EYL #99 Purpose & Profits

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All right, guys, welcome back, e y l Atlanta edition. We're still here, still here. We haven't left yet for sure. So this one, this one is gonna be a good one. Comes courtesy of our family. Damn Vincent. Yeah, congratulations, finally get something this This was a dope one though. When I when I saw this story, it was it was very unique and very interesting. I'm like, we definitely gott to cover this. This is dope. So Jasmine Crowe entrepreneur

It's even like one out of five. Because of everything that's going on with coronavirus and the pandemic, just so many more people are going hungry. And what's crazy is that seventy two billion pounds that's just from businesses. So that doesn't include the food that we throw away in our households. That's something like one hundred and sixty one billion. So this is like grocery stores, colleges, restaurants, you know, stadiums. That's who throws away that seventy two billion pounds.

And that's that's just the United States. That's not even a world.

That's just the US.

Yeah, crazy, that's definitely enough food to in hunger is.

In the landfill.

And then also there's a two hundred and eighteen billion dollar annually spent on in the US to grow, process, and transport food that's actually disposed enough eating. So I say that to say, obviously, there's a lot of food that's wasting. There's a lot of people that's hungry. So Jasmine came away with a company that actually takes the food that's actually being that would be thrown away and actually feeds it to people in need. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the

Thank you guys so much for having me.

I feel honored and welcome to Atlanta's great city. You guys may never want to leave. You know, I'm pretty sure in different times we could show you even much more fun. But as you can see, Atlanta is still kind of.

Nothing.

Kind of feels like old times out here.

You have to wear your mask inside places, and that's pretty.

Much about it.

Depends on what places you're in, as we've learned as a fact.

All Right, so how did this start? How did this start? How did good To start?

Because, like I said, I mean, it seems like such a brilliant idea, but I haven't heard of anybody else doing it. So what gave you the idea to actually think like this is actually something that could be a business.

You know, Before I.

Started good Or, I had this company called Black Celebrity Giving, which I'm actually going to revamp, and I would work, as you can guess.

With black celebrities, worked with a host of celebrities.

So I started Futures Foundation, Candy Burusts, so many more, and I would help them do their community giving rights, so defining their giving blueprint. And what I realized is I was extremely busy around Christmas, Thanksgiving and back to school, like that's when everybody wanted to do something, and then throughout the rest of the year I would kind of

Who donates the food?

And the reality was like nobody, And I'm like, dang, Like it would make a lot more sense if I could get this food donated so that I want to have to cook it and price match and go to five and six different grocery stores. And that's just a simple Google search, you know what happens to extra food

So the Soul Sundays was an idea at first, and then it moved into sold restaurants sold Sunday restaurant.

Yeah.

And you know the reason why I did that is because people would sometimes be lined around the block hours in life, for like an hour and a half, two hours sometimes to eat, and I always used to let women and children go first. And one time, this man, you know, there was a little argument I noticed kind of at the line. I think he was arguing with somebody, and I went back and I was like, no, sir, you know I've been cooking for three days. I promise

Like never?

Right, Like, if it's I can't get a reservation, I'll go to a different restaurant.

Like I really rarely would ever wait someplace and stand up an hour and thirty minutes to get a plate. And then I realized I wasn't giving them a place to sit down. You know, I just wasn't doing it right. I was doing it from the heart, but I could do it better. And so then I started running tables and chairs and linens and I would make these little menus and print it out and let people kind of sit down and dine with dignity.

So that love that restaurant.

Yeah, And then if.

We were on wait, you know, I'd like come back in thirty minutes. And the thing is, everything was ready, So the food came out really quickly. But it was a five course meal to start with an appetizer, super salad, I'm sorry, soup and salad, then an entree, two side items and desserts, And I mean people loved it like I had to send you guys some pictures and videos. It just was huge, and so the first one I ever did went viral and rest wasty.

When I was reading a story, it was like kind of a line because that's kind of what we were doing in the summer with our kids. We would go to my church because we had a homeless outreach, and we would feed the homeless every Saturday. And it was like the feeling of giving is just like incredible, and like watching the kids be fulfilled by it made it even better. And their thing was like, Yo, can we

In that room exactly, you know.

And one of the things I liked to I used to always do with Sunday Souls is I always had options, you know, And I've had to check my mom because they'll say things like, oh, you know, they're homeless, you could feed them anything, and I would be like, no, you know, your homelessness is just something that you're going through, just like hunger is something you're going through. You're not always going to be homeless. You're not always going to be hungry, but you could lose your job. You know,

There should never be a choice between food or bills like that.

That's crazy and everybody that's that's what you said. I mean, that's a critical choice that everybody makes going to pay and then what we find as food always goes first because people could say like, oh, I could go without food, or what they do is the parents, the adult will go without food.

And I've had tons of friends.

