn't back then. Back then, it was relatively easy for a couple of reasons. Number one, I had production line time available, and we were looking to fill the plant.

Right. No matter what, no matter how. So in the early days, we were in yes mode.

You know, if somebody said they wanted to do it, odds are we were going to do it. I mean, we today. And I'm down in the number of products I do today. I do 137 products for schools, for K12. And out of.

As a company, we do like 592, I think, from the last meeting I was in, so. But, you know, we did over 200 items at one point prior to Covid. And, you know, we did what a lot of people did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We always say no more bougie products. You know, we basically went back to basics and, you know, just said, you know, this is. These are what.

These are our core products, and this is what we do. And these other products are kind of niche.

And the one thing about being in the food business is when you discontinue an item, it's always somebody's favorite item. It always is. And when you discontinue it, that's only when your sales will quadruple on it.

The day you announce, you'll discontinue it and there'll be, you know, four truckloads of orders come in for it. Right. It just never fails.

But, you know, but again, our goal is to make the products that our customers love with the nutritional specifications that we need to hit, but have the ability from an economies of scale standpoint, to run a lot of volume of an item when we run it.

Because, you know, as everybody knows in the K12 business, even though this is, this is, this is not a, this is not a high profit margin business, you have to make your money in K12 running millions of pounds of stuff because running thousands of pounds of stuff will end you when you will.

In selling K12 product, you will end up in bankruptcy because again, the rules and regs and graders and this requirement in the CN label program and I, I need you to whack another 25 of sodium out of it. And you know, all that kind of stuff is so ex. You know, it's just expensive.

I'm just excited that as far as our product line is concerned, we pretty much have gone through all of our, you know, we've done all our sodium reductions as a company. Right. We all know it's a big thing coming up here soon. It's been a big thing, it's going to be a bigger thing. We're just excited to be able to.

We've been for the past three or four years what I call Black sky thinking. Pretty much you got to take your product line, you got to change it or it's not going to be an item that's going to exist in the future.

We've now finally come out of all that and we're now in blue sky thinking and now we're looking at more innovation, more new and exciting type of products.

both ends of the candle since: 2010

But you got to do what you got to do to be in the business that we're in.

Nick: 00:24:00

So totally tell me more about that. Black sky versus Blue sky. What does that mean?

Brian: 00:24:05

Black Sky. Black sky thinking is we always say head down, grinding forward and making a change to 83 products.

And you know, and you're not making those changes to make them a better, to quote unquote taste better or to react better. You're making those changes in order to take out sodium, to reduce sat fat to.

Sometimes I'm doing things that I don't really think my customer maybe really would want me to do, but they're required to do. So my job is to. And we. This is an internal term. We call it equalization of palatability.

That's my R and D and food scientists and all the guys with doctors on their names across the street that work in our facilities, work in R and D. To me, in salesman world, that means it just needs to taste the same.

That is, our goal, is to give you all the benefit, give the customer all the benefit of sodium reduction, fat reduction, things of that nature without, without asking our ultimate customer, the kid coming through the lunch line to sacrifice, feel like they've sacrificed anything. I just want them to eat the cheese sauce or the taco meat or the chili or whatever. They're eating the Mac and cheese.

I just want them to quote one of my food service directors.

They said the day they quit running to the lunchroom for macaroni, for your macaroni and cheese, is the day we're going to have to make a product change. Right?

Because again, you know, and in the food service, well, in this food business, you know, you want to sell product that people want to eat, right, that they want to enjoy, that makes their life better.

You know, sometimes you're working on some projects, you're like, you know, I don't know, I'm not going to make anybody happy with this, but, you know, it's going to, it's going to make some dietitian happy somewhere maybe trying to make the. We always say, what, the spreadsheet turn green, right?

You want that week to turn green and make sure your sodium and your, Your veg numbers are right? Or. I mean, it's the reason I, you know, I love our food service directors because nobody works harder than those guys and gals.

I mean, you know, in my family's restaurant, if we decide we're gonna put new seasoning on a, On a strip steak or something, we don't calculate the sodium we're putting on it. We just go, yeah, that's about right, you know? Yeah, right. And, you know, what are you serving?

Well, just make sure you use you, you know, make sure you use the number six scoop. But I don't really care whether you're mounding it or not mounding it, you know, or, you know, or scraping it.

Nobody's weighing anything except in the beginning. I mean, it's, it's a, It's a damn tough job. Just from a regulation standpoint to, to put a, put a, put a, put a meal on a tray and give it to a kid.

