A conversation with Jay Albany, CEO of Dirty Clean Food, about what it takes to build a successful direct-to-consumer business- basically buying from regen farmers and delivering to consumer, restaurants, etc.- in the regen space and in the most remote city on the planet. Despite all challenges of B2C, Jay makes a passionate case for the contrary. A deep dive full of golden nuggets of direct-to-consumer companies, what works and what doesn’t, but also a long conversation on the power of transparency within businesses and the most important return of all, inspiration.
What are the lessons learned? Looking at the graveyard of direct-to-consumer companies we have seen, especially in COVID years, raising a lot of money, struggling, or shutting down. Does that mean disrupting the current supermarket oligopolies isn’t worth it?
LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION ON:
THE RETURN OF INSPIRATION IS THE MOST NEGLECTED AND POWERFUL RETURN
Jay reflects on the meaning of inspiration, connecting it to his personal journey, and the potential for positive impact.
”Our company, Dirty Clean Food, supports the regenerative agriculture community in Western Australia to affect this, and the returns are financial, obviously, because we’re a business, social, inspirational, and natural. And most people hear those, I think— social, natural, and financial. People immediately leap to connect it, but just talking about the importance of words, that word inspiration means a lot of different things to different people in the network and to me and to people in my company. And it turned out for me, it has moved from kind of a word I was struggling to understand in the model and framework to really the whole thing. For me, this whole project and company have been about… we can build a new way to help people access food they feel good about, and it’s good for the planet. And that’s great.”
– Jay Albany
LESSON 2: THERE ARE REALLY GOOD CLOUD-BASED TECHNOLOGIES AVAILABLE
Jay describes the biggest practical change in scaling their delivery business from 100 to 300 stops per day as the need to upgrade logistics software.
”But here we had no tech people. So, we had to interview some firms, and we ended up using a logistics software that I think some trucking companies or delivery companies are using, and that made it work for a little while. We’ve since upgraded that. But yeah, I would say that was the biggest change because suddenly, you’re planning how you execute the logistics, and I had to default back to, how did we do this when we had 1000 orders a day? […] It’s amazing what is available now. I mean, I think one of the things that we’re excited to share as we try to grow in new cities is that there are really robust, cloud-based tools. And they’re much better than they were even five or 10 years ago. So, if you put together the right combination of them, you can exist, and it is functional and scalable.” Jay Albany
GIVING 10% OF THE COMPANY TO STAFF AND FARMERS IS CRUCIAL
Distributing 10% of the company to employees and farming partners on the first day demonstrates the commitment to the team and partners.
”I think what I did really quickly was I said, Yeah, I am the one who bought this; I took it private, but you all kept this company going… So, give 10% of the company to employees on the first day. Our employees and our farming partners. I’m not saying I’m so great for doing that; I’m just saying… I think what was probably more important for the morale and motivation of the team was, hey, we’re in this together; yes, this has happened; we still have a lot of work to do. But if we are successful, we’re all good. We’re all owners, and we’re all going to be a part of it. And I’m going to ensure that we keep it that way. And I’m going to do this before I raise money. So, you’re taking from me, not from other people, and we’re going to figure out how to do this.” Jay Albany
WHY A MANAGEMENT BUYOUT
In March 2024, regenerative food and agriculture company Wide Open Agriculture sold its Dirty Clean Food subsidiary via a management buyout led by CEO Jay Albany, who stepped down from his position at the Perth-based group as it transitions to becoming a pure-play plant-based food business.
”I hope it’s come through early in the conversation. I have a lot of love for Wide Open Agriculture. I mean, I am in a new country and met some people who had similar values, and we had a friendship. And we built the business together. They were also pursuing other ways to commercialise regenerative agriculture. So, coming out of COVID, Dirty Clean Food keeps ticking along in terms of growth, but it’s not yet profitable. And the overall company really saw an opportunity to invest in plant-based foods, which also have a powerful environmental story. And the two strategies had some tension.” Jay Albany
”That was really time-consuming and difficult. […] But practically, what happened was that it was hard to raise enough money […] The obvious choice was to close Dirty Clean Food. But ultimately, I couldn’t let that happen. So, I figured out how to borrow some money and make sure I could get enough working capital to get it going. […] Everyone knew that I loved Dirty Clean Food, and basically most of the people who thought about buying it thought it was too complicated and too specialised, and it would need a manager to have any chance of working in the system.” Jay Albany
Full disclosure! Our investment syndicate Generation-Re Syndicate is a small investor in the management buyout of Dirty Clean Food.
LESSON DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER, MAKE SURE YOU SPEAK TO ENOUGH POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS
The challenges faced by farmers in selling their products directly to consumers.
”It is really hard, as a family farm or small business, to be a farmer and then go, drive to the city and sell your product. It is very time-consuming. Think about what time they had to get up to bring everything into that stand, how long it took them to set up before you got there, and how long they had to wait and then take it all home. It’s a lot of work. And if you add that process to the 20 customers in the city and various points, it’s really time-consuming and tiring. Farming is already hard, and regenerative farming is farming plus.” Jay Albany
OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED
Koen and Jay also talked about:
- Transparency in business, including financial data and decision-making
- Improving a company’s financial performance through crowdfunding and direct-to-consumer sales
- Disrupting industries, sustainability, and local food systems.
LINKS:
The crowdfunding campaign will be open to the public to invest by Thursday 25 July. Global Investors can join via the Birchal platform.
Disclaimer Text: *Always consider the general CSF risk warning and offer document before investing.
- Gen-Re syndicate
- The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food – Book by Dan Barber
- The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works – Book by Ricardo Semler
- Richard Perkins
- Ray Bradley Farm – New York
- Warren Pension – Blackwood Valley Beef
LINKED INTERVIEWS:
- Henry Dimbleby – From designing the National Food Strategy for England to starting a £50M fund focussed on food transition
- Jasper Bertels on how to regenerate and calculate the returns in a landscape of 1M ha
- Eurof Uppington on decommodifying olive oil, the largest and most fraudulent crop in the Mediterranean
- Gijs Boers on why the biggest drive to the growth of regenerative agriculture is quality
- Abby Rose – On raising non-extractive funding and the power of AI to help farmers with observation
- Dan Barber, great flavour, health benefits and healthy ecosystems can only come from healthy soils not a lab
- Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin – Why chickens are the perfect entry point to decolonize our food system
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.