I mean, I think Jeezi even was talking about it in an interview, like he used to see his mom like split a cheeseburger between him and I think his sister whoever his other sibling was And just like if you guys think back to that, like I don't recall being hungry, but you know, I'm pretty sure my parents, our parents could have been hungry just to see us have and I think that happens a lot.

Yeah, we hit those stories over the time. It made me think of the line like most when was it? See them?

Said?

Most nice a sleep for dinner. Yeah you know what I'm saying, that's great, you think of.

You know, meat meal talking about noodles and noodle kids. I mean, that's many. I have a program right now in Atlanta. If you guys are still here, y'all should come out every weekend. I feed in this community. It's called Forest COVID. It's probably one of the most destitute communities I've ever seen. And you know, I've been doing this work for over a decade. But a lot of

But that's who gets all the money.

You know, that's I mean, billions and billions of dollars is spent in grants. You know, at the start of COVID, Jeff Bezos gave a hundred million dollars to Feed in America. And it's not to say that feeding America you know, doesn't serve a purpose, but they've been around since the seventies.

They've gotten billions and billions of dollars.

Doing the same thing, you know, just get you know, having food bangs, giving food to nonprofits, and it's always just whatever is donated, and then they end up giving people, you know, peanut butter, no jelly, spaghetti noodles, no spaghetti sauce. And people can't make a meal from what it is that they receive. And so what I've tried to do with Gooder is actually get people meals or if nothing else, if I'm giving them groceries, everything that they're getting in

Let me ask you this because it was it was interesting as far as like I said, I don't think people realize how much food is thrown.

Away Before I even ask that question.

I just want to make that point because it's like in New York, Uh, there's two million rats.

Yeah, you know what, we're speaking of hunger. We'll get into that withah. So here's how that comes about. City Day that's in New York City. This came about we would add an establishment, we'll leave the name anonymous. And they were closing their doors and they were like, we're like, yo, y'all closing I know you're going to throw the food away. This is like before we knew that we were going to do this, and he was like, yeah, we're going to throw the food. He was like, yo, we'll just

Yeah, because he said I actually have seen quater few rats or not expected.

It was actually a bet.

Because there's sixteen million people in New York.

There's eight so there's almost nine million.

There's eight nine.

Million, so there's almost like.

For every of the population.

Okay, so for every rat, there's like four people.

Yes, yeah, so so yeah, it was it was a wager that Troy. Troy told me that there was more rats than people in New York. So I just found that hard to believe, so we googled it and we realized that it was two million.

But it's still a lot. That's a lot, So I said to say.

That's more than the city of Boston.

That's crazy.

There's two million rats in New York.

So what's happening is that, you know, there's a lot of restaurants in New York City obviously, so at the end of the night, they throw they throw the food in like you know, the trash.

They just throw them the alley ways and all that.

So what happened is that it's created a whole ecosystem for rats to eat, Like they know what time the food is gonna go, and they eat the food on the streets. But once COVID hit, all the restaurants closed. So now they had videos of rats actually turning to cannibals and they was actually eating each other because there was no food for them to eat, and it just

Watch these tonight.

So I say that to say, I mean, you got a whole, like, you know system that animals are actually something.

You know, I'd rather the food go to an animal, even if it's a rat, right Gooder, We take our number one thing is hunger first, right, so our goals to get anything that's edible and give that to someone that can actually eat it before it ever makes it to landfill.

Not only did you turn this into an actual business, and Eve enlighten me that it's not a nonprofit.

It's a b corp. Yeah all right, can you just explain what a b corp is for people?

Yeah, So B courp basically means for profit for good. It's super hard to become a certified to be corporate. It took us over a year and basically it just they check everything so like who our vendors are kind of making sure that we're an ethical company. So for me, the reason why I turned this into and I have years of experience in nonprofits. I've started hundreds of nonprofits for some of the top celebrities, so it wasn't hard for me to think I could just turn this into

We have hog farms.

We actually have worms that we feed food waste to that produces fertilizer that makes the soil better, so as we grow more fruit and vegetables, it's healthier for all of us. And now we have a partnership with Southern Power where we're actually taking food waste and we could turn it into energy. We're trying to really get into to that more so the idea is to keep it out of landfill because food waste is the number one so it's one of the leading causes number three cause of global climate change.

I was just gonna get into that because that's one of the things that you're stressed, is like, this is not just a health issue. This is a social issues, economic issue, and that's an environmental So when we would and this is true, when you're talking about how kids like one out of five go to bed hungry, how that affects their learning, Yeah, didn't get into that little deal.

Yeah, And I think, you know, I always have to as a black woman, I always have to say for black and brown children. So this is you know, mostly Hispanic even Native American as well, and black children, we are like one in three, one and four. So it's it's a lot worse. And so what happens is it's it's this vicious cycle that never gets broken. And what we think is, you know what, we give children free

So that was like their breakfast.