And unless you're involved in it, you have no idea how complicated it is. It is so complicated, you know, you almost need Elon Musk to design something and to make it work better. Yeah, totally. Right.

Nick: 00:27:16

Yeah.

Brian: 00:27:17

Right.

Nick: 00:27:18

When it comes to regulations, do you find like, does a new president, a new political party, does that change what you do and the regulations? You know, in the 30 years you've been doing this.

Brian: 00:27:31

Yeah, hurry up and wait. I've been my, I think Bush 1 was my, was, was president when I came in. And yes, it's, it's a, it's, it's a, it's.

It's like riding a Brahma bull, you know, every presidency because you never know what their particular thing is going to be. Right? Some just want to kind of keep it, keep it going.

And they don't, they don't really want to come over and mess with certain parts of the, of the feeding programs. You get other ones that are in there. They want to try to change the world completely. They want to go really far, really fast.

And as we all know, really far, really fast. Doesn't really work really far. Over a, you know, two or three generations of kids, that's possible.

I mean, I mean, some of the funny things that I think back to is the world hold the word whole grain rich, right? That doesn't even, didn't even exist. I just, they just made it up. And I remember calling people I needed to, I needed to buy whole grain rich pasta.

And, and they go with Brian, we make semolina pasta and we make whole wheat pasta. We don't make whole grain rich. What is whole grain rich? I said, well, they go, they go, that's not even a term.

I go, well, the undersecretary just said whole grain rich, and that's what it is. So. But again, we worked with a number of our pasta suppliers to make whole grain rich pasta.

And you know, we probably are now at iteration number 20 as we've upgraded pasta throughout the years. And we've pretty much gotten it to a point that it's, I was gonna say it's never. We always say you can always make something better.

u know, but that took us from: 2010

way, way back when, prior to: 2010

So I can get ground beef down to the fat level of a ground chicken or ground turkey item. I can reduce the stat fat and the fat by 50%. So we started doing that, and we did it at no extra cost. I didn't charge them any more money for it.

I had to sell a healthier, better for you product at the same price as the other guy or gal that was making the unhealthier product. But that's how we also got our foot in the door with a lot of schools.

And the one thing we always learned, I never, ever walked into a cafeteria where the workers went, no, we love cooking and draining, rinsing the ground beef in a colander and carrying all the grease out to the grease trap. Right. Or you go to California where they'd say, we're not even allowed to have a grease trap. Right. They don't even want us to do that.

So, you know, so that part of our business and our beef business, our entree business, kettle entree was born. And we cook, drain, and rinse most of our beef cattle items have for years. And to my knowledge, there's nobody else that does that.

You know, there might be somebody out there, but we haven't run into them. And again, I do it for the same price as the guy or gal who doesn't do it.

Our view at JTM is that is our give back to the world of hey, look how you trying with, you know, I'm trying to make you a great delicious product, But I'm also trying to make you that product that you don't know. It's stealth health that you don't know. It's. You don't know. It's good for you.

I mean, I love taco Bell taco meat, but it's got about, I don't know, 17, 18 fat grams in it. Maybe 20. Mine's got five. Wow. So I mean it, you know, but. But you wouldn't know it and you know, that's the key.

Nick: 00:32:24

So anyway, have you ever tried to expand into a new segment or new product line and it was just a total flop? Like, it just was an epic fail.

Brian: 00:32:33

Absolutely. The word funnel comes to mind. The worst product I ever came out with, it was. It was an enrobed. It made. It made all the sense in the world.

In the world. It was an enrobed Kind of a think of a yeast roll, right? Like a yeast. Like a yeast roll. Yeah. Enrobed. And in it.

Had in it, there was a taco and cheese were in it and sausage gravy. And I mean, I have competitors today that still have that product. Everybody's brought it out. It's been a failure. I was.

I just happened to be the first in the line of failure for the product. Yes, that, that. That was a $1 million mistake for me.

And all I have to do if I ever want to watch all the veins in my CEO's neck come out is just say the word funnel. And it's funny. We utilize the K12 alliance, right? And you may be familiar with David Kaplan and his group.

We utilize the K12 alliance, and they do some of our focus group work for us, right?

And when I first hired David Kaplan, he came in and the first project he had for me was to analyze the funnel program and tell me if I could save it, what he thought of it. And he's standing in the lobby, he looks at me, goes, this is going to be a one and done project because you're going to fire me.

I go, why am I going to fire you? He goes, I don't have. I don't have good news for you. I go, that's okay. You can call the baby ugly. I mean, if. I mean, I think it's ugly already.

I'm trying to figure out if I could, you know, if we can save this thing. We went. We went into the conference room and he opened with, well, this is the lowest testing product my group has ever tested in our 20 years.

