Keurig Dr Pepper's Former CEO Has A Beefy Take On Growth

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0:36Larry Young:Hello, friends. I'm Ray Lateef, and you're tuned into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. What if the smartest growth strategy for your CPG brand is to stop chasing growth? Larry Young spent nearly 50 years in the beverage business before trading corporate boardrooms for a cattle ranch. The former CEO and president of Curd, Dr. Pepper, and his wife, Colette, now own Texas-based 1024 Ranch, where they're building a premium beef brand on their own terms. In this episode, Larry and Colette explain why they've resisted pressure to grow fast and chase scale, how they've made premium quality accessible without premium pricing, and why customer relationships, authenticity, and simply delivering on your promises can be more powerful than any conventional growth strategy.

1:36Larry Young:They also share lessons on educating consumers, building word of mouth, choosing the right partners, and hiring people who genuinely care about what they do.

1:49Larry Young:hey folks it's ray with taste radio right now i'm supremely honored to be sitting down with larry and colette young the co-owners of 1024 ranch larry how are you i'm doing great how are you today ray i'm fantastic colette good to see you good to see your pleasure to be here today thank you i wonder how many people are wondering the same thing that i was wondering when i heard of 1024 Ranch, which is, is that the same Larry Young from Keurig, Dr. Pepper? Indeed, it is. A man who was in the beverage business for almost 50 years, who once retired, probably could have done anything you wanted to do.

2:30Larry Young:But why ranching? Why beef?

2:32Colette Young:Well, I retired once. You know, I was with Pepsi for a long time, retired from Pepsi. The only thing I ever failed at was retirement. I made it four months and Colette told me I was married for better, worse, not for lunch. So get back to work. And luckily I met some great guys with the Carloff group that had the majority of Dr. Pepper. They needed some help. And I got to start there. It's supposed to be 90 days to nine months. Turned out being 20 years.

3:01Larry Young:Amazing. Amazing. And how many years is this for 1024 Ranch?

3:05Colette Young:1024 Ranch is 16 years old now.

3:08Larry Young:Outstanding. And Colette, just for context, talk about the ranch. I mean, you're not only a beef cattle business, but you're a consumer brand as well. We started out as a hunting ranch only. And that was a sport and interest of Larry's and mine. And so we were a hunting ranch. And then Larry has had lots of experience with cattle because he grew up around cattle. I did not, but he introduced me to that part of ranch life. And so we decided we would start raising cattle. Do you live on the ranch? Yes, we do. We're there right now. That's right. We're right here at the ranch. And Larry feeds cattle every day.

3:50Larry Young:We're hands-on. I run the ranch. I run the hunting part. Larry's in the cattle. He gets in the feed truck at dark every morning. And at least one day a week, I go with him and help him feed cattle. We're hands-on. We work it all. Who's a better shot, Larry or Colette? Oh, Larry. Okay. Well, you know, a typical day in the beverage business, I assume, is a very different day than you're experiencing nowadays, Larry. But what's been the biggest difference going from the corporate boardrooms to your own ranch?

4:25Colette Young:Well, you know, not a lot has changed. I mean, when I was at Dr. Pepper, I was at work every morning early. All my life, I've got up at 4.50 in the morning. I go to work early. I'm very hands-on. I believe that you got to be there to inspect what you expect. And so, you know, leaving the corporate world, it's a lot more peaceful here, let me tell you. I don't have the phone ringing off the wall. I don't have, you know, emails every five seconds. But the biggest thing I miss is my secretary.

4:58Colette Young:you know as colette said we started as a hunting ranch we immediately started expanding buying more land went into cattle we had a really good commercial herd we went from you know expanded with that with a registered simbra herd and then as we kept going i got to looking at it saying you know what can we do different with these first calf heifers something we can breed different So we started breeding Akagushi bulls, which are Japanese Wagyu And that's where the meat business came from Because the meat's phenomenal Let me tell you about what the Agushi beef does

5:34Larry Young:Yes, the Agushi beef is a Simbra and Akushi, which is the Wagyu It's heart healthy It melts at a lower temperature, the fat does So it goes through your bloodstream better It's very healthy for you We believe in real food, and this beef is a real food in our business because we raise them, we lay eyes on them every day, we feed them every day. They graze out in open pastures and are real normal cattle. And so they are, you know, from... A superior set of beef. That's right. Thanks for filling that in. I can absolutely agree with that statement that it makes you feel good after you eat it. You know, sometimes when you eat beef, low quality beef, that is, you don't feel so well afterwards.