It sounds like my breakfast.

Yeah.

And then for lunch they had like a little cheeseburger that they have the microwave chips, like cookies, goldfish, apple sauce.

A meal on the weekend.

Yeah, those little socioeconomic factors that most people in education, especially like I wasn't working in the city for years, People forget that part. They forget all the factors and all the baggage that comes when the kids get to school. But from a social standpoint, I know, you talk about how hunger and the lack of food affects the crime rate.

Yeah, it's she's I mean, it's it's like, you know, one of the things I gave a whole ted talk on this. You know so many people if you really start remember I was watching there's a show on BT and I think it's called Trap Queens, and I was watching it those about these young women that were in jail, and one of them she was saying, like, you guys, you know, you don't know, you know, she was like the way I grew up.

She grew up in Tampa, Florida.

She was talking about her and her sisters them going and stealing change out of wishing wells and trying to put this money together just to go and get a burger or whopper from Burger King. Like that level of like people doing whatever they gotta do to eat. In One of my good friends, Don Im from LA.

He's an older guy.

I think Don might he might almost be sixty now, but he told me he was like Jazzmine. You know, I used to have to snatch people's purses when I was eight in Ohio just to eat, like that level of just like I don't have like desperation. You know, what do people do when when they're desperate? And that's you know, going back to Beanie Sigull, he raft about that, right. You know, pressure busts pipes people when you're desperation, you want your kids to eat, and you want people to

They don't even call the cops.

But there was just so many people stilling meat and just like it was happening so much. You know, you give everybody those charges, it just becomes a lot of charges and just you know, the police are coming out all the time, so that hits a real, real crime.

But people get desperate.

You know, people a mom has twenty five dollars to her name, she's got a kid, and she's got a baby, you know what cost twenty five dollars infanmil And so it's like, gosh, can I get my kid infamil? And can I feed my other kid who doesn't drink infanmil? Like it's just so many crimes happen because of people being hungry.

Let me ask you this on the business side, so you talked about Bee Corp. But can you just explain like what a becorp is for people, because you know, you said, like you said, Basket and Robbins.

Jerry Minty, Jerry's Patagonia, Shaye Moisture is one. So really it's just it's it's it's no different than a regular corporation. So you know, you still pay taxes, but it just means that you are certified that your business has ethical principles, so you're not using child labor, you're getting your supplies from the US like that kind of level of just but it basically means for profit for good. So at the end of it, and what it means, what B means is benefit.

So you're like a public.

Benefit corporation, so that Gooder we operate for the benefit of public goods.

So we're not just for ourselves.

If we get a customer and we get them to give us our give us their foods, you know, we give that food back to the community. So we're benefiting the community.

In our But the tax structure, everything.

Is still tax structure is still the same.

So like and it's in B corps are only recognized, I want to say, in like seven states. Delaware is one of them. But Gooder is like a Delaware CEA corp. And we're a foreign entity in Georgia, but we're.

A sea corp here as well, so we still pay corporate taxes. Okay, but we are recognized as a certificate.

Are you incorporated in Delaware?

Yeah?

I incorporated in Delaware early on because I know tax benefits and I knew I was going to be trying to get investors, and so that's just kind of the best way any I think anybody that's in venture capital will tell you to incorporate in Delaware. I mean I almost have heard people that were incorporated in other states and then they went out to raise venture capital and then they got incorporated in Delaware.

You're incorporated in Delaware. You have like a po box out there.

I don't even have a bio box out there. Anybody can incorporate in Delaware. Then I'm a foreign entity in Georgia. I have an office out here.

So it's a for profit business. But how do you make money if the restaurant's like giving you food? Can you explain the business model?

Absolutely?

So we charge a volume based feed for service on our composting or our vanux recycling, as well as our surplus food recovery. Remember they're already paying to throw the food away, so they're already they're not paying us, they're paying waste management, they're paying Republic Solid. So we charge them based on how much food or recovering and how often, and we have a sliding scale, so good or is very asset light.

We don't own a lot of vehicles.

We literally have one vehicle, and all of Humor in the nine States now we have one vehicle. But our partners are like Roady Omni Logistics, Postmates, so these are our drivers. So depending on how much food is being picked up, that determines the customer price. We've done a lot of case studies, so like on a low end and pick up for good or could be fifty dollars.

On a high end, it could be a thousand.

So you're you're not targeting restaurants.

We target restaurants in a lot of locations. So we want to target like this one restaurant on this street. We like to target like an airport with one hundred restaurants.

A'm all with thirty restaurants because I was going to say, like your regular Mom and pop, they just throwing food in the garbage.

Yeah, but you're talking about like a or We.

