Growing Lettuce in Greenhouses: Paul Sellew ’80 is Founder of Little Leaf Farms

[0:00]Hello, the guest today is Paul Seelu, class of 1980. He's an entrepreneur, founder of Little Leaf Farms. So hi Paul, what does your startup do? Thanks, Tony. Yeah, great to be with you today. So little leaf farms, I started about 10-11 years ago and we have high tech greenhouses now in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and soon to be Tennessee. And we're the country's largest grower of baby leaf greens grown and controlled environment. And 1011 years ago virtually was, there was really nothing being grown. It was mostly just head lettuce. And I made the decision to look at the baby leaf category because that's where it was growing fastest. And, and now we service 8000 grocery stores, service half the country and employ over 800 people. Wow. So. So it's like over multiple states as well, like the space in. The United States and Canada. Wow, that's that's a big coverage. And then so are these like I'm trying to picture, is it like a field of lettuce? Like what does it look? It's a greenhouse. So picture of greenhouse. I was a horticulture major at cows, right? So they're greenhouse is on campus. They're glass, glass roofs. Let the sun in and then we control that environment and grow hydroponically, meaning you don't grow, you grow without soil. And as a result, you know, then we don't need to spray anything on our crop. It's pesticide, herbicide, fungicide free. And obviously based on this current Cyclospora outbreak that's sweeping the United States right now, which has been linked to field lettuce, CEA controlled environment, AG lettuce grown by like little leaf and others is absolutely safe to eat is. That because like the feel less lettuce, the disease spreads over out. Well, it's not a controlled environment, right? So, you know, basically they don't have the control over the two principal vectors water, right. Oftentimes that you know contamination can get into the irrigation water and you don't have the same level of control with over your people. So those are the two major differences compared to what I do versus conventional field

[2:03]agriculture. Gotcha. So it's like this was like how much control is it? Like is it like like they have to puncture in clothing when they walk in so it doesn't contaminate? Like how much control? No, absolutely. We it's an overpressure facility, so you know you have to go through a disinfection process to enter the greenhouse. No humans touch the product from seeding to harvest. And then the water primarily is what falls on the roof. We get about 48 inches of rain here a year in the eastern US. And so we capture all that in adjacent line basins. And then that's our primary source of irrigation water. And that water comes in, it first goes through UV disinfection so that you kill all biology and that way you have a pure clean rainwater, you know, to irrigate our crop and, and, and then again, we don't spray any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. So absolutely clean, fresh safety and. Is like, is there a lot of like the robotics in there as well? Like how does it compare to like? Yeah, the the, the plants move through the greenhouse from seeding to harvest. We use what's called a mobile gutter system. So literally the plants move. So it's very different, could not be more different than what you see in the field where you plant a seed in one location and it grows out. So yeah, we basically, you know, plant on one end of the greenhouse and the mobile gutters move, they stay space as the plants get bigger automatically. And that allows the perfect environment for the plant to grow. And then about day 24, day 25, we we harvest the plant, package it and get it in the stores within 24 to 36 hours. Gotcha. And it also reduces variability, right? So if there's a drought, you could add more water to it so then you can keep them constantly. I mean, we store the water from all rain events, so we never run out of water for all the obvious reasons. Farmers can't run out of water, Tony. Right. Not good. So in the case of drought were backed up with municipal water

[4:03]systems that are human grade drinking water. And so we always have backup and and so from that standpoint, you know, we're never concerned about running out. So. So what are like the trade-offs between field lettuce and controlled environment agriculture lettuce then? Well, I started it and I was motivated by work that Cornell had done in this area. There was a professor who's no longer with us now named Lou Albright, and he coined the term peri, urban agriculture, right? And what he meant by that, that the perimeters of all urban areas were traditionally farms. Now they're suburbs, right? So returning of those areas with very different production systems than growing in the soil. Like I am 30 times as productive per acre in growing output in my greenhouses than a field farmer. But you are returning those perimeters of urban areas called Perry urban agriculture back to their traditional role to feed the city. So when I got started 1011 years ago, virtually 100% of the lettuce to that people were eating in North America were grown in two valleys over 3000 miles away from from where I live outside of Boston, Salinas, CA and Yuma, AZ. So the idea of eating fresh lettuce, it was just simply not possible that lettuce was grown there and then transported across the country, which took a number of days. So therefore, the whole idea of fresh lettuce, forget about that. Then we would get it, get into distribution and buy the product 789 days after it was harvested. And you contrast that with what I do harvest seven days a week, package deliver, get it into the store within 24 to 36 hours and let the consumer enjoy truly fresh, fresh lettuce, which they were really unable to do prior. That's why that would come all the way from California. So I do like expand into like Tennessee that then you're able to service Tennessee as well within 24 hours. Yeah. You mean we serve the Southeast and market, which is really

