Executing the Digital Game Plan with Bluebird Grain Farms
What does it take to grow a successful organic food business while building meaningful customer relationships, embracing digital marketing, and staying true to your mission?
Meet Brooke Lucy, Co-Founder of Bluebird Grain Farms, a family-owned organic grain farm in Washington State dedicated to bringing nutritious ancient grains and wholesome food products to customers across the country.
Join Curt Anderson and Damon Pistulka for an inspiring conversation with Brooke about how Bluebird Grain Farms is executing the B2Btail Digital Game Plan to strengthen customer relationships, expand its digital presence, and uncover exciting opportunities for growth.
Discover how Brooke and the Bluebird team are:
Executing the Digital Game Plan to identify ideal customers and create new growth opportunities
Leveraging digital marketing, SEO, and educational content to attract and connect with customers
Building stronger relationships with wholesale buyers, retailers, and loyal customers
Sharing their passion for organic farming, ancient grains, and sustainable agriculture
Exploring creative strategies, partnerships, and new opportunities to grow their business
Brooke also shares valuable lessons from her entrepreneurial journey, including the importance of perseverance, building authentic relationships, and continuously adapting in a competitive marketplace.
Whether you’re a manufacturer, entrepreneur, food producer, or business leader, this conversation is packed with practical insights on turning a digital marketing strategy into meaningful action.
Get ready to be inspired by Brooke Lucy and discover how Bluebird Grain Farms is putting the Digital Game Plan into action!
Get your FREE Digital Game Plan and put your strengths to work.
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Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:01
Hey Damon, how are you, brother? What’s going on, man?
Damon Pistulka 00:03
I’m doing great, Curt, and I am so excited for our show today.
Curt Anderson 00:08
Oh my goodness gracious! I, dude, I didn’t sleep a wink last night, man. It’s we’re ready for Stop Being the Best Kept Secret with our dear friend, the one, the only Brooke Lucy. Brooke, how are you today?
Brooke Lucy 00:19
Thanks, guys. Doing great, thank you. Good to be here.
Curt Anderson 00:23
We are absolutely thrilled. What a dear friend! We have so much to discuss, man. And I don’t. We were just talking off offline. We we we just had a wonderful discussion. Even
Damon Pistulka 00:31
more.
Curt Anderson 00:32
But Brooke, you know what, Damon? I’m going old school, dude. I can’t help myself. I have Brooke. We have a little question that we’d like to ask, and so Damon, we’re I’m I’m going there. So, Brooke, when you were a little girl growing up, when you were a little girl growing up, who was your hero? Who did you look up to? Who just like worshiped the ground that you walked on? Who was your hero as a little girl walk girl? Oh
Brooke Lucy 00:53
my gosh! You know what? This is kind of funny, but it’s so so true. I loved Little House on the Prairie, the books. No, I wanted to be Laura Ingalls. Laura
Curt Anderson 01:05
Ingalls, yeah, I knew you. I
Brooke Lucy 01:06
did. I wanted to be like traveling across the country on a wagon. I do not know why, but I loved her. Yeah, and I love the story. Yeah,
Curt Anderson 01:16
Laura, isn’t that a great answer? And so, hey, and we might as well go there. Tell us what you did the first semester at college?
Brooke Lucy 01:22
Oh, at Prescott College, yeah, yeah. I backpacked for 2022 days through the Grand Canyon.
Curt Anderson 01:30
22 days through the Grand Canyon. That’s how you start your semester, Damon. Yeah, I know, I know. Like I was doing something completely different in college. We won’t go there, but you know. So hey, what an awesome, wonderful, amazing experience! So, Brooke, we have a ton to cover in a short period of time, and so do us a favor. You are the the founder, I’m CEO extraordinaire of Bluebird Grain Farms, just this wonderful, incredible company. Tell us a little bit about the company, and tell us tell us a little bit about Bluebird and how do you and Sam, your husband, your amazing, wonderful husband, how do the two of you make the world a better place?