Like franchises too, Like we've been doing some pilots with some pretty large franchises, and the goal is like all of you know, Wendy's for example, says, you know what, We're going to be zero waste. None of our stores are throwing away food. We're going to be committed to our communities across the country. And then now there's this gooder service is available to all Windys owners.

And operators because it's like part of their franchise I used to go to school in Hawaii, and what happens with grocery stores and people don't know is that, you know, when you have like an expiration date, you got to throw the food away. But even before that expiration date, when the expiration date doesn't always mean food is like not eatable.

It's usually the cell by day.

Yeah, but so long story short, they got to get rid of that food. So, like where I lived, it was like student housing, like like it was like apartments, but it was like mostly students. So they used to come like every Wednesday and they would just drop off like all of the food that that was right, they throw it away. They throw it away, they gave it to it. So it was like bread, yogurt, milk, stuff like that.

Did you gotta see Tiger king You want to see that? You see it was so it.

Was I heard about it.

I watched You're one of the only people not to watch Tiger Kings, but you saw you knew there was a There was a one of the episodes.

They showed like how Walmart was bringing all the.

Food to them and his workers would go through the food first and kind of like pick out the food like that so much of the food is just like you said, it's like it has a sell by date on it. For example, the power goes out, they throw everything out in the freezer and cool cooler section, like

So when they throw it away, it makes no.

Sense because they could also freeze it and just give it to a non profit the very next day, and then it's like it's perfectly good food, but.

They throw it away.

All the rotisserie chickens, I feel like something like a one point five million rotisserie chickens are wasted a week in America. So you think of every grocery store you go to, and they have all those chickens in the deli counter, like whatever is on that hot bar they throw away every night, every grocery store, whatever's on the hot bar. So publics, I'll use them again as an example.

Yes, that are just thrown out.

So the Path Act I was going to get into that. The Path Act is that part of that initiative.

Path Act is new that was under Obama. So that's twenty twelve.

And so the Path Act actually gives these businesses enhance incentives for donating the food, so they could write off two times the cost. So if it costs them a dollar, they could write off two dollars. If they donated, so like the businesses could actually be essentially receiving money and like forty billion dollars a year and tax credits just goes.

Wasted from these businesses.

So a lot of it is just educating them on it and then you know, just getting past all like the layers of like legal But other.

Countries are doing it and they're very successful.

And Denmark there's a whole grocery store called Food for All where they get all this food from all these grocery stores and then they just people can pay what they can.

So it's illegal to waste food.

France, businesses could be fine to I want to say, it's like ten thousand euro for each yourccurrence of wasting.

Food, which is a lot of money.

I think ten thousand euro is probably like twelve thousand here, almost eleven thousand.

You know what's interesting too about Europe is that so when you start to travel, you realize that America is like different from other parts of the world where it's like the portions are very small because even in the sizes are small. Yeah, place sizes are small. Because I was I remember I was. I was in La years ago and I was in a conference and like a bunch of my colleagues. We all went out and I was the only black person there.

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Why it's from different culture. And we was at like this fancy steakhouse and we was eating and I was hungry, so I ate, I ate my food and remember I never forget the guy.

He was looking at me. He was like, must be hungry. High. It was like a joke.

And I realized that it was like they looked, they frowned on it if you ate everything on your plate, like they would leave food on a play just to show I'm not starving.

Like what I mean, it was like it was like a thing.

So, but it's just crazy because it's like you got the haves and have nots right, It's like people are literally starving and then other people is literally purposely throwing food away just to show.

I'm not you know what I'm saying.

Like, so but that that's that's that's an American way, and it's like not even be able to get up.

You know, like they got to sit down and to eat all your food like that level of nothing else.

That's crazy, yeah, because it's like that there's no such thing as a big mac in Europe and they don't have superside drinks.

So we ordered too much food and everything and everything everything.

It's way bigger, even like the portion like you're supposed to eat like five times a day.

We'll eat like.

Two huge males a day that we can't eat. So people really don't think about it. But not only is it it's a shame because people are starving, but financially it's like you're trying to run a restaurant or business. How much money are you wasting by have and all this excess food that you're just thrown away a lot.

And I think one of the things that we've been able to prove so what we do is one of the other kind of selling points for good or is we kind of have a data analytics piece to everything.

That we recover, so most people don't know what they waste.

So one of our customers for weeks and weeks and weeks they were their number one wasted that was pork.

And so this is a large corporate.

Campus here in Atlanta, you know, one of the largest oldest companies here. And what we found is like people had started to give up pork. You know, everybody around the New Year. It's like, oh, I'm not eating pork, I'm not eating this, I'm vegan them this and so without our tech, yeah right, but without our technology and without our analytics, they would have never known that. So it would have constantly been making pork every single day,

Didn't even need pork.

So that was something we were able to show them, and they were able to reduce the amount of pork that they prepared.