6:27Larry Young:And I remember eating yours last week and I was just thinking, this doesn't feel heavy. I feel very good after eating this and I can totally see where you're coming from. Larry, when did you start thinking about that opportunity to be a consumer brand as much as you were sort of running the farm?

6:43Colette Young:Well, we were running the business. You know, we had the brand out there, the 1024. We became known for our cattle with selling our commercial calves to the feedlots. Then we got our registered herd. We started selling bulls and replacement efforts. The 1024 name kept getting bigger. And that's when we decided between Colette, myself, and our general manager, Galen Swenson, that we could get into the beef industry. we could have a superior beef at a very reasonable price. It doesn't cost that much more to raise good beef. And a lot of people really try to take the prices through the roof. And so we've been very successful saying we're going to build a brand the right way.

7:28Colette Young:We're going to be like Dr. Pepper. We don't ever want to be the biggest. We just want to be the best.

7:34Larry Young:I think that Larry is a great visionary. and when he talks about this, we have not gone fast. We've gone slow and steady. Sometimes that does win the race. We want to make sure we're doing things right, the correct way. And so we've taken our time, and of course it does take time to raise cattle. Also, I wanted to mention, when you're eating that beef, it's one DNA. It's not 500 that could be what you're buying at the grocery store. And that beautiful color that you saw, that burgundy is real, not red dye that they put in that meat to often make it feel like it's a real additive. Yeah, zero additive.

8:15Larry Young:So it's very healthy. So what you see is the real thing. I'm so glad that you brought up price and affordability because both are top of mind for American consumers these days. And I have to say, I was kind of shocked when I went to your website and saw the prices of your steaks. They were very affordable. And certainly as compared to other mail order steakhouses, it feels like you thought about that as a key selling point for the brand. But what resonates most with your consumers at this point? Is it the quality? Is it the price? Is it the brand itself?

8:52Colette Young:I think the biggest thing is the quality. Once they try it, just like you said with the ribeye, it's unbelievable. And probably the biggest thing we sell, Ray, is the hamburger is unbelievable. It's like butter. And people try the hamburgers. They love to make smash burgers out of them.

9:10Larry Young:Yeah.

9:10Colette Young:And it just makes such a different taste. But you hit on it. They also say, this is cheaper than at the grocery store. How do you do that? Well, we're making money on it, but we try to make it where it's affordable, where everybody can try a really good farm-to-table food product.

9:28Larry Young:That's right. And we ship all over the United States, and we do a two-day shipping, so it arrives very cold. And we track the shipping, so everybody gets good quality meat that they can stick in their freezer, you know. Enjoy the whole week or two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, that hamburger meat is fantastic. That ground beef we use for tacos and so good.

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10:36Larry Young:More than 70 % of new CPG products fail. often over margins founders never fully understood. Outsourced accounting can close that gap for good. Visit belaysolutions.com slash bevnet for a free small business accounting guide from Belay. Your inbox should reflect the parts of CPG that matter to you. Choose from BevNet's seven free newsletters covering beverage, food, beer, spirits, careers, education, and more. Sign up and select your favorites at cpgmedia.com slash newsletter. I think about, again, today's modern consumer and how they think about health and nutrition. And, you know, again, beef is one of those things that's had a varied history in the minds of American consumers.

11:25Larry Young:So when you're selling a brand like 1024 Ranch, how do you talk about health and wellness in a way that's going to have the most impact on a consumer decision? I know, Colette, you talked quite a bit about it being a single DNA, and you talked about it being a better quality and a better cut. But how do you talk about the nutritional aspect of it, the protein, you know, the fulfillment of eating steak?

11:54Colette Young:I think the biggest thing Colette hit on just a moment ago is that it's heart healthy. When the Akagushi first came over in the Wagyu, that was one of the things they found that the fat is more like almost like a salmon or something like that. the enzymes are better for you. And people think about that a lot. I mean, always the buzzwords are better for you. Everybody's wanting to go natural, but they still pay$20 a pound for laced potato chips. So you have to understand what does the consumer want? And it has to taste good. It has to be delicious. So that's kind of been our sweet spot.