[6:03]expanding. But if you think about like that business model that was in place 1011 years ago and still dominates today, what California and Arizona don't have is water, right? A lettuce leaf is about 95% water. So they're using groundwater. That groundwater is a non renewable natural resource, pumping it out of the ground, growing lettuce. And in effect, when you're eating lettuce from the West Coast, you're drink, you're eating, you're drinking the water that was transported across the country in the form of a lettuce leaf so that we can have lettuce. So I just thought that there was a better way to do it. And and that's what we've been able to demonstrate with Little Leaf Farms with with our approach right now, we're the fastest growing packaged salad brand in the country and and we're the the number 4 leading brand of packet salad in the United States. That's incredible. So so, so, so then like you're the, the rainwater also drops in Tennessee as well. So the rainwater in Tennessee. Over 4 / 4 feet of 48 inches of rain there, and that's millions and millions of gallons of water that falls out of the sky for free, right? So we just capture that and very practically use it. And that's the other reason why we like greenhouses, because in addition to the water that falls out of the sky for free, we also have the sun. You know, there has been an advent recently of what they call vertical farming, which, you know, the idea around that was having multiple layers and build vertical farms in urban areas to basically, you know, feed people in the city. For the most part, it has failed. It was actually the brainchild of a Columbia University professor Dixon to Spammy and of course, what does Columbia know about agriculture compared to Cornell right. So I listened to Lou Albright. I listened, you know, was educated at Cornell and their approach was Perry urban agriculture using high tech greenhouses and and and that strategy has proven out to be successful. If you like map out like the like the cost of like growing

[8:05]it, the cost of farming it, like taking care of the plant, like the control environment agriculture changed like the financial statement of like a farm like how? I'm basically operating right now 70 acres of high tech greenhouses. So my cost of production is on the East Coast comparable to the West Coast products delivered to the East Coast. Remember, they have huge transportation costs to transport that LED us thousands of miles and it also, you know, uses up, you know, time and so you don't get fresh product as a result. So not only am I comparably priced, but I'm also higher quality. Was there like a technology shift that made it possible to do or was it just like a? You needed you needed to do it at scale. You know, basic economics, economies of scale, if that makes sense. But you need to do it in a very automated way, like our greenhouses. You walk into them, you won't see any people. You'll just see millions and millions of plants of lettuce and and then we run seven days a week and then we're able to manage our costs so that we're comparable to the West Coast product, even though, you know, building our greenhouses are quite expensive. So there's big investment. We've invested many millions of dollars to build our greenhouses, but as far as cost to production, we're comparable to the West Coast product. Gotcha SO. Much higher quality and much more fresh. Yeah, so labor costs would go down and then also the transportation costs would go down. But then, yeah, okay, What are the costs that go up on the, I guess, greenhouses? You have to build the greenhouse. It's capital, you need to have the capital investment to upfront to build the greenhouse. And you know at the scale that we are that's, that's a that's a multi $1,000,000 investment. So that that is the trade off. But you know, from the standpoint of, you know, the unit economics and the operating costs quite competitive. Gotcha. That makes sense. So the automation with the greenhouse too, did you have to design it yourself or were there like already components where

[10:07]you could use to design? Yeah, what we. Did we were the designer of the overall greenhouse? When you look at how to build a successful greenhouse, you need to have the automated growing system, you need to be able to manage the climate, right? And then you also need to manage your irrigation and fertigation system, right? And then So what we did is that we worked with vendors who we felt were the best in the world and what they respectively did. And then we designed the overall facility, integrated the different technological components together. And the result has been we have the, you know, highest performing greenhouses in super. And then like does the same greenhouse in New York, in Boston, because we shift to like Tennessee and that would work there as well because. Yeah, you have different climates. Greenhouses are tied to the climate that you operate in. So, so that you have to understand that because you're trying to, you know, clearly have the climate not deviate inside the greenhouse no matter what the temperature is outside. So that means, for instance, in in Massachusetts, we're heating in the winter time and we're pulling in the summertime because we want our plants to not know the difference, right? We're trying to control that environment so the plants can just grow and, you know, and be happy. Yes. So there's a temperature, there's humidity as well I like. We manage everything. We manage temperature, we manage humidity, we manage CO2 levels in the greenhouse, all of that, you know, year round, 24/7. Are you with demands the sun as well? Like how much sun delight this gets as well. Yeah, ironically, you know, this time of year, you know, come late spring into summer, there's actually too much sun. So we have sunscreens that we literally, yeah, we, we, we don't need all the sun. So what we do is we block about 25% of it. And that also deflects and doesn't allow the thermal energy to come in because again, the sun offers 2 benefits, right? And, but it depends on what time of year it is. It is the thermal energy. So we'll help heat the greenhouse. That's really important, three of The Four Seasons of the year.