So a lot of it is just lack of knowledge. People don't even know. They're just producing, producing, producing and stuff people they don't even eat anymore.

So what did the idea the tech component of good? Because I know you have to saying that tech technology will solve hunger, I believe so yeah, yeah, So where did the idea come from? Like was there a tech background somewhere?

I'm not a technical founder at all. I mean other than just using app you know, like I'm not.

I gave you the title tech inter dator.

I'll take it.

Let's use it.

Yeah, I think I was.

I first became intrigued by the emergence of the food delivery y app.

So I was getting all those referral.

Codes and it was like, you know, get ten dollars off your first Uber eats meals or your postmaate meal or whatever. I was like, Wow, it would be really cool if you know, I can make an app in reverse that the restaurants and the businesses can use when they have excess food, they can request to pick up. I'll go get it picked up and I'll deliver it to a nonprofit. So that was like the initial idea, and then I just started really looking at everything else.

Like what do we have to lose?

Not just you know where I started going, and I will tell you for about the first you know year, when I first had this idea, so many people are like, oh, this is never gonna work.

I don't think it'll make money.

No one's gonna do that, And so I took that in like that's a terrible thing to do. Right, Nobody should ever listen to what someone else says about your vision and your goal, right, because they're not on the journey with you. But because I wasn't a technical founder and I was going and meeting with people that were, you know, technical people, I allow them to tell me

It does work.

So can you just explain exactly how this works? So all right, Walmart has excess food, you have an app that has a truck driver in East Atlanta. He picks the food up from Walmart and then he delivers it to the Salvation Army.

So something like that.

I mean, the main thing is we have all of their inventory in our app. So when we on board a customers choose Walmart, that we'd have all their skews and so Walmart could literally like skew something out and just tell it. You know, they could scan it with a a sq gun and it would really calculate everything. So then our platform inventory is everything it is that

Hundred chicken sandwiches and whatever.

Whatever they signed for a donation letter goes back into let's say Walmart's dashboard, and then Walmart On the back end, they can look up and see everything that's been donated, what are the most wasted things that they're donating, what's the tax value of everything they've donated, how many people they've went to, you know who they're serving, the kind of nonprofits. And then they're also able to see the

So it looks like a two fold solution, right, you're actually helping feed people, but you're also helping businesses run more efficient operations.

Definitely, that's one hundred percent.

So I like to call us a triple win, like you know, a win win win, a triple bottom line. We're helping the businesses people, which for me is priceless. But I learned early on that wasn't for the businesses to hear that. I had to be like the last thing. I told them, Well, we help them save money and be more efficient so they're not ordering things that they're never selling anymore. And then we also help them be more sustainable, so like we're really helping them improve their

But it's a big it's a big issue.

Oh good So let me ask you this, what's the profit margins?

It varies.

Typically a good profit margin for Gooder is anywhere from forty to forty nine percent for us. And so we've started a grocery delivery service. So we're like now like the free instacart if you will. And we just started this once coronavirus happened. So we saw that, you know, food delivery was really picking up, you know Instacars, Amazon Prime Ship, you know, they're blown out of the water.

And so we thought, what if we win and got groceries for them?

And so now we started, you know, our businesses we're closing, right so everybody the airport's, the convention centers, all of our customers were no longer there. So I really thought, like I got to make a pivot, Like I've got to figure out how do we stay in business. And so I started to think, We've got to get food to people now.

And so now we sell directly to.

Government cities, counties, school districts, and we sell a grocery.

Delivery service to seniors.

And so we're delivering right now upwards of like twenty five hundred seniors a week just in Atlanta, and we charged the city or a county, and we charged them per senior per delivery, and built into that we call it a cost plus model. And so we have the cost of groceries, the cost of supplies, the cost of delivery, and then the plus is essentially a profit margin that

Many people were like, oh, government contracts.

They take forever you know, it's all this red tape and stuff, but there's not enough people that look like neither are getting these bids and actually executing on them and like doing what they say they're going to do. And because we back everything in technology, now we have data. So we've built a new app that every you know, every morning a driver comes in, we pay everybody that works with us, even on the low end fifteen dollars an hours, where we start them at because I never want anybody to.

Need food, you know, working for me. I think that would be the worst thing ever.

So everyone starts at fifteen dollars an hour and then we take them up from there. They come in, they get a list of everybody that they're delivering too, and it routes them along like an efficient delivery route, so an Amazon Prime delivery or like a postmaate. And then once they deliver, they are required to take a picture of the senior that proves that the senior got their food, and they can add any notes about the senior in there.

And now we're.

Able to create these really compelling reports with heat maps for any of like all the seniors where they lived at, pictures the food that they receive. We know their dietary restrictions, and so it's been really crazy. So we've built quite a few businesses under one umbrella that are all profitable.

