Egg prices, avian flu & golden yolks, with Vital Farms CEO Russell Diez-Canseco

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1:24Shortages are growing from coast to coast. And at stores with eggs on the shelves, sticker shock. It's like$10 a carton. I'm like, what? The United States Department of Agriculture predicts egg prices will rise another 20 % this year.

1:45Hey, everyone. Today's episode, we're delving into the suddenly wild market around eggs. My guest is Russell Diaz-Conseco, CEO of leading egg brand Vital Farms. While many egg producers find themselves struggling as avian flu wipes out millions of birds, Vital Farms has managed to keep growing. Its eggs are premium priced, but those prices have mostly stayed stable. Russell shares how the brand's relationship with farmers, transparency with customers, and unique business model has allowed the company to turn crisis into opportunity. We also talk about why Vital Farms became a B Corp before its IPO, the company's high-profile lawsuit with PETA, and what makes Vital Farms' yolks so orange.

2:30If you're feeling the impact of eggflation, Russell offers valuable context beyond just the eye-popping price tag. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

2:48I'm Bob Safian, and I'm here with Russell Diaz-Conseco, CEO of the egg producer Vital Farms. Russell, great to have you with us. Great to be here. So eggs have been in the news a lot lately, the price of eggs in particular up like 50 % over the past year and some places more. What is going on? I know there's talk about bird flu impacting supply and hens lost, although when I go out to the store, there seem to be plenty of eggs, just these big numbers on the price tags. What's going on? You know, there's a fair bit of conjecture about what's going on in the market. The headline is, yes, a lot of birds have been destroyed over the last couple of years and even more recently in the last few months as a result of avian influenza.

3:37And that has resulted in like a supply contraction in the market. Some would say the price impact has been outsized relative to the amount of that enduring supply contraction and that in earlier instances of this, maybe pricing didn't remain elevated for as long as it is now. What I can tell you is that almost all of those birds that have been, they call it depopulated, been killed, have been on really large farms, farms with a million or more birds in cages, some outside of cages, but all in these big buildings with a lot of birds. And that has resulted in more than 12 % of the bird population in the United States being killed over the last year.

4:27On our network of small family farms, it's been less than one half of 1%. And I can't prove to you exactly why we've been so lucky to avoid this issue, but we've been a lot luckier than many. I know your focus is eggs, but you can't be used to all this public attention on eggs. Are there things over the last year where you're like, why is this happening? Things that surprised you or made you sort of stop? You know, it's interesting. Certainly eggs are in the headlines for a variety of reasons, right? It was an election year. Food inflation has been an important topic. I don't love that egg price inflation in particular is such a focus.

5:04I still see eggs as a really high quality, affordable source of protein. and in our case, as a point of entry for conscious consumers looking for better foods produced in a different way. And I don't want eggs to lose that status. So I'm looking forward to a return to normalcy. You work with local farms all over the country. Are there calls you've gotten or situations that you've had to navigate to help them navigate? We do work with now over 425 small family farms. They're not quite all over the country because we choose a certain part of the country that we call the pasture belt because our birds are meant to be outside.

5:47So we won't do it in the Northeast because it's too cold in the winter. We won't do it in the Southwest because it's too dry. But the Midwest and the near South, places like Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky are pretty great for our birds. So we don't own those farms, but we're very interactive and supportive of those farmers because we think it's in our best interest for them to be successful. So whether it's technical education on how to weather a challenge like avian influenza or financial education on how to maybe manage preventative maintenance on your farm to help those birds be as healthy and productive as you can get them, we spend a lot of time investing in those farmers.

6:29And the avian flu, the risk is to the hens, not to the consumers of the the eggs, right? Or is that even that not clear? I certainly haven't heard of any cases of someone getting avian influenza from eating an egg. And we enjoy eggs at our house the way we always have. Yeah, the risk is to the bird. And it's sad. Frankly, our purpose is to improve the lives of people, animals, and the planet through food. The notion that millions of birds are being killed because of this is really heart-wrenching for me. I think in the last year, in 2024, we had one of our farms affected. And our job at that point is to help facilitate the farmer getting the birds tested as soon as possible, a diagnosis, getting them connected with the right government agencies that kind of take over from there, and then getting birds back to that farmer as soon as possible so he can kind of continue his operation.