Brooke Lucy 02:06
Oh well, good question. Let’s see. Well, Bluebird Grain Farms is a it’s a certified organic farm. We are a food manufacturer and a food brand, and we’re based in Winthrop, Washington, and that’s North Central Washington. And for over 20 years, my husband Sam and I, we’re a husband-wife team. We have been working to bring essentially nutrient-dense, ancient, and heritage grains to the American table. And really, at the heart of what we do is a very simple belief: the way we care for the land, and that we care the way we nourish ourselves, we are deeply connected. Those two things are go together. So we work under the premise: when we build healthy soil, protect biodiversity, and grow diverse crops, we’re also creating opportunities for people to eat more varied, nutritious diet, and yeah,
Curt Anderson 03:08
all sorts of wonderful things going on here. So, and do us a favor, guys, connect with Brooke on LinkedIn. We’re going to be pulling up her website. You want to go to Bluebird Bluebird Grain Farms? Check out her website. She has wonderful, incredible food. Yeah, but let’s go back in time. You mentioned 20 years ago. What was going on 20 years ago that you and Sam started this this wonderful, incredible venture, this entrepreneurial journey together? What was happening 20 years ago?
Brooke Lucy 03:33
Yeah, well, Sam and I really got inspired by the local food movement in the late 1990s. Farmers markets were kind of popping up all over the West Coast, and people were beginning to ask and demand, really, you know, where is their food coming from? And there was such a like amazing energy happening on the West Coast from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, bringing farmers markets to communities. But we noticed something was missing. You could buy beautiful vegetables, fruit, meat, cheese, but where were the pantry staples? I wasn’t seeing any grains being offered, and so it made us really start thinking about. Wait a minute, we’re living in one of the largest wheat-producing states in the country, and we couldn’t source local grains, so that kind of led us into this deep dive of where where can we buy local grains? What varieties are there? And that led us into the just kind of this remarkable history of wheat. And there’s been over 25,000 varieties of wheat developed around the world. Yet our industrial food system has largely prioritized wheat for yield, uniformity processing, kind of industrial large-scale distribution. So we, yeah, we started discovering these ancient wheats like emmer, einkorn. Spell and some really amazing heritage varieties, which had essentially been feeding civilizations for 1000s of years, and we saw an opportunity to bring these grains back and give the give our community, our children, our friends access to more nutrient-dense, actually flavorful grains that that we essentially have lost.
Curt Anderson 05:27
That is wonderful. So now let’s let’s go here. So you’ve mentioned a couple different. You mentioned Emmer, Einkorn, Svelte. What for friends out there that aren’t are not familiar with ancient grains? Kind of give us like a one-on-one overview. What is an ancient grain? Why is it so important to our our food source as a food source?
Brooke Lucy 05:47
Yeah. So essentially, the ancient wheats kind of our refer our what defines them is that they haven’t been genetically changed or hybridized very much. So they still contain their husk or their whole farro is a term for ancient whole wheat, and that’s an Italian term. And so there’s essentially three primitive wheats still on the market that haven’t. I mean, Emmer and Einkorn are two of the varieties that really have not been hybridized to for industrial agriculture, spelt is a little bit different, and they’re really the earliest domesticated wheats. Einkorn is this is the mother grain. It is like the genetic material that all grains have have come from, and and emmer is its child essentially. It einkorn bred with a wild grass to create emmer, and then spelt came out of that. And out of these three wheats, kind of all branched all of our modern wheat.
Curt Anderson 06:50
Wow!
Brooke Lucy 06:50
Yeah, and what’s exciting that each of these grains, each of these ancient wheats, just offers its own nutritional characteristic in cooking or baking, and they are just so high in protein, high in minerals and other nutrients that modern industrialized wheat just simply doesn’t have.
Damon Pistulka 07:11
So when you talk about that, so so like just like modern hybridized wheat, you know, industrialized wheat compared to one of the other grains, what like protein difference, what’s a what’s a difference in them?