Sore, like how many states is Good are running.

In right now for our grocery delivery program, just Georgia for our traditional surplus food recovery and organics recycling now ten we just launched monday in New Jersey and in Philadelphia with pharmaceutical company.

That's powerful.

So a couple of questions the government contracts, MWBE, are you taking advantage of that?

Yeah, we're NB, we're WBE, we're dB, and we're ac dB. So we're Airport Concessions dB, Disadvantage Business, Minority business, and we're women business enterprise. So we took advantage of a lot of them.

Yeah, we got to do that.

I think that's the other thing people don't do. It takes time, just like it took time to become a b court. But all these businesses like this billion dollar pledge, we're going to spend more money with women, and we're going to spend more money with people of color. It's the same people that always get those contracts, and so that's why you have like the act Ones and I love I love Janets. Her story is amazing, right, she's a billion dollar entrepreneurship. Act one is a billion dollar company.

And that's what you've got to do.

You've got to play the long game, and it is to get in with the governments, get in with the corporations, and become a benefit to them as you benefit others.

You how did you get in? For anybody that's not familiar.

And we actually did an episode about this, but this is programs that corporations and government agencies have for minority businesses, women businesses, disadvantaged businesses, stuff like that, Like they have to have a certain amount of their budget set aside for that. So but it's kind of broad ranging because it's like, who's not a minority?

Everybody is at this point, even like white women.

Like there was even fifty.

You know the SUA, which is the one I'm doing right now, a small business enterprise. Anybody can qualify for that, no matter what color you are, as long as your business doesn't make more than fifty million a year.

I'm hoping I.

Won't be able to qualify so much longer, but for right now, I'm trying to qualify for that, and that is, you know, doing business as with a small business. So every single city that I've actually done business and has some kind of an office, so it could be like NMSDC is who we got our certification through.

There's also a lot of consultants that.

Will do the applications for you, and a lot of times it's just gathering a lot of documents, so who are all the owners? Like for me, I had to prove my you know, my taxes. I had to you know, show all my properties. You know, you just have to show anything that you have, and like your ownershipping, you basically can't be like a billionaire to get these certifications.

But it's just really what it is.

It's just doing the applications and submitting the paperwork, which which is so much of the easy stuff that nobody ever does because you know, if it's gonna take you a week to do it. It seems like it's a long time. And think of how many papers we did and reports we did. This is no different. You just have to literally fill it out and apply for it.

Is what I'd like to do with Chick fil A or your company.

And know that relationships matter and sometimes it doesn't happen overnight. Some of our I mean, we've been an NBE now for three years and we're just now like this. This new deal I just got with the pharmaceutical company is probably one of the first ones where I've been able to really say, hey, I'm also an MBE. But I don't think that that's what initially got me in the door.

So one of your partnerships with the NFL, and that was interesting. And when you look on own surfaces like food NFL, how does this work? How do we force that relationship and how does it work?

Yeah, so the NFL has an NFL Green, which you know, again everybody wants to be green.

Everyone.

The NBA has an NBA Green. So the Super Bowl was coming to Atlanta. I again registered to be a minority supplier for a Super Bowl, and sustainability was one of their initiatives. And so luckily one of my customers at the time was the Convention Center where a ton of events were taking place with the NFL. And so even though I wasn't in business for three years, I was very unique and that I was the only supplier that was doing this, and so that's how I was able to kind of get in a little.

Bit ahead of the game.

And yeah, I mean the thing is, everybody thinks, oh, we're not a food business.

Right.

Some of our big company customers are tech companies, and I've had them say, oh, you know, we're a tech business, We're not a food business. But I'll say, well, you have one hundred thousand employees, you got all these cafeterias at all your campuses, and you feed people every day, like you in essence have a food business within your business.

And so the NFL has a ton of food, so much food till this day.

I think the Super Bowl customer within the NFL was probably one of our largest recoveries ever. Like we had two tractor trailers full of food, so just tons of food, and we recovered all the excess food from Super Bowl.

Yes, so then now it makes sense. I saw Netflix was a partner, but like, yeah, if they have these campuses, they have these offices with all these employees.

Like Ozark is one of our customers, So we do all the Ozark film sets, the films in Atlanta. We're trying to get tired of Perry Studio. So if anybody knows Tyler Perry, tell them to call us.

Tyler are watching.

We're trying to get all these film sets because they feed. And the greatest thing about why these kind of customers matter is because the kind of food we get people that are hungry, and.

That's that's the greatest joy of it.

I always laugh when the when I first started, I had rescued rescued from my turn TNT and I took to one of the shelters and I just wanted to see their process. And this guy was like, oh, y'all trying to kill me today, and I was like, sir, it's just asparagus, Like he had never had asparagus. The idea of like giving somebody food that's gonna come from the higher, higher, upper echelons and get down to someone

Of just like that's why I'm matters.