7:27Eggs are more expensive than they've been. Vital Farms eggs are particularly expensive, like premium eggs. What makes an egg worth paying extra for, especially when eggs are already more expensive? When we first started this business, Matt O 'Hare is our founder, and he's a serial entrepreneur with a big heart around animal welfare. And he wanted, in an industry that at the time had more than 95 % of the laying hens in cages, he wanted to create a business that could liberate some of them. And that's exactly what he ended up doing. So in those early days, we were the only nationally distributed brand of pasture-raised eggs, this new kind of egg that we were trying to popularize.

8:11In the ensuing years, starting as far back as when I joined the company in 2014, there have been lots of options besides Vital Farms to buy that commodity, that thing called a pasture-raised egg. And yet over the years, ours has been the most expensive version of that commodity. And we've been growing rapidly with healthy margins. We had an IPO in 2020. And so it's something more than just the features and benefits of the commodity that they're buying. They're buying our purpose and they're buying how we do what we do, in addition to this certain kind of egg we produce. We operate with a lot of transparency.

8:53For example, our egg cartons have the name of the farm from which those eggs came on the end of the carton. And you can see a video of that farm on our website. When we go to a retailer, for example, we're not just trying to transact with the retailer. We're trying to help them plan their business to achieve their goals. Right now, it's no secret that we're not filling the orders in full. A lot of egg companies aren't, But, you know, we've developed a really powerful brand and demand, especially in light of the fact that we haven't raised prices in over a year, is really outstripping our supply of those eggs.

9:27We're pretty transparent about what we commit to with those retailers. That's a rare thing in this world and certainly in the food system. And that's very appealing to some people. And if you haven't had to raise prices over the last year when prices of other eggs have gone up, that means that premium is narrower than it used to be, right? Which I guess is good for you. How do you maintain that? Is that something you expect to maintain? Or is pricing, as you're talking about it, it almost sounds like pricing isn't really a challenge or an issue. There is some balance to the way we think about the choices we make around pricing.

10:08we might have built a brand strong enough that we could command an even higher price at some point in the future. We also have a commitment to improving the lives of people, animals, and the planet through food. And we might price ourselves out of some growth that leaves some chickens in cages and leave some people stuck with an egg that may not be as good for all of our stakeholders. So we take all that into account when we set pricing. But the truth is that our cost structure has faced some inflation over the last few years, but nothing that would inspire us or force us to double pricing the way we've seen it in the market over the last six months.

10:48And that, it sounds like, is because you're using more smaller farms as opposed to these bigger industrial farms. You know, input costs are what they are. It takes a certain amount of feed and a certain amount of space in a barn and a certain amount of heat in the winter, right? And a certain amount of veterinary care to produce an egg. And those are very sort of measurable, trackable commodities. We feed our birds corn and soy in addition to what they find out on the pasture, for example. Those have not doubled in the last six months. There is a pricing discovery mechanism for commodity eggs in this market that is driven in part by kind of spot pricing of eggs.

11:31And when there's a dislocation of supply, that number can jump up and suddenly that finds its way into pricing to retailers and pricing on the shelf. We price based on what we think is right as part of the marketing mix, like any other branded company would. Pricing of eggs may fluctuate based on this commodity availability. is not what's relevant or, I mean, it's pertinent, obviously, in some ways, but it's not really relevant to what your pricing is in your market, in the way you think about the market. That's absolutely right. There have been times over the last 10 years when there were price wars on eggs and that you could find them for 50 cents a dozen at retail, and we didn't change our pricing.

12:12There have been times like now where some of the cheap, what used to be the cheaper eggs are actually more highly priced than ours. We're actually sometimes not the most expensive egg right now. And that doesn't necessarily prompt us to change pricing. What we found over time is that our ability to grow, our ability to grow profitably is not very correlated to what's going on in the broader egg market. And the idea that eggs may stay at this high price indefinitely, like this may be the level they're at now, that doesn't necessarily change your strategy and product your strategy one way or the other.

12:50It doesn't. I can't predict the future in terms of what might drive the economics of what we do. For example, one of the really important elements of our operating model is that we develop long-term relationships with these small family farmers. Often they've become egg farmers by working with us. Maybe they weren't doing that already. In most cases, they weren't. So we develop a relationship by which we buy all the eggs they produce for a certain amount of time, and they agree only to sell them to us. And the price we pay is variable, but it only varies with input costs. So I never want a farmer to be, for example, hurt financially because corn and soy prices went up.