My CEO, my CFO, my senior VP of sales. And my CEO looks at him and goes, well, thanks for coming in today. Shuts his book, walks out. He goes, okay, Brian, kill it.

Kill it as fast as you can. We'll save as much money. That is the worst product I have ever come out with.

And I made a shelf stable cheese cup once, which I had all intentions in the world that it was going to be just like my regular cheese sauce, which was frozen. And the company that we ended up working with had to make a number of modifications in order to make it shelf stable.

And it took a fabulous product and turned it into a just a complete, just craft. And that was my other one that was.

Oh, and when you sell frozen products for a living and you try to sell the world a shelf with one shelf stable product, or actually, I think I had three Jalapeno, queso and cheddar. When you Try to sell the world that thinks you, that knows you as a frozen guy and you ship product even on dry trucks to them.

They still Ian with, with, with big giant day glow stickers on the sides of the boxes. Do not freeze me. I am shelf stable. When I, when I tell you, Nick, that they probably froze quarter million pounds of it.

And when you freeze shelf stable cheese cups, you know what they are? They're not good. They're really water separates. So. Yeah, so that. Those are my two. Those are my two losers.

You know, I've had a couple other along the way, but pretty much I focus group everything now. Even though I think it's the greatest idea ever, between my marketing team and my culinary team and my R and D team.

Once we get it to the point where we all agree that we think it's good, then it goes outside for a focus with focus group work with real kids and real people. Sometimes you're blinded by your own life, you know.

Nick: 00:36:22

Yeah, I think it's important to do that. I know Amazon, they have this concept called a PR faq. It's a press release and then frequently asked questions.

Essentially they'll have an idea and they'll release a press release that, hey, here's this new product or service. Here's some, you know, it's fake testimonials, but it looks real.

Brian: 00:36:41

Yeah.

Nick: 00:36:42

And then a bunch of frequently asked questions that people, when they read it, they can, you know, understand what it is. And then essentially a way to test, see if somebody would buy that. So maybe it cost them $10,000. Right.

To put it all together and make it send it out. Or maybe it's more. It's Amazon, it's way bigger.

But it's a good way for them to test to see if it, if a consumer is actually going to purchase that service or product or whatever they want to, they're thinking of.

Brian: 00:37:06

Here's a funny one for you. People ask me this all the time. What's it cost to bring a new product to market? Right. Yeah, one SKU minimum. My minimum entry is $137,000.

Nick: 00:37:20

Are you serious?

Brian: 00:37:21

Minimum, minimum that it's going to cost me $137,000 before one person buys a box and eats it.

Nick: 00:37:33

So how do you get that number?

Brian: 00:37:36

That's the average of. We try to track my average development costs throughout the years. And that's what it all adds up to. 137,000.

Throwing away old ingredients that you can't use anymore, buying in new ingredients. Did I mention every ingredient that you have to add to something to make it healthier. Cost.

I mean, light salt, light salt used to cost 20 times more than salt. Now light salt costs 30 times more than salt. And where most of the light salt in the world comes from Canada.

People we're kind of fighting with right now. So the one thing that we have lots of in America, all we'll ever need is salt. And that's the one thing they don't want us to use. Right?

I mean, it's just kind of crazy. But again, whole grain rich pasta cost a lot more money. All you got to do is look at a USDA bid for pasta, right?

And USDA is buying, they're buying a million pounds of pasta at a throw. Semolina pasta, 75, 80 cents a pound. Their whole grain rich pasta, it's going to be 285 to three and a quarter.

It literally costs all I used to say, until recently, almost what ground beef costs, but not right now.

But it's just, it's unbelievable what the cost difference in costs are in order to do what you have to do to make a product look, taste, and act exactly the same as the other product. And then we'll have customers that'll say to us, you know, well, why is that product $5 a case more?

I go, well, because you need 250, 42 milligrams of sodium total in a serving. And the other product had 550. And it tastes the same. Actually. I, you know, somebody will go, I think it tastes a little better. Well, that's great.

It should. For $137,000, you know, I could buy everybody a new Corvette every time I come out with a new, new line of a new product. But it's great.

My developmental process in food service is, is, is, is quite a bit less money because you're using common ingredients. You know, you're allowed to use salt and other things. You know, call me crazy. You know, you're not cooking, draining and rinsing.

And some of our food service business, they actually prefer. They don't want to drink. They, you know, they're, they flavor, you know, you know, they love the flavor.

And again, I get it, but that's not the, that's not the hand I'm dealt. And that's not the world I live in. I mean, you know, it's. We always say we're in and out of Washington all the time.