That's where we got to get food from the film sets because the stuff that they're feeding the actors is really good.

And why should they just this perfectly.

Good food away when in the same city somebody that doesn't have a million dollars, that's not making a million dollars an episode, it's hungry.

Yeah, I was just gonna ask you that actually is perfect leading because especially when it comes to kids, and it's noble to feed people that's hungry. You know, they

Food, what food goes to who?

And like all right, we're trying to do like more of a healthy option or if that's.

Serently just like a ticker system. So what we will do is it.

Like so Papa John's, for example, is one of our customers. We will never give the same or organization Papa John's every day.

Of the week, so we would know like, hey, they got.

Papa John's today, they could get sweet Green tomorrow, they could get So we try and give them more like a well rounded I'm balanced. But then a lot of it is just us trying to get prepared meals. So like the airport still is one of our largest customers, but think we would get the food. A lot of people don't know this, but stuff in the airport only

So it's different.

Salads and I mean we turn people on to like foe and kill. I mean so many things that people had just never had before we were able to introduce them to. So I think a lot of it is we don't really try and go after like McDonald's like, for example, that's not a customer, that's like on my high priority.

I want to get McDonald's and get all.

Their excess food. I'd love to get Whole Foods. They throw away their hot bar every single four hours. Everything that's on the high every four hours they throw it away. Well they say they compost it, but I've talked to employees they say they throw it away, so they you know, every four hours that goes to waste. And I just keep on thinking, like if we could come in three hours and thirty minutes, you can come in three hours

But they just throw it away.

That was what I was thinking in my head, Like the logistics of it. Is there specific time that you send the cars to go out and pick up or.

Is it just a request as soon as they request it on the app. As soon as they request to pick up.

We go out.

So is that is it app free, and like, where is it for the customers?

So it's you know, it's not because remember we inventory everything it is that they sell, so we can give them the data on it. So yeah, it's in the app store, but you have to have you have to have like a log in from us to kind of get it. So we haven't made it to where just anybody can use it yet because it just becomes tricky. People can start trying to have us pick up stuff from their house. We have to really make sure that it's like a commercial kitchen, that it's clean, you know,

So that's like a long term goal.

I'm just looking for a city to say, like, we don't want people in our city to go hungry. Ye'd be like, you know, every mayor should that should be something that.

They stand on I feel like, yeah, like we went to Los Angeles a few weeks back and the homeless population is huge, Yeah, huge, And it was like this year it's.

Even I hear come September, it's going to be a lot of worse. They're saying now maybe towards December, but there's still so many people that are like on the verge of eviction.

You see the viral story of the lady.

I mean, I think here is like almost like one hundred thousand dollars, but she was like homeless for her two kids in the car in California because she was evicted recently.

Yeah, I'm just thinking, like good, that just sounds like a brilliant idea like a city should be adopting us.

Yeah, we definitely are doing a lot of We just did a really big partnership with the Lakers and UCLA Health where we had one of our grocery stores. We have two pop up grocery stores at the Poor Shakespeariance Center coming up later in September in LA and we're trying to get out there too, Like we're trying. We're really having some good conversations. We were meeting with the film the film you know studios and then so much just happened?

Twenty just did how did well?

Two questions? What's the overhead? Because like, yeah, what's the overhead?

I mean it all depends.

I mean right now, we spend you know, with all of our staff logistics, we maybe spend one hundred thousand a month.

So like, but like what do you have to spend money on drivers?

Drivers, food supplies?

You know now with our grocery program, we spend a lot of a ton of money on food, a ton of money on supplies, staff members. You know, we really like Gooder has a at our office. But you guys are always welcome to come to We have breakfast every day for all of our team members. We do lunch every Monday, wind down Wednesday.

I mean employees.

Do you have full time? We have ten and then like our part time we have about sixty like the drivers and stuff drivers people are working out for films.

Like contractors employees.

Yeah, okay.

And the second question that I have is how though you talked about COVID a little bit, but like obviously everything has changed now, like even movies, everything is changed with COVID, So it's affecting businesses. I'm sure it's affects your business. How has it affected your business? And how do you see because I personally don't think that we're not going back to normal maybe never, definitely not anytime soon.

So how are you.

Planning going forward dealing in this new age of social distancing and restaurants being closed and short hours and stuff.

Like that reduce capacity.

I mean we are, We're duly focused, right, So we're still selling kind of our traditional services more so thank Okay, maybe it's going to be more organic recycling now, but we're still talking to customers. I mean, I'm still having sales meetings every single week about traditional gooder. But on the flip side, I'm really looking at this good or grocery program because we're helping a lot of seniors. I mean, we're changing lives, you know, to people to get free groceries delivered to them.