[12:09]But during summertime, we don't need that thermal energy, but we want the photosynthetic energy and those are different wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum that you get from the sun. So we use screening techniques to basically let what we want in from the sun and not let other parts that we don't want from the sun in particular now, which is the infrared and and thermal energy of the sun. Is that because the lettuce might not like it or might get like sunburned or might get what? Happened is that, you know, I mean the greenhouse effect, right? Shortwave radiation comes down into the atmosphere, bounces off the Earth, long wave, and a portion of that thermal energy is kept, which is why there's life on on planet Earth. A greenhouse is a microcosm of that. Shortwave radiation comes down through the glass, bounces off the ground, comes back as long wave, and then you capture in a greenhouse some of that thermal energy. So again, yeah, so in the summertime, that's too much. So that's why we we block a portion of the Suns energy because we don't need it, right. But then that's not true in the fall, the winter and the spring where we're looking for the, you know, the benefits of thermal energy in addition to the photosynthetic spectrum that you get from the sun. That makes sense. This is like you're like the College of Engineering and there's like Mechanical Engineers to do robots. There's also like biological engineer to choose like the right lettuce. There's like chemical engineer I guess for the water that goes in in the thing. Like how much of the innovation was in each individual discipline I mean. What we do, it's, it's, it's really a merger of engineering because if you didn't know what we were doing, you would think we're a manufacturing operation. But we're a farmer, right? And that's biology. And you need to understand plants, right? And so therefore the merger of what we've done, I think better, as good as anybody, if not better, is merging the environment to optimize the biology of the plants that we grow and engineer the systems so that the IT is done at the most

[14:12]cost efficient manner, right? You know, incorporating automation and all of that. So biologists and engineers, they don't always think alike and that's that's always an interesting challenge in getting them to work together for the common good. But I think we've done that pretty. Well, gotcha, that makes sense. How did you decide? Like if you designed the greenhouse, do you operate the greenhouse as well? Like how do you decide like? Our business model is very simple. We're design, build, don't operate right. We design it, we build it, we own it and we operate it right and under a grow package and market business model, right. So we do not produce any kind of private label product, only little leaf farms. And I'm so thankful we did that because now with this Cyclospora event sweeping the country, we've gone out very publicly and said our product is clean, our product is OK to eat. We've explained how we, you know, disinfect the water, how we don't spray anything on our lettuce, how we control the environment, how people are not in contact with the product because it's an automated system. So I'm so thankful that we, we, we kept our label out there so people know they have a, an option for truly safe lettuce. Yeah, that makes sense. So you control the whole channel all the way to the consumer? Yeah, exactly. That makes sense. Do you sell like direct to consumer as well with like a website sales? No, no. We basically go through food service distributors that then resell the product to restaurants and institutions. I think Cornell, hopefully they, they carry our lettuce and also we sell directly to the grocery stores. Gotcha, gotcha. That's because then the grocery store has like storage places for it to keep going. The hip. Distribution centers that we ship to and then from their distribution center, they deliver daily to the grocery stores. That makes sense, but you control the greenhouse because it's like hard to operate. So the farmer who's used to open field lettuce, they wouldn't Totally different. Totally different. It's almost as different as night and day. Gotcha. Gotcha. So you have to operate it yourself as. Yeah, exactly. Yep.