13:33So I pay them more when they go up, and I pay them less when they go down. The idea is I want them to have a predictable income stream. At moments like this when commodity prices are through the roof, when egg prices are through the roof, it can be tempting to say, hey, maybe I could sell my eggs on the open market and make more than Vitals paying me. And while that doesn't affect what they do during a contract, if a contract is up for renewal, it might catch their attention. Those that I have lived through times when egg prices weren't so frothy remember when we were paying them more than the spot price for eggs.

14:11And so, So, you know, we tend to take a long view here and we prefer working with farmers that do as well. I love Russell's explanation of how the egg market works and what makes Vital Farms distinctive. The brand's resilience through the avian flu troubles is a great reminder of the value of deep relationships with suppliers and with customers. Still, what happens practically when a brand's values collide with near-term business imperatives? We'll dig into that after the break. Stay with us.

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15:59Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth. That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500-level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one. So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash MOS and get up to three months free. Before the break, Vital Farms CEO Russell Diaz-Canseco talked about how the brand has fared amid the twin crises of bird flu and eggflation.

16:45Now he talks about what he learned in a legal battle with PETA, why he brought his son to Vital Farms' IPO, and what makes the company's distinctively orange-yoked eggs different. Let's dive back in.

17:02I've had conversations with like the head of Impossible Foods who's talked about, you know, branding for meat alternatives. The environmental message doesn't work. What works is talking about that it tastes great. It sounds like for you with Vital Farms, you're sort of straddling both. I mean, you're making an argument about sort of broader stakeholder impact, not just that these eggs taste better. I had an epiphany back in 2016. We finally had our first marketing leader and we were doing what they call consumer ethnography work. So we're at a store in Minneapolis and we're shopping with this woman, the shopper.

17:43She's going through the dairy set. She takes some milk and puts it in her cart, and the facilitator asks her some questions. Why did you choose that milk? Why a quart instead of a half gallon? I see the carton says organic. What does organic mean to you, et cetera? And this continues. She picks out some bacon. Same questions. Picks out some eggs. Same questions. And by the third or fourth item, the woman kind of got frustrated, and she turned around, she kind of threw up her hands, and she said, look, I feel like every week I hear another story, read another story about a producer of food who, who lied, who got caught cheating, not doing the thing that they told me they were doing.

18:25And the reality is you're asking about all these words on the package, but the reality is if I trust the brand, I'm not actually paying all that much attention to the claims. And so I think what we've been able to do, it's not easy, is we've been able to build a brand around trust and transparency. Not that we're perfect, not that we're everything to everyone, but that we do what we say and we say what we do. And that's hard to come by in this country. It's true. She's right. I mean, I'm remembering last fall, Vital Farms came under some scrutiny regarding animal welfare practice. I think from groups like PETA and some other plaintiffs at the farms you work with.

19:09I mean, that can't have been good for the brand and building trust with customers. We did. We got sued by a group of class action attorneys, and PETA was a part of that. We prevailed. The case was dismissed with prejudice. We didn't settle. Essentially, the assertion was, you say you're an ethical food company. In our opinion, ethical food can't be produced by animals. Therefore, you're misleading consumers. But there was no like gotcha video. There was no, we caught you doing something you didn't tell us you were doing. Like I said, we're not perfect for everyone. The important part is that we're transparent about what we do and that we don't do anything to lose that trust.

19:50Episodes like this, like the headlines come out and a lot of people, like the woman you're talking about in the supermarket, just sees the headlines, right? Well, it can be incredibly frustrating. It's funny, in that specific example, it's not lost on me that PETA doesn't sue big industrial factory farmers because big industrial factory farmers aren't competing with PETA for the consumer's attention. We are, right? Because we are appealing to conscious consumers. They're appealing to conscious consumers. They have sued Whole Foods a whole lot of times. Maybe it sounds like hubris, but there's a certain almost confirmation, a little bit point of pride that if PETA sues you, maybe you're onto something.

20:35And there aren't necessarily sort of strategic lessons that you took from that experience. Well, a few things come to mind because what happened that you were referring to from 2024, it became what I would describe as clickbait. You know, we're a popular brand amongst conscious consumers. if you're trying to build your personal brand amongst conscious consumers, one way is to attack the thing that they trust. I think one of the things that helps a company like ours sort of ride that wave is that we do have the courage of our convictions, that our crew members can be confident we are doing what we said and saying what we do.