That's the thing that nobody talks about. Right.

We can be afore, we could be fortunate enough to have Instacart or Shift or Amazon Prime, but there are hundreds of millions of people who do not have the ability to do that. One hundred and sixty one million people have had grocery delivery, right now in the United States, one hundred and forty four million have not and that doesn't mean that they don't need it, they just don't have access to get food. So we really think that this is kind of going to be the new horizon for us.

For everybody who whom for.

There is in an Amazon Primer, Instacart, there could be a gooder. And so that's something that we're gonna think of because reality is, no matter how much the world changes, people are still going to have to eat. And that's why food delivery is like on the rise. Quick service restaurants are seeing numbers like the Papa John's and the pizza huts, like you go in and you grab something really quick. If you look at those numbers, they're they're

We're gonna just be gone.

You gotta eat everybody, everybody, everybody got to eat.

But I have a children's book.

Called everybody what I was doing, that everybody eats. I mean, that's that's fitting. That's a model, and that's your model too, that everybody eats. We all family.

Yes, that's it.

That's the whole The whole idea is to teach kids, you know, that everybody needs to eat and everybody should eat. But the reality is so many people don't eat.

As you're a blessing.

Well, this is so dope.

So I mean, yeah, that's that's it's it's really dope, and it's really encouraging. Like you said, I mean I think that it's dope. How you can make it a business because that's our whole show is about business. Never apologize to making a profit, but you can they'll do good at the same time. Absolutely for profit for good because a lot of times, especially you know, there's been a lot of talk on like black Twitter and stuff like that that like capitalism is bad, and I think

I mean, think of all the people. You know, I carry a lot of weight on my shoulders, but it's a positive weight. But I think about you know, hey, I've got almost seventy employees. I'm marching towards one hundred. I'm about to hire more people next week, like who are dependent on us to do good and us to operate and you know, and I want to pay them well and I want them to you know, have an investment and a piece of good or I want them to have an ownership and what we're building.

And so you know, you can do good and you can do well.

And why not, right because I could be a Zuckerberg and just be having people like and share stuff on Facebook, But what does that really do for the betterment of the world. And so if anybody is going to make money doing it, it should be us. And if you look at you know, all the like nonprofits is a huge business. Like you know, look at Red Cross, right,

Look what happened with Haiti.

I think they got they raised like eight billion dollars and built like one hundred houses, and so you know, I'm like trying.

To change that narrative.

Like I believe cities and governments and foundations should give us the money to solve their problems because we really prove that we do it. And then yeah, we have a profit, we have a business that's we're trying to keep an operation. But if I one day am out of business because everybody's eaten, then I'll be okay with that, you know, Like that's fine for me. Whereas most other you know, organizations, they don't want to do that because

Be in existence so that they can exist. I really want to figure out how can I solve it so that I could go solve the next problem.

You have it a blessing.

You have it, ladies and gentlemen. It's been a pleasure.

There's a reason she's the number one tech innovator in the city of Atlanta. There's a reason, y'all just heard it.

I appreciate you coming on.

I appreciate you guys having me out, and you know, I just want to say, let your passion, you know, kind of have a profit for you.

And I think, I really think that's what I did.

You know, I was cooking for people out of my kitchen and one bedroom apartment Southwest Atlanta, you know, loading up my car, having my friends come over loading up their car, and I figured out a way to make money by doing something that's helping other people. And so I just encourage anybody to do that because there's you have nothing to lose, like if good or clothes tomorrow, God forbid, I'll still be able at the end of my life to stand before God and say, you know what,

But I still I still did what I said I.

Was gonna do, doing the work, doing the work.

Absolutely.

How can the people find out more information about what you got going on social media?

Handles?

All out yet definitely and so check us out at gooder Co on Facebook and Instagram. We are the Gooder co on Twitter. I'm Jasmine Crow on Everything, so you can connect with me via LinkedIn and yeah, you know feed more ways less mission.

That's the model.

That's the mission model.

That's the model Mantra. Yeah, shout everybody on Patreon dot com, y'all know that's our Pride to Pay program. Obviously Tier four or five members you have access to e y L University and number on online school. We have a new member on Patreon. Shout out to Crystal, Shout out the Cristal. That's our hometown member. So shout out to you and everybody that's been supporting the merch on earlier Liisia dot com. We got some special things for you in store, so be on the lookout for that for sure.

For sure.

And once again shout out to the great city of Atlanta. It's like a second home for us anytime we come out here.

It's love. Shout out to Bam for making this capa in my God, this is a great interview.

Shout out to Mike too for sending up the ey L studios in Atlanta. We been we've been running through.

His team shot shot to Jamal's Shout to everybody that plays a part at your Lisia and don't forget the merch merchers on earlisia dot com right now.

So thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week.

Peace peace.

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