[16:13]That's really interesting. And then when you're choosing which states to go to, do you choose it based on the criteria for the certain model? Well, I started in Massachusetts. I mean, right now Boston is the farthest East Coast city from the West Coast. So therefore we had the I call the not the benefit, but the opposite of that. We had the problem of getting the least fresh lettuce from the West Coast, right. So it just made sense to start here. This is also where I live throughout the business model. And then we, you know, we we have a lot of traction in the greater Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. So the next place was Northeast Pennsylvania and McAdoo, Pennsylvania. And then now we have a lot of growth down in the Southeast and the Midwest and Tennessee is a really good location to service those two markets. And that all has the transportation costs from California, so that costs a lot. So they all share the. Of course, yeah. And I mean, we're up against the West Coast right now. Controlled environment, leafy greens like 10-11 years ago was closer to 0 than 1% of the market. Now it's over 8% of the market. So there's been a lot of growth over the last 10 years, but that means 92%, you know, is still supplied by the West Coast field growers, right? And that's Salinas, that's Yuma and that's also they have Mexican production. So we think there's a lot of room to grow. And you know, what we have seen is the model of greenhouse tomatoes. 30 plus years ago, greenhouse tomatoes were single digits as far as the percentage of the market. And then because it was a better product, tastier and appeared better. Now certain tomato varieties are 60 to 80% of the market. So the market has really shifted to CEA greenhouse grown and I think we're in the early days of seeing that same transition with leafy greens. Incredible. So the tomatoes that were grown before, did that use the same technology as the lettuce? What made it tomato? I mean, it went from field grown

[18:14]tomatoes, right? And what happened is that oftentimes they were picked green and ethylene gassed, right? You know, so that you just didn't have the same flavor where in a greenhouse grown tomato, they're able to sort of get it ripe on the vine and then pick that and get it into the store. So you know, anybody who knows anything about tomatoes, you'd rather eat a vine ripened tomato than a green tomato that's been ethylene gassed to force it to ripen in effect artificially. So I think the product quality was better and the consumers voted with their pocketbook and I think the same, I think the same thing is going to happen. We're in the early innings now of leafy greens. And then that's because the tomato was closer to the consumer. So within the day they. Built a network of tomato greenhouses throughout the North America and that allowed them to basically ripen the tomatoes on the vine and then ship it to the consumer closer. Right. So when you first started, like how did you choose the lettuce then? Like why not tomatoes? Why not some other? Why did tomatoes? I started a company called Backyard Farms. I built a 42 acre about tomato greenhouse in in Madison, ME. So I'd already done tomatoes and I thought that no one had figured out leafy greens. The only greenhouse production was head lettuce. And you know, and I felt it was a better opportunity to focus on the baby leaf because you could grow different varieties and cut them and blend them as compared to you grow a head of lettuce. You cut a head of lettuce, you sell a head of lettuce, right? So the market was growing more in the baby leaf area. The consumers were more, they like the flavor, they like the appearance, the texture. So I said, OK, that had not been figured out when I, when I had started. And so I said, this is a real opportunity to, to, to do something unique. And if you're successful, you can potentially disrupt the status quo, which I, I think we are in the early stages of doing. Interesting.

[20:14]But you know, what attracted me was that no one had figured this opportunity out yet, and that was a big challenge. So you already had your backyard farms, or you're growing tomatoes, so you understood how the greenhouses work. Yeah, but I mean growing tomatoes, I mean the old, the old saying apples and oranges, tomatoes and and lettuce, for instance, totally different other than they are both inside of a greenhouse. But the production systems could not be more different. What causes like the difference? Like a tomato needs sunlight and. It's a very, very, very different crop, right? A tomato is grown a it's a vine tomato and that tomato is in the greenhouse upwards of 7-8, even nine months. And then you are getting a fruit set a week so that you know the old proverb of picking the low hanging fruit and then what happens then you're keeping that plant producing for many, many months inside of a greenhouse. You're growing the plant so that the fruit can be harvested off the plant, right? When you grow lettuce, we're harvesting in 2425 days, we're not growing a fruit, we are harvesting the entire plant, right, talking the leafy green. So it's just very, very different production system, very different crops. Familiar with both and so I can you know, I understand the fundamental differences in production based on what I did with Backyard Farms and which was the tomato greenhouse business I built and of course Little Leaf, which is the leafy green business. So like a tomato, you have to like pick it each one and that's. They're handpicked, handpicked. They're for the labor and the crop care and all of that stuff. The amount of Labor you need in a tomato greenhouse is, is enormous. And that was also I, I was attracted by the ability to automate more in lettuce and then minimize the need for all that labor, which you know is, is difficult at times to find. So the baby lettuce, you just take it and you just pop in the