Brooke Lucy 07:23
Yeah, so essentially, what’s so unique about these ancient weeds is, I mean, they are just this the this pure genetic material. There, there’s einkorn has 28 chromosomes, or I’m sorry, einkorn has 14 chromosomes. Emmer has 28 chromosomes. Most modern wheats have been so heavily hybridized; they’re they’re more complex, and they they start around 62 chromosomes and can go up from there.
Damon Pistulka 07:51
Oh, okay. So
Brooke Lucy 07:52
that’s kind of a good way to just kind of think about its genetic material. You know, like they’re just very simple, and I like to call them, yeah, they’re they’re wild. They’re primitive, and it’s it’s when we talk about protein, ancient wheats just naturally have high protein. Our emmer has eight grams of protein per serving. Einkorn has 11 grams of protein per serving, and we are seeing the pro that protein climb. The more we dig into, like, make sure our soils are just at optimum health, we see those that protein really staying true. Whereas when when soils get depleted, you lose some of that protein content. Yeah, can’t quite the plant can’t take up and and convert convert the nutrients into proteins. So, yeah, I mean I could keep going on and on about the protein, but what’s different, Damon, is so industrialized grains have really been focused on their the they’ve been hybridized for yields and efficiency because we’re we’re we’re farming on this vast amount of farmland, and the industrial revolution really pushed us into this large-scale, huge commodity agricultural system, and so flavor nutrition were not the priority. It was really about how how well we could you know how could we harvest 1000s and 1000s of acres of the same variety. So most modern wheat, the the protein and the like the gluten and the protein usually go together. So the high protein, high gluten. That’s what’s so different with these ancient wheats. These ancient wheats have very high protein, but just a trace of gluten, and so that difference there it like is has a whole nother nutritional like digest and digestion yeah yeah factor that’s very real, and that’s my customers are are people who are very sensitive to wheat but tend to do. Really well with these ancient wheats.
Damon Pistulka 10:02
That’s a huge thing because I can’t tell you how many people I know that are gluten intolerant or have had to cut gluten completely out of their diet. And if you could have the same benefits of wheat without the gluten content, that’s a huge benefit.
Brooke Lucy 10:15
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh.
Curt Anderson 10:18
Very and and more more nutritious for you, so let’s. So, Brooke, just I love doing a little show and tell, right? So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to pull up your website and let’s talk about some of the products, and then folks can get a visual because, like, you know, again, if this is new to our friends out there, I was just telling, I was just telling my wife the other night, I’m like, man, I’m from like you’re like a master class on like healthy eating, and and like I feel like I’m I do decent, but then after talking to you, I’m like, man, I got a long way to go. So like, we’re we’re she and I we’re gonna level
Brooke Lucy 10:47
up.
Curt Anderson 10:47
We’re gonna be sharpening up our our our status here. But let’s let’s go to the website, and all right, we can see that perfect, Brooke. Let’s take just share a little bit to give us a little tour of some of the product here at Bluebird Grain Farms.
Brooke Lucy 11:00
Yeah. So our our primary focus is ancient and heritage wheats, and so everything on our site is either an ancient one of the ancient wheats or a an heritage grain. So let’s go to our very number one bestseller. It’s that Emmerfaro right there, right to the in the middle to the right. Right there. There you go. Yeah, I got it. Yeah. So that is just this is our work. What we call our workhorse. This is Bluebird’s number one seller. It’s what we have spent years like building our own seed stock and bringing this to the American market. Most farro has historically been imported from Italy, and so we felt like wow, there’s a niche there to make a domestic product right here in the United States. So we’re quite proud of that. And really, the biggest difference, other than the some of the the genetic varietals of Emmer, we we really pride ourselves in not pearling our grain, we keep all of our grains are whole grains, and that’s really to pass the nutrition onto our customers. Because as you can see, I’m kind of crazy about making sure we’re we’re feeding nutritious food. So yeah, and what’s so beautiful about Emmer is the versatility. So you can cook it like a rice or quinoa. So it’s it’s a you know many people have heard of farro. This is a this is a whole grain farro cooked. You can cook it on the stove top in a pressure cooker, rice cooker. It does take a while to cook, but the time you take in cooking, you save on the back end because it keeps its chewy texture over a lot of hold time, and it makes amazing grain bowls. Wonderful, wonderful for like risotto style dishes, stir fries. I mean, it’s basically any any. It can be a great replacement to any starch.