12:30Larry Young:We talked about health. We talked about the quality. Again, sharing that story and making it a compelling one to consumers is inherent to any consumer brand these days. I'm talking to both of you as the co-owners, and I feel like if a potential customer had an opportunity to sit down with you for five minutes, it'd be sold pretty quickly. But obviously, you can't sit down with every other customer, every potential customer out there. So beyond the quality and beyond the taste of the products, Is there another part of the story itself that you feel like is critical to acquiring new consumers? We really believe in customer service and people relationships.

13:14Larry Young:And when people come here, that's the one thing they notice a lot in our ranch is the way our employees treat our customers and the way we treat our customers. We're really visible. We're highly visible. We show up to lots of events and people need to know that we are real, just like our food. Clearly, also premium. Tend to for Ranch exudes that small batch premium aspect of food that so many people covet these days. There are different tiers to premium, though. And I think you have to be careful about feeling like you might be too premium or too precious. Is there a sweet spot for when you talk about the premium angle such that people understand that you're premium but approachable?

14:04Colette Young:Yeah, we spend a lot of time on where our price points are. And I think that's one of the things that you mentioned. When you look on the website, people are shocked at the prices. Whenever they come out for steak night and they taste it, then they go to buy it. They start telling their friends about it. They get on the website. So that's the main part is that, you know, the quality is number one. I mean, we have to have the quality. And we also want to make sure that we can deliver everything we say. That's right. And so that's why we're not looking at getting too big too fast, because so many of them end up where they're sold out, got people telling them they can't deliver the order.

14:42Colette Young:And so we like to just build it slow and make it where it's very obtainable at a great price, and we'll always be there for them. If we say we're going to do it, we do it.

14:51Larry Young:As you know, Larry, in the consumer products industry, everything seems to skew to grow fast, get bigger, get investment, and eventually sell to another company. It feels like that's been the entrepreneurial journey for so many different brands. As entrepreneurs yourselves, you've talked a lot about patience. You've talked a lot about being focused on being the best quality out there. Sometimes, however, it does require others to buy in. How do you cultivate partners, you know, investors or otherwise, that are the right fit for your company?

15:30Colette Young:Well, we build some partners that, you know, not part of the business, but we sell some of our beef to local restaurants. You know, people go in and try the beef and especially the hamburgers. They cannot believe how the hamburgers taste. The ribeyes, you know, if you look at in this business, New York strip, filet mignon, and ribeyes are the first thing to sell. You have to be very sharp and know how to get rid of the rest of the beef. I mean, there's only 24 ribeyes in a cow. That's it. But now you got another 560 pounds of meat. What are you going to do with it? So we make the hamburger. At steak night, we show people how, if you look at what most of your chefs will talk about, chefs, when they're at home, they don't eat ribeye, strip, or filet mignon.

16:16Colette Young:They'll eat a chuck eye. They'll eat a Denver. They'll eat a McKinney steak. They're just as good as steak.

16:22Larry Young:Sure, that's the part of that dinner is educating people that those parts are just as good because the meat consistency throughout the calendar.

16:31Colette Young:And even less expensive.

16:32Larry Young:Yes, and less expensive.

16:33Colette Young:Very reasonable.

16:34Larry Young:They're like right next door to them in that cut. So they're just as good.

16:39Colette Young:Got the marbling just like your ribeye head. So we spend a lot of time doing that. And so with the word of mouth, the restaurants we have, what we do online, the steak night, the business just continues to grow at a good pace. You know, we're not trying to be Omaha steaks or anything like that. We're just out here. And main thing, we're having a lot of fun doing it.

17:02Larry Young:Also, I just wanted to add, too, that we spend a lot of time on our social media. Taylor Goodwin does that for us, and he is very good at spending a lot of time out here at the ranch and taking pictures and sampling the meat, taking pictures of the meat. He's part of those steak nights sometimes. The relationships we have with these people are our investment, don't you think, Larry? It's not like a monetary investment. It's investing in people out here. And so when we get that word of mouth, it's always the best. And we just know that in the social media, I notice on a lot of mine, it comes up, what's heart healthy?