[22:16]classic. Yeah, the gutters, the gutter, they're grown in gutters, mobile gutter system. And the gutters, when we're ready to harvest, they're LED out of the greenhouse on conveyors directly to a automated cutting machine. And then conveyors bring it to packaging. And so, Tony, next time you're in the Boston area, you know, as an engineer, I think you'd appreciate what we do. Come out on business. It's unique in the world. Yeah. That's incredible. So like the even though the way that lettuce is, it's simpler to package, simpler to take out well. It makes it different, right? Complexity is there. It's just very, very different. And to do anything really well, you know, it's complicated, right? And yeah, but, you know, I mean, it's very different production systems other than they can both be grown in greenhouses, leafy greens and tomatoes. So, so well, like when you first started, like, what were like the difficulties you face? Was it like the lettuce didn't come out big enough or the lettuce start dying? Yeah, you, you have to do all the things that a business has to do if it's going to succeed, right? It starts with your production system and your technology and expecting that you're going to get certain, you know, performance and then yield, right? Yield's very important in production agriculture. And then you have to build the team, right? You've got to build, you know, all the people that share in the vision and are aligned and all growing in the same direction. So combination of the physical assets and then, and then the people and then ultimately you need, you need to find the customers who are going to buy the product. And, and you know, all the grocers do is they, they allow you to sell to the consumer, right. So if the consumer likes it, guess what great thing about the food business, they'll come back next week and buy more. And so, you know, that's what we've been able to do those those three things, our production system, our amazingly dedicated people and and then our customer relationships and we've been able to, you know, manage those three things so that we've built a successful business. That makes sense. So we're like the average

[24:16]consumer who eats the lettuce like when they're at the self like buying groceries like how do they decide to pick little Leaf farm Buttus A. Lot of it is kind of word of mouth. Sometimes we might have a promotion going and incentivize the consumer to buy. And then ultimately from there it has to be a good eating experience. It's the food business. So if you don't and if a customer does not have a great eating experience, you're not going to get them back as a repeat, right. And you know, we started very modestly, you know, in New England with some local, you know, grocers here in New England and and now we're in 8000 grocery stores in half the United States. So I think the cut the consumer has spoken. They like our product. And they would tell their friends about the product and. Then we produce, we produce, we produce millions of packages a week. Well, it's like an eating experience. Well, like they open it, they put it on a sandwich. Like what's the eating? Most people, of course, you can, you know, use it on a sandwich, but also, I mean, it's a salad. It's the major ingredient for a salad. And you know, that's I think is the primary use for our product and I think people have enjoyed our product versus the the West Coast. And a lot of that was for the reasons we discussed earlier, right? Just freshness and getting it into the store within 24 hours after harvest, right, which which the West Coast guys can never duplicate. Yeah, that makes sense. They have to travel over the country. Yeah. And then, like, restaurants, how do you get like, restaurants to start using the lettuce as well? Yeah, We, we. Work through the food service distributors and and you know, we don't deliver to restaurants, but that's why we go through food service to distributors and then they then deliver that to the restaurant. And we have a amazing amount of like great restaurant and institutions that that buy our product and same benefits that the that the consumers at the retail grocery get, right. Better fresher, crisper, great, better taste, you know, just better than the West. Yeah. That makes sense. So This is why you it's so important that you differentiate yourself from those California

[26:18]letters that's causing all the disease. Correct. Absolutely. I mean we are night day different and you know that's why we've communicated that to the marketplace. The disease vectors are water in people and you know, we basically have designed those risks out of our system, just simply not possible. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then like the people would, then they would separate it out. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. And also, I mean, Cyclospora is derived from human waste. So the, the notion, yeah, the, the notion it's a parasite and the notion that, you know, human waste could ever come in contact with our lettuce, that is a just a totally foreign that would just never happen. So therefore you combine that with our disinfection process, then it's just, you know, our, our product is absolutely clean and safe to eat. Yeah, it's raining water that comes down, then UV treated, so then it's clean. Yeah, it's exactly possible to get the. That makes sense. Very, very cool. So onto your like overall career path. So you did entrepreneurship before this as well like. I've been I've been starting and building companies the last 40 years, so this is my latest little leaf farms. There were in agriculture before as well. I was involved with companies that I started in and built that were involved with the, the management of organic residuals, you know, including leaves, grass, brush, you know, animal manures. And then via sort of high tech composting, converting those, those raw organic materials into value add, you know, soil products and organic fertilizers. And, and it built companies by the name of Earth Grow, that was one of them that would then package that and sell it to garden centers. And ultimately the Scots Company, the big national player, bought that company. Wow, so, so like when you're going from like one company to the next company, like what what comes with you like experience, were you able to build like? You build on the experience, obviously, you know, lifetime learning, all of that, keep an open mind.