Curt Anderson 13:02
Yeah, and folks can purchase right here on the website. And the cool thing is, you’ve got your different sizes. So depending on where you, if you’re a restaurant or you’re going for more quantity, you can service those. If you’re just DIY or cooking at home, you can get a smaller pack. So, Brooke, talk a little bit about like what’s the the thought behind you know like some of the bigger customers that you deal with like restaurants folks are buying like more larger quantities
Brooke Lucy 13:28
yeah so we do large volumes even truckloads of this product and my customer there is mostly people either in food service or adding it to an ingredient and what I love, like in the Pacific Northwest, if you are in a natural food deli in the Pacific Northwest and you see a farro salad, you’re most likely eating our emmer in that farro salad. So some of our customers are the folks that are prepping salads for food service and delis, and what they love about this grain is literally they’re cooking large batches, so 50 pounds, you know, making mass volumes of grain salads, and it and the longer it sits and absorbs the like the dressing, the better the salad gets. So it doesn’t go mushy like a rice.
Speaker 1 14:21
Yeah. So
Brooke Lucy 14:22
our customers are yeah making sal grain salads or adding it to yeah menus served with meat or protein. You pair this grain with a another like another protein or a chickpea, and you’re getting like a healthy source of protein.
Curt Anderson 14:38
Right. Right. So it’s a powerful dish right there. What um again like great selection of products. What’s another product that we want to take a look at?
Brooke Lucy 14:46
Yeah, let’s see. Um, why don’t you go down? So there’s our einkorn right next to it, which is actually if you’re just to the the left. Yeah, if you click on that, and yeah. Yeah, so we have a trademark for Inca, which is really one of the issues that I won’t go into too much in this call. But what we are finding in in the market is people are really taking these grains are starting to get hybridized. So, for example, a lot of spelt has been hybridized fresh out of its hole, and so spelt. There are varieties of spelt that have lost its ancient grain integrity. They’re not a true ancient grain anymore because they’ve been hybridized extensively for industrial purposes. So we’re watching this happen, and we thought, okay, we’re going to trademark Inca just so that people understand when they buy an Inca product, it is a single-origin, true variety of Einkorn wheat. Always organic, never, never processed, never hybridized, and not blended. Most wheat is blended with multiple different grains so that they can stretch, stretch the grain or meet a certain protein content. So, and so, this is an einkorn wheat again. Similar application of emmer. You can cook it like a rice, but it’s totally different beast. It’s more of a delicate. I call it my sensitive child. You know, it’s it’s it’s finicky, a little bit trickier to to to work with, but it’s beloved as a grain for baking, mostly mostly because of the low gluten. I mean, this grain hardly has just any gluten, very low glycemic index. But look at the protein; it’s 11 grams of protein
Damon Pistulka 16:36
per
Brooke Lucy 16:36
serving, and that’s our einkorn. Most einkorn I see on the market is not that high, so I really attribute that to our regenerative and organic farming practices. So, but this is a beautiful grain. Again, you can cook it like a rice or quinoa. It’s soft. It has half the cook time as emmer. It it or you mill it into flour for just this beautiful low gluten flour, and it performs like a soft white wheat.
Curt Anderson 17:06
Nice, awesome, and man, 11 grams of protein that is a powerful punch right there. Yeah, it is. And and I want to you tell a wonderful story. I want to. How about can I get down here to this product? You have a wonderful story about a trip to Italy, and oh yeah, can you share a little bit about what what’s going on here? Do I have the right product here for your your Italy story? So tell tell the folks your story here.