21:12So they're not back on their heels. There was a lot of ownership amongst the people in my company to really get our story out there and defend ourselves against what I would describe as baseless attacks. And that's what it's all about. You can't fake your way to the kind of trust that we have. And you can't fake your way to getting an entire company full of crew members to do what it took to get our story out there. So it was a great test, I think, of the resilience we built as a company internally and a great test of whether we're really doing what we say. Yeah, I mean, Vital Farms is, along with being a public company, is a certified B Corp.

21:54And you've said that being a B Corp helps your shareholders, that it strengthens the competitive edge. Is that what you're talking about with this example? What I would say about being a B Corp and a public benefit corporation, when we went public in 2020, we did it, you know, with a lot of introspection because there's, you know, there's a lot of conjecture that when you're in a public company, you become a become beholden to short-term results. You start to operate in a different way. It can be tempting maybe to compromise on your values. And it was important to us that we not allow that to happen.

22:29One way that our pre-IPO investors, our board was primarily comprised of venture capital and private equity firms that had invested in us over the time. One way that they put their money where their mouths were, was they chose to have Vital Farms reincorporated as a public benefit corporation. One of the main features of that is that our charter basically says, I don't have to just maximize shareholder value. I have to define the impact we'll have on other stakeholders. And I need to consider the other stakeholders when running the company. Well, presumably, if you are a traditional investor who thinks that shareholders are the only ones that matter, you might be put off by that.

23:21You might think that that is not going to be great for your profitability in making an investment in Vital Farms. And presumably, that in turn results in a drag on the stock price at the IPO. My private company investors said, if this is what it takes to help ensure that you're protected from the vagaries of the public market, were willing to do that. And that's exactly what they did. And I guess, I mean, part of the philosophy behind that is that in the long run, that will help the company be more valuable in the long term, right? It's just you're not having to react in the same way to short-term investors and short-term market turns.

23:59I commonly get the question, how do you balance purpose and profits? There's a trade-off implied in the question, and I don't see one. I think of purpose as a driver of our long-term success, and that includes the profitable growth of the company. The fastest way for me to destroy values of company would be to compromise on my values and do something to destroy trust. But yeah, I think I have a really big responsibility to make sure that the investments we make in our people, in our farmers, in the environment, find their way back to our income statement, our balance sheet over time. I don't think you can have a dissatisfying compromise for too long, or else I think you're going to be in trouble with some of your stakeholders.

24:50I know you've mentioned before that you sometimes bring your wife and your family along when you go visit a new farm. What is that about? Where did that come from? So, you know, I've been very lucky in my career. I've got some really wonderful companies that I've been a part of, learned a lot over the years. One of the things I faced over a lot of years in my career was that age-old question about work-life balance. How do you say goodbye to your kid on Monday morning on the way to the airport and come back on Thursday night and not feel like you left something on the table that week, as good as the job might be.

25:25And one of the things that was important to me in this job was that I find a way to better integrate what was important to me at home with what was important to me at work. And part of it was this theory that if I could bring my family along with me sometimes, and it was less of a mystery what I was doing when I wasn't at home, maybe it wouldn't be so dissatisfying for us not to be together every day. So my first year at Vital Farms, we developed a relationship with a group of farmers that had been producing eggs for another egg company that was selling them to us. And we started to work directly with them.

26:05And that takes a lot of trust because we hadn't really done that before. And we were great at marketing and sales, but back then we didn't have a lot of experience supporting the farmers directly. And these farmers were all Mennonite farmers, deeply faith-driven in everything they did, very family-oriented. They wanted to be egg farmers because they wanted to be able to provide for their families on their farm. They didn't want to go into town to have a job. It was important for me that they understood that I felt strongly about my family too. It was important for me to introduce my family to those farmers so they could see why I was so passionate about helping them be successful.

26:46It personalized it for them. So in January of 2015, on a very cold Monday, my wife and my son and I flew up to Missouri. She brought 14 bags of her homemade organic granola, which is like kryptonite. It's amazing. And we went farm to farm. And my son at the time was maybe eight. His name's Nathan. And we introduced ourselves and we gave them the granola and met their family and told them how much we appreciated the chance to work with them. And I think it made a real impact. So it sounds like this is both good for your family and your family life and yourself, but also good for the business. I mean, you weren't just doing it because it was good for the family.