[28:19]And then, and then of course, there's some timeless things that you need to focus on if you're going to be successful. And it starts with, you know, getting the best people to come work with you. And I've been very fortunate in that regard. Like how did you or how were you able to get the best people to work with you? Well, they, they, you know, I believe that the key people, you know, have to be be aligned on economic incentives and they have to believe in what the company's mission and what the company is all about. For instance, little Leaf, you know, we defined why we exist as being part of the food system transformation by growing better food in a better way, right? And I think that kind of represents more of an existential, you know, belief that we're just not a grower of lettuce. That's what we do, right? But why we exist, it's a, it's a higher purpose. And I think it's very important to have, when people join you, they, they are aligned on that. And because, you know, I think that's very important from a motivation standpoint. Gotcha. So, so, so like when you're first starting, if you have a higher purpose, like how do you show that you have credibility in be in being able to achieve that purpose? Well, that's that's that's kind of like, you know, how you succeed, right, and day-to-day execution, you know, the focus on the quality of the product, right? Those are those are core values that you need to embrace if you're going to be successful, right? Great to have high minded, you know, goals and ideals, but it needs to be married with like incredible execution and a focus on the very best quality. And you have to do these things, you know, they're they're not mutually exclusive, right? If you're going to be a successful company, you need to be able to master that. Otherwise, doesn't matter how high minded your ideals are, if you don't combine that with like great execution, you will not be successful. Like like when you first started out, like how? Like what were like the first things you tried to execute on to start building that the ability like how do you? Well, I mean you, you know, when you firt, when I first started Little Leaf, I mean, I didn't

[30:20]know what I didn't know. And so that's why on purpose I started very small. We only built a 2 1/2 acre greenhouse. Now I have 70 acres. So I didn't know all the mistakes I was going to make. I didn't know what they were going to be. I didn't know what I didn't know. So therefore, you have to start at a scale that as you learn and said, Oh my God, why didn't we do it that way, that you're small enough to be able to incorporate those changes. And then I built my next 2 1/2 acres two years later. Then I built 5 acres two years after that. And then I've been building 10 acres a year ever since. And now at Tennessee, I'm building 20 acres at one time. So it's an iterative process. You have to learn along the way. And I'm so thankful I didn't have a lot of money to start because it forced me to really be disciplined and, you know, and, and, and, you know, go through the kind of school of Hard Knocks and, and then incorporate those learnings into our future. So there is like initially you're trying to figure out how like how to increase yield, how to get the cost. And optimize all those systems. That's correct. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then like that and that those initial batches too, you weren't like selling it either. You were still no. No, we were selling it, but you know, our yields were much lower than they are now. You know, our costs were much higher than they are now. And then you know, as we, you know, as we learn and say, OK, well this can be done better, this can be done better and you have a culture of continuous improvement. Then in turn you incorporate those learnings in and and then that's what we've been able to do quite successfully. Gotcha. So you're able to like even from the beginning, you're able to start generating revenue and selling the Yeah. Absolutely, yes, yeah, but not very productively, right. And again, we made a number of mistakes that that we were at a small enough scale, it was easy, easy to sort of fix. Then if then if I had gone massive scale from day one, that would have been a big mistake. Yeah, that's a big mistake. Yeah. So you have like the R&D phase and then once you have the R&D phase done, then you scale up more after.

[32:20]Yeah. We, I mean I would not call it R&D for I would say applied R&D because we built an operating greenhouse and we were selling, you know in the market selling products since 2016. But you know, we're just, we're just so much more efficient and so much, so much better now than we were back then. And it's because we've incorporated the learnings. And how do you balance your time between learning even more versus like scaling into like more locations like Tennessee? I mean, continuous improvement is a is a core value, right? So you always want to learn and incorporate those learnings in the next bill. And you know what we've learned is that people like our product, right? So we're going to be building out more capacity. I gave you the tomato analogy on what greenhouses and CEA have done. I think, I still think we're in the early innings on leafy greens and and we're gonna continue to build out capacity. Yeah, that makes sense. So for the closing question, I always ask the guest what what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you? Well. I mean, I have to the kindest thing that I mean, I don't know whether this would be defined as kind, but I've just had the opportunity to work with so many great people and the contribution of their time, you know, their, you know, their intellectual horsepower, their work ethic, their passion, whether that could be defined as kind or not, I'll leave that to others. But you know, the the I'm so grateful that I've worked with so many great people over my career. Super, thanks for sharing.