Brooke Lucy 17:32
Yeah, so let’s see. When I was a sophomore in college, I spent a semester living with a host family in Italy, and we ate this amazing porridge every morning. And I, you know, at 21, I didn’t really know what what it was, or didn’t have the foresight to really like do a deep dive in what I was eating. But it wasn’t until I was back in the United States, you know. 10 years later, we’re looking at growing these ancient grains, and it dawned on me that what I was eating in Italy was a cracked faro porridge, and this is just the most nourishing, unbelievably like sweet, nutty hot cereal. I call it my healthy version of cream of wheat. And what I loved about it in Italy is like they cooked it warm, you know, as a like a porridge, and served it either sweet or savory. So we would put Parmesan cheese on it, like add sauteed onions even for the morning. So I love that, but this product really was inspired by that because you go to the the breakfast category on the grocery in the grocery aisle, and 90% of those grains are oats. Which I love oats, but you know what? We need diversity in our diet. We we Americans want diversity, and we need more fiber, and we need natural protein. So this really was my entry into accessing, getting all right my product out for just everyone to try. Everyone knows how to cook oatmeal. So if you can cook oatmeal, you can you can cook this.
Curt Anderson 19:19
Yeah, that’s that’s about all I can cook, Damon. Is oatmeal, so I’m I’m I’m on board here. So,
Brooke Lucy 19:25
yeah, you don’t even have to cook it. You can do it overnight style. It it does great for like overnight oat concept.
Curt Anderson 19:31
Yep. So, Brooke, any uh hit tell us a little bit of any of the other products that we can pull up here to share with folks.
Brooke Lucy 19:39
Let’s see. So we, we have kind of three different camps. We have our breakfast, ancient grain breakfast line, which is the what we just went over the crack frail porridge, old world cereal blend, and then I have my what I call my pantry staples. So when you’re thinking about the grocery category. We’ve got our whole grains, and I have a couple of blends. And I’d love to point out if you go down to my Inca and lentil blend, I just wanted to show you kind of a cool. So right there, there’s Inca and lentils, and this is basically our whole grain Einkorn and a French lentil that has the same cook time. And I love this because look at the protein on this one. If you if you zoom in there,
Curt Anderson 20:28
1212 grams.
Brooke Lucy 20:29
Yeah. So this is like amazing, and this is just for a quarter cup serving, right? So you add like a meat or something else. This is just one of my favorite blends that I love. Again, just trying to think, get getting people to think we’ve got to get diversity in our diets. Let’s look at the fiber. 32% of your dietary fiber, and and this is just pure, clean, whole food. There’s nothing added. I’m not. I’m not adding. You know, any flavoring? It’s just trying to get people to think about instead of white rice, you can cook this. Yeah, and then you know, Curt, one other kind of specialty thing that we really just do for for our online customers and our B 2b customers is all of our flour is milled fresh to order, and I just really want to. That’s what really inspired this business: is wanting to deliver these fresh, flavorful grains that people truly have not experienced. And so we pride ourselves in kind of the quality turnaround time and getting fresh milled flour. So, for example, that like the organic Sonora Heritage soft white wheat flour in the upper right hand corner. This is like such a beautiful, amazing flour. I use it as like it’s a it’s a whole grain flour, meaning the German, the brand is all there, but I use it like an all-purpose flour, and in cook cookies, muffins, just I’m making a soup. I’ll use it as a thickener, and just we mill everything to order. So when you put in an order, even if you’re a B2B customer, it’s it has it’s not sitting on the shelf and then shipped. The grain is sitting in our in our silos, and then we mill it for your order. So that’s something that really differentiates us from the big guys.
Curt Anderson 22:37
Yeah, and and I go ahead, Damon, please.
Damon Pistulka 22:40
Well, and you probably don’t even realize if you hadn’t had fresh flour before the difference between what you get that’s been in a warehouse for six months compared to what you just had milled last week.
Brooke Lucy 22:52
Exactly, and yeah, that’s my biggest like thing that I try to communicate to people is you got to try it, and you could just try baking with it. It performs a little differently. Everything we do is a whole grain flour, so you’re not going to get your classic AP flour from us, which is fine. That has its place in in the kitchen for sure. But this is, yeah, it’s about bringing flavor and nutrition into whatever you’re baking. It’s a higher price point than people are used to because most grains on the shelf are are commodity grains that we’re actually we don’t see the true price because our tax dollars pay it through subsidies so that’s what is one of the challenges as a small organic farm we do not get subsidies from the government so the cost of the the The price of the our products are the true cost of production, whereas you know commodity grains you do not see that true cost of production.
Curt Anderson 23:49
Yeah, yeah, and I and and I want to be mindful of time, Brooke. But and I’m going off script a little bit here. But the you know for a manufacturer, you can just like your passion is just so contagious, and just you know, your enthusiasm is just off the charts here for your product, your dedication to nutrition, good health. I mean, like, what a wonderful mission that you and Sam have taken on here to make the world a better place. I just, I want to hit. I, I wouldn’t forgive myself if we didn’t talk about the branding. Okay, yeah. You come in like, hey, we’re farmers, we’re manufacturers. You know, a lot of manufacturers. They bend metal. They cut steel. They make circuit boards. Like they don’t need to really have like a brand per se. Share a little bit on your vision. Like you’ve done a phenomenal job here with the image, the look, the logo, the the coolness with the bluebird. Talk a little bit about the branding and the the intention and thoughtfulness that went behind this.
Brooke Lucy 24:42
Well, you know, it’s just even our branding has been an organic work in progress, just like our grains. The branding is, yeah, that’s primarily been my job for the last 20 years: is building our brand, working with amazing graphic designers. That have helped like hone in my messaging and making sure that people know that there is variety on the market. Right, not all wheat is created equal. So I hope when people see my brand or when they they they start you know trying my products that they truly are thinking about nutrient dense, single origin, you know, high-quality grains that are accessible to to not only my direct-to-consumer but to businesses and even manufacturers.
Curt Anderson 25:34
Yeah, I love it. Just like the look, the font, the feel, just everything that you know. It just it just looks so inviting, so nutritious. Like it just really represents your brand, Damon. Anything that you want to share? Any thoughts that you want to? Nah,
Damon Pistulka 25:47
just this is like you said, Curt. This is a masterclass in understanding about you know alternative and and more healthy choices for us to make.
Curt Anderson 25:56
Yeah. So Brooke, let’s go here. So as your as we’ll start winding down. You know, again, like there’s a restaurant out there, and there there’s a chef, or like, hey, geez, we’re a little bit stale. We need something. We need a little bit of newness, or like we’re hearing, we need a little bit more nutrition, protein. What what’s a message that you would share for these folks out there that are like your distributors, your chefs out there, your restaurants? Anything that you want to share to those? Yeah,
Brooke Lucy 26:21
well, what I found over the 20 years, you know, we we can’t compete with the big big guys. We just can’t. And so, at the end of the day, the my best customers, people who are ultimately happy, are my B 2b businesses that know that their customers want a high-quality, consistent, beautiful, flavorful product. That’s where my product shines: is the the the restaurants, the people that want that fresh pancake. They want pancakes made with fresh milk flour because their customers notice the difference, or they want you know whole grain farro instead of brown rice because it’s just something a little bit different that that just differentiates their product from your standard, you know, food service item. And that’s one thing that I got to say in the food service world, which has been my challenge. I will say is, it’s it’s so hard to permeate, you know, those cheap prices. You know, I it’s so hard for me to compete with commodity commodity grains, but at the end of the day, when people try my product and then begin to think about, wow, I can use that split farro in a in a in a burrito wrap, or I can use that cracked farro porridge instead of oatmeal, and that’s that one signature item on my menu that’s going to hook people and keep them coming back. So yeah, it’s it’s really that that customer that really wants quality, consistency, and something unique and different.
Curt Anderson 27:50
Yeah, and I think the big thing I’m going to stop sharing here. The big thing is Damon. We always talk about that that wonderful book. I’m a huge disciple of that book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Yeah. And so the thing is, you know, it’s really as you’re as you’re mentioning, you know it’s hard to compete. However, you’re targeting a different customer, a different buyer persona. You’re like it’s like you’re in that blue ocean versus that bloody blue, you know, red ocean where everybody’s fighting for that commodity product. You have a separate product, and I think it’s uh. Hey, Damon, we got a couple of comments here that I missed.
Damon Pistulka 28:20
Yeah, we do. We’ve got Tom talking. Tom asking, “Love it says love the new bag.” And then we got someone else that says, “Do you currently ship worldwide?”
Brooke Lucy 28:29
Yeah, yes, we do ship worldwide in in larger volumes. But yes,
Curt Anderson 28:34
yeah, and that’s in in over the years you’ve shipped to Asia, you’ve shipped throughout North America, and so you’ve done a phenomenal job, Brooke. Let’s. I have one question for you that I’d love to ask. You and I and Damon, we are all connected through mutual friends of ours, our professional colleagues, the wonderful, amazing team at Impact Washington. Share a little bit how awesome it is working with Impact Washington. Can you share as a manufacturer? So for our friends out there, they’re like, “Hey, who’s Impact Washington?” So in all 50 states, there’s this organization called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the MEP. In the state of Washington, is Impact Washington. Brooke, you have the privilege of working with these folks. What’s your experience as a manufacturer working with Impact Washington?
Brooke Lucy 29:17
Yeah, yeah. Well, being both a producer and a manufacturer in a very large, you know, very rural part of Washington has been so rewarding, but also very lonely and challenging at times. Because we’re not like in this industrial district where we’re like, you know, seeing people and having coffee with people in manufacturing. We are a lone wolf where we live. Literally, there are no other manufacturers near us, probably within 50 square miles. So we’re a small team, and the reality is that when you run a business like ours, you have to wear a lot of hats. We’re, you know, like I said, farmers, manufacturers, food safety experts, marketers, salesperson, and it’s impossible to to be an expert at everything. So that’s where Impact Washington has become such an important resource and partner for us. They’ve helped us, like initially, they helped us bridge the gap by connecting us with people who have expertise with the SQF and food safety certification. That was our initial support with them. Introduce, you know, so that that was huge for us getting our SQF cert certification. Impact Washington gave us support there, and then in this most recent round, they introduced us to people like you, marketing professionals. I would have never been able to meet you guys without without Impact Washington, so they’re definitely providing a resource, a critical resource. You know, I our company is not. We don’t. We started this company just my husband and I out of nothing. We we didn’t inherit it. We didn’t inherit the land. We literally started from ground zero with $40,000 in cash. So they have helped us navigate some very tricky times in the market, and yeah, it’s just critical, just like the SBA, you know, to have resources like this for small entrepreneurial businesses and manufacturers.
Curt Anderson 31:16
Yeah, absolutely love it. So hey, sending a big shout out to our friends at Impact Washington, and we we are extremely grateful and honored and privileged to be part of your journey. So, couple quick questions for you, Brooke. What are you super excited about? We’re coming into like the future at Bluebird Green Farms. What is just really you can tell you feel your passion with your product. What are you excited about coming into the future here?
Brooke Lucy 31:43
Well, I do feel like the tide has turned. Like a lot of people understand and know the challenges that we’re faced with in this food industry, where there is there needs to be a shift. People need access to more nutrient-dense food. We need to start respecting the way food is grown. We need to, you know, organic is important to people. And so, I just would. I feel like we’re at this pivotal time where our challenge is getting the message out. But I also feel like we’re all queued up to go, so I just need to find that that those few key buyers that truly value that quality, and that’s what I’m excited about. Is like marketing, pitching my product. We have the inventory; we’re ready to deliver. It’s just like really finding those key partners that are willing to help us scale up,
Curt Anderson 32:41
yeah, this is phenomenal. And so, and I’ll I’ll give I’ll shout this out. And then, if you want to fill in, first off, connect with Brooke on LinkedIn. Do yourself a favor; she puts out wonderful. So, if you want recipes, if you want ideas for home, maybe you’re you’re a little stale at home, and you need some freshness and some great nutrition. Check out the Bluebird Grains Farm website, and you have a webinar coming up, Brooke, on november 19. Why don’t you give a shout out to the webinar?
Brooke Lucy 33:08
Yeah, thank you for the reminder. I haven’t even put out the marketing yet, but I am. I have a webinar coming up with Maria Speck, who’s a cookbook author. She’s wrote written several quick cookbooks. She recently published a cookbook called Baking with Ancient Grains. She is just a true professional in cooking and baking with ancient ancient grains. So we have a webinar coming up on the 19th at 3o’clock. It’s free. Just talking about baking with ancient ancient grains, mostly emmer, einkorn, and spelt. And yeah, looking forward to bringing my my community. I have over 30,000 subscribers on our our newsletter, so that’s a great resource for people to subscribe to my newsletter. I send out a recipe once a once a month, and my husband, the farmer, gives gives some farmer notes and a little perspective on actually what’s happening in the field. So, yeah, looking forward to that coming up.
Curt Anderson 34:05
That’s awesome. Be part of the 30,000 community again. Stop by the website bluebirdgrainfarms.com. Check out the website. Sign up for the newsletter. Got an exciting webinar coming up. All sorts of wonderful things. Brooke, my last question. We’re gonna we’re gonna close out on this. Ready? I’m throwing a curveball at you. No.
Brooke Lucy 34:23
What is it?
Curt Anderson 34:24
Ready. What is the best business advice that you’ve ever received, and or that you would like to pass along, or maybe that you wish you would received when you and Sam started 20 years ago? But what’s the best business advice that you would love to pass along to a new young entrepreneur? What are your thoughts there?
Brooke Lucy 34:42
Well, I mean, this has changed a little bit in recent times, but the best business advice is: if you are not profitable, you do not have a business. So you you have to be you have to organize your business to be profitable, and at the end of. That comes with a lot of very very hard decisions and and and sometimes compromises with your passions. As an entrepreneur, you know I’m the creator. I’m the creative one, and it’s really hard to like pull back. And so my my challenge right now is just focusing on what we do best and really trying to yeah make make the items that I know we do best keep my company alive and viable for our 10 amazing employees. It’s got to be profitable.
Curt Anderson 35:30
Got to be drop the mic right there, Damon. Your Damon, your thoughts? What do what do what do you think as we close? No, it’s just been
Damon Pistulka 35:36
great talking with you today, Brooke, and learning so much about the ancient grains. Learning how I mean even even to the point of how the preparation of the land affects the grain nutrients.
Brooke Lucy 35:50
Yeah, I mean
Damon Pistulka 35:51
that’s I’ve heard it before in animal food, and I’ve you know how obviously how we eat affects how we how we are, but that in that ingrain products is is really interesting to understand. But just thanks for sharing this stuff with us today. Yeah,
Brooke Lucy 36:06
thanks you guys. You’ve been amazing support. So appreciate it. Hey, sending tons of love to you, Sam, the entire
Speaker 2 36:12
team at Bluebird, and we’re gonna get out there.
Curt Anderson 36:15
We can’t have a we can’t wait to have little waffles or porridge. We’re gonna have something there, Brooks. Yeah, yeah. We got to get
Brooke Lucy 36:20
some porridge. We got to get some forage.
Curt Anderson 36:22
That’s right. That’s right. So, Brooke, hang out with us for one. Hang out with us for one second. Everybody, again, connect with Brooke on LinkedIn. Stop by the website. Check out her webinar. And again, shout out to you guys for our manufacturers. Go out there, keep crushing it, and we will see you on our next episode. God bless, and we’ll see you.
Damon Pistulka 36:41
Thanks, everyone.