Neil Dudley: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pederson’s Farms podcast. We are so excited you’re here. We appreciate you joining us. And we look forward to sharing these conversations with thought leaders from our industry. They’re going to paint a picture from every perspective – consumer customer, vendor, employee, and peer – that I think is going to be super valuable and we’re really excited to share. So, thanks for tuning in. Remember, don’t tune out and grab life by the bacon. 

Hey, everybody, if you think about protein and you know about a company called Crowd Cow, then you’re going to be super stoked to get to hear from this guy, our guest today. His name is Joe Heitzeberg. He’s the founder of Crowd Cow. And, Joe, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. You buy some Peterson’s products. So, it stands to say, read this sign behind me. It is like thank you from the bottom of our ever-loving bacon hearts. We just really appreciate getting to work with you guys. Bring a lot of, what do I want to say, trustworthiness to our brand, and it’s just been a lot of fun. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Thank you so much for having me on and thanks for doing what you do. I got to tell you like customers love the bacon, so it’s a pleasure. I’ll read you a quote from a customer: “My husband is a bacon connoisseur. And he loves this bacon and that’s no fib. He likes the texture, the smell, the taste on his tongue. And that’s a lot of info from him. The man is quiet, but not about this bacon. Oh, by the way, I really like it too. Like what my husband said.” So, it’s just a lot, there’s been a ton of- 

Neil Dudley: That was almost poetic. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Yeah, it really was. How about for the sugar-free bacon? “I wasn’t sure that I would love sugar-free bacon, but I do. The smokiness really comes through, and I appreciate the full flavor of the pork.” A lot of people are looking for reduced sugar in their diet, but nobody wants to trade taste, so you’ve really nailed it with that one and all the other products. And of course, you’ve got ham, we’ve got hams, I think, of yours and spareribs. So, it’s great products. Thank you very much. 

Neil Dudley: You bet. I think that illustrates the truth of what we do – it’s a partnership. We all really are in an ecosystem where we need to be doing good things for each other and really consumers ultimately. Now, before we chase that rabbit too far down the road, I said something early on in this, when you first joined the call here that  I feel like it might’ve offended you, but I’m going to go ahead and say it again. It seems like your resume, your history, your space, where you’ve been, where you’ve operated in your life from what I can gather on LinkedIn and other places-

Joe Heitzeberg: You’re saying I’m a nerd. 

Neil Dudley: No, I’m not saying nerd, but it just doesn’t paint a picture in my mind like cowboy or a guy that’s going to be selling beef in a big way. What’s that story?

Joe Heitzeberg: Well, it’s pretty simple. I’ve got a family, I’ve got a kid, and I’ve got to be a good role model. To be a good role model, one of the key components to that is knowing where your food comes from, honestly. You want to serve your kids food and have them appreciate the people who raised it and how they raised it and that they’re not destroying the planet in the way that they’re raising it or harming the animals or impacting their local communities in different areas of the country by virtue of how the businesses run. And it’s important to raise kids in that way. And for me, there was no better way to accomplish that then to- he was five years old when we started the company; he’s eleven now. And he’s helped pack orders. There’s work ethic in there. There’s delivering orders to our neighbors. He’s taste tested products – that’s the fun part of the job – visited farms. He actually, I’ll tell you since we’re on a farm podcast here, I wouldn’t probably- most people get kind of grossed out, but I took him to a farm and the farmer said, hey, Aaron, there’s one that’s going to give birth, do you want to go see that? And he’s like sure. And then after that he was like you’ve got to check if there’s a twin in there. And he got this long glove out and my son was like sure, I’ll do that. It’s connection, connection, deep connection. And that’s really deep, but the idea of Crowd Cow is not just selling food, it’s to bring that connection back to the people who produce it so that you can bring that around the table. So even if you’re more like me than a farmer, while you’re sitting- you’re a tech geek and you’re sitting around your table, you can know and connect all the way back and feel good about what you eat. And it tastes better as you heard in all those customer descriptions. I think that’s the big thing. And honestly, I’ll be completely honest, before we got into this business, I didn’t appreciate just how much better things taste when they’ve been raised the right way and they’ve been eating the high quality- You are what you eat. So is the animal, and it can really have a profound impact on taste and nutrition and quality in a way that I’m never going back to the grocery store stuff. That’s what our customers tell us all the time. 

Neil Dudley: That insight, see, I take it for granted because I just grew up with all that understanding and experience and reality. So, I really appreciate working with a company that understands the importance of that and wants to share it. I think this is part of that, this conversation around just a couple of businessmen with Ben, our producer listening in just in case he chimes in, and, oh, hi everybody out there on the YouTube. We just want these conversations to be out and in front of as many people as possible. Now so, if you don’t know about Crowd Cow, go learn about them, go check them out, crowdcow.com. You can see all the things they do. You’ll find some Pederson’s products on there, but there’s a lot of other great products. And I would say beef is a big, big piece of what you do. I mean, would I be close by saying that?

Joe Heitzeberg: Yeah, I think it’s the biggest by volume of what sells overall. And it’s probably the same in the country overall. Though I did meet a guy; I met a guy a few years ago on a ketogenic diet, and he was eating something like three pounds of bacon every day. It was whoa. 

Neil Dudley: That’s right. Well, you get into ketosis, you get your body burning fat instead of glucose, then the more fat you eat, the more fuel you got. And that’s all just so interesting. And being in this business, I’ve learned a lot about keto, Whole30, AIP, just a lot of different- And there’s going to be so much information on this podcast also to go along with that. The founder of Whole30 was on here. We’re going to talk to really experts in the keto space, talking to peers. The idea of the podcast is to really highlight the industry. It is so beautiful, it’s so intricate, it’s so dynamic, all those things. And we only have one perspective. So, it won’t be the perfect perspective. It won’t be the most all-knowing. But from Pederson’s, from my relationships, from the people we do business with, listeners are going to get to hear. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Yeah, I think it’s great. It’s a great service. I think it’s very interesting. One of the realizations I had very early on in this journey we’re on, that we’re taking people on, is that