I have people that work for me that they pretty much just do governmental stuff all day long. That's all they do. And now they're talking about breaking up all of the. Not breaking up, but taking the FNs and AMS offices. Right.

Which are located in Washington D.C. and moving them all over the country. So we can't wait to see how that'll work, whether they'll keep, you know, this AMS group that like, okay, let's say it's the CN label office.

Is the CN label office really going to, is it going to stay in dc? Are they going to move it out somewhere and are they going to take the.

By the way, it's two and a half people that work in the CN label office, not three, two and a half. Because the other half, the other person works half on something else.

Are they going to take the two and a half people and divide them into two, three different regional offices? I mean, yeah, I just have, you know, there's a comment period out for it now and we were talking about it today.

I'm like, I really don't know what comment to even say. I like them all in one place. But you know, that, that, that is not what's going to happen. They're all going to be in different places.

So we'll, we'll learn another new normal, you know. Yeah, I put them in Indianapolis, in the Indianapolis office. That would be really handy for me. But yeah, it'd only be an hour and 20 minute drive.

But I'm sure they'll put them in the Salt Lake City office which is as far away from me as the offices will get.

Nick: 00:41:57

Yeah, that's a good way away.

Brian: 00:41:58

Right. So, but you know, but you know, I don't know. Like I said, it's the good news about the K12 business is not never the same day twice.

Ever walk into your office, I'll get a question I've never been asked before. Every day. You know what, what farm was the cow on? Did the cow come from? Do you know what farm the turkey was, would grew up?

Do you know what hatchery that, that, that, that, that hatched the egg. Got that question last year. Yes. On your, on your turkeys. Do you know what hatchery is?

The one who hatches the eggs for the turkey farm that grows the turkey. We don't. I'm sure somebody with enough money could figure that out. But yes, you know, but no, I can't tell you that. Here's another good one for you.

What state was the cow from that the milk that they milked to make the cheese. Wow. And then she go, ma', am, the milk comes in on a 40,000 gallon tanker and a cow gives about, I think it's 8 to 12 pounds of milk a day.

So that's a whole bunch of cows. That's a ton of cows, right?

I mean, you know, can you tell me the cow that is from my box of taco meat I made, I made 1.2 million pounds of taco meat last, last week, ma'. Am. And you know, yeah, there's just no way to know.

Anyway, it's just, but we never get any of those questions like in our food service part of our business, but in our school.

It amaze, still amazes me some of the questions we get, especially when they'll, somebody will call the food service director and they'll send them, they'll go, well, you know, I don't know. But here's, here's Brian Hoffmeier's cell phone number. You know, call him, right? You're like, yeah, what? I'll try to figure it out.

So, yeah, I'll try my best, like I said. But anyway, it's never the same day twice. I wouldn't change a damn thing if I had to do it all over again.

And I knew what I knew I'd probably still do what I do. Because you know, the other thing about this to being in the K12 part of the world world is I mean, I'm servicing people.

I'm serving people that are going on in their lives. I'm serving people that are in the beginning. I'm, it's, I, you know, it's, it's the positive end of things. Right?

I mean, I would not want to be in the acute care business, even though I have some of my colleagues here that are servicing that, that, that segment. You know, it's, you know, like I said, it's, it's always, it's always fun.

There's nothing better than doing cuttings in school with kids coming through and eating your lunch especially.

There's nothing better than a 9 or 10 year old in a school when you're trying products because you're going to 100% get their opinion whether you like it or not.

Nick: 00:45:00

Yeah, they're going to let you know.

Brian: 00:45:01

I've been standing there before. Oh, this is fantastic. Oh, how come we don't serve good food like this in the director next year?

But I've also been standing there where the girls eats it and spits it out. This is horrible. What's this made out of? What's made out of beef? Oh, I'm a vegetarian. You're like, oh, okay.

Well, I see why you don't, you know, I see why you don't like it, but yeah, you know, anyway, I love the little happy face tests and all the different things we do because, you know, interacting with customers with the ultimate, ultimate customer is a lot of fun. You just got to have thick skin some days.

Nick: 00:45:38

That's right. Amazing. Well, Brian, thank you so much. I mean, this is I've had a lot of fun here. Thank you for sharing your story.

And I learned so much about you and jtm. I didn't realize, you know, how much you guys, gals have been at the forefront of what you do in the food business.

And again, just thanks for coming on, sharing, and I'm sure this will resonate with a lot of people.

Brian: 00:45:59

Yep. Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on. Thanks, Nick. Thanks.