“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”  -Hunter S. Thompson

He took an adventure against doctor’s orders and it changed his life.

Back to another Ohio startup (what up LeBron!), Inca Tea does not disappoint. As you'll learn today, Ryan Florio is a contrarian thinker. He does not take things at face value, which gives him an advantage in business and life.

The story of Inca Tea began when Ryan and his friends hiked a treacherous Peruvian mountain trail with the help of their Sherpa Edgar.

Edgar introduced them to an amazing Ancient Tea recipe combining boiling water, freshly cut apples and Purple Corn, which Peruvians consider a super food that fights against a host of medical conditions.

Upon Ryan’s return home to the U.S., he quit his job, cashed in his 401K, took a second mortgage out on his home and started a company called Inca Tea, the first U.S. company to use the ingredient Purple Corn.

In addition to winning several awards throughout the state of Ohio, Inca Tea’s sales continue to climb at big-brand stores around the country (like Bed Bath and Beyond) and online orders continue to come in from all over the world.

We share Ryan's journey and offer tips for food startup founders who want to do things their way:

• How his childhood shaped his values and outlook on life
• Ryan's previous entrepreneurial adventures
• What Ryan has learned from sourcing
• The healing properties of Purple Corn
• Going "all-in", the mindset and stress management
• Food marketing on a shoe-string budget
• Starting a kiosk at Cleveland airport
• The importance of building relationships and saying thank you
• Taking online sales from $1900 to $30000 over 42 states and 7 countries
• How he develops flavors
• On attracting and retaining cusomers
• A day in the life of Ryan Florio
• When to sell your company
• Future plans for Inca Tea

Selected links from the show:
Inca Tea
Inca Tea Cafe
The War of Art
Robert Thurston Coffee Episode

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." - Steve Jobs

Kellee James exemplifies this quote. Looking at her experience, one can connect the dots and trace why she was able to start a food commodities exchange.

Mercaris allows buyers and sellers of raw commodities to meet and trade online. Customers include Whole Foods Market, Michael Foods, Perdue Farms, and others.

They make it possible for "everyone in the supply chain, from farmers to food manufacturers, to track prices, volumes and other statistics for organic corn, or non-GMO soybeans."

Prior to Mercaris, Kellee spent five years at the Chicago Climate Exchange(CCX), the first electronic trading platform and registry for spot, futures and options contracts on carbon, sulfur, clean energy and other environmental products.

In 2009, she was appointed by President Barack Obama as a White House Fellow where she advised members of the administration on environmental markets.

She has also worked with coffee farmers and commodity banks in Latin America on risk management and income diversification strategies. She was named by both Black Enterprise Magazine and Crain's Chicago Business Magazine as a '40 under 40' rising leader.

Learn the ins and outs of Kellee's life and company:

• Her aspirations to be a pro athlete and how she adjusted
• Why politics and government are two different things
• What she learned from politics
• Limitations of the futures market
• "Every single contract that is traded on our platform results in the physical delivery of the underlying commodity."
• Why didn't an exchange like Mercaris exist 10 years ago?
• How they assemble their data (very cool!!)
• What she learned working with coffee farmers in Honduras
• How the company attracts farmers, grain mills/elevators, and retailers
• "Identity preservation" in commodities
• The auction strategy: standard vs. reverse auctions
• The commodities she wants to add in the future

Selected links from the show:
Mercaris
Kellee James on AngelList
The Rogue Traders Foods: Facebook | Instagram
Direct Origin Trading

Richard Willis and Bob Pierson saw the trend of food trucks before most. From their website:

"The Macclenny based company is cooking up a thriving business of customizing food trucks and trailers. They have capitalized upon the public’s insatiable appetite for mobile food, the steady online buzz, and the testimonies of satisfied customers – nearly tripling their annual revenue to $1 million within the last year.

Fed by reality television shows, social media, and a demand for increasingly creative trucks and food, the nation’s street vendor market has grown into a $1 billion industry."

Tune in to learn:

• What are the keys to Bob and Richard's success?
• How much does it cost to start a food truck or food trailer?
• What traits to successful food truck owners share?
• How has the industry changed over the years?

The M+R Recipe:
1 – Seasoned business owner with construction experience
1 – High-potential business partner proficient in computer-aided design and online marketing
1 – SBA-backed loan from community credit union
Cook in pre-heated food-truck industry. Serve to customers across the country.

Selected links from the episode:

M&R Specialty Trailers + Trucks
"Pimp my Food Truck" Youtube Channel

"After the tour, I started meeting with him regularly to do Harley trips, and over a bottle of whiskey we both talked about doing something together, starting a business ... Let’s make a coffee machine that’s connected, that uses your patent."

If you're into coffee, you may own a variety of equipment: grinder, coffee dripper, french press, an expresso machine .. what if it could all be replaced by one, smart machine?

Roderick de Rode is making it a reality with his Spinn machine. (Check out the video)

He got his first investment at Rockefeller Plaza; an investment banker there gave him $25K.

In the past, Roderick has successfully built and managed $100M+ businesses in hardware, software and online services.

We talk about the machine, entrepreneurship, and, of course, the second most traded commodity in the world, coffee:

• How they evolved the idea from a patent into a soon to be retail machine
• The downside to Keurig machines
• The second and third wave of coffee
• Why the machine will sync with local coffee roasters
• The upcoming crowdfunding campaign
• Why hardware is .. hard
• A brilliant gamification strategy for their audience (take notes)
• The invaluable learnings from their hardware advisory team
• Looking back what he would have done differently
• Roderick's advice for food startups

Selected links from the show:
Spinn Coffee
PCH International
highway1.io
Juicero

Tim Joseph had no farming experience. He had never even milked a cow. In 2004, he received a fast education when sixty-four cows stepped off the trailers onto his land.

Thrown into the fire, Tim and his wife Laura started selling milk while Tim worked a full-time corporate job from home. In 2009, they went "all in", opened a storefront and transitioned to making dairy products, like yogurt and cheese. And the company started to grow..

Over a two-year span from 2011-2013, Maple Hill Creamery went from being on shelf in about 600 stores—mostly independents in the Northeast—to over 6,000 stores, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Target, Walmart, Ahold, Safeway, Natural Grocers, EarthFare, and many others.

Tim is also committed to building the Maple Hill Milkshed, the community of nearly eighty 100% grass-fed dairy farms in New York. A fun, incredible success story. I had a lot of questions for Tim:

• Working from home and dairy farming on the side, how did you manage your time?
• How did you make the transition from conventional dairy to organic grass-fed dairy?
• How did you manage the fear of stepping out and doing something different?
• What’s a day like on the farm? Cow milking 101?
• Why does grass fed dairy make sense?
• What was the initial response to "grass fed dairy?
• How did you manage growth from 600 to 6000 stores?
• What were the keys to such rapid growth?
• How do you view trade shows from a P/L perspective?
• How is yogurt made? What about Greek yogurt?
• When is it time to go "all-in" with your food startup?
• What questions do you need to ask yourself?
• Will you hire robots to milk cows? (note: this is already happening!)

Selected links from the show:
Maple Hill Creamery
Pennsylvania Certified Organic
This is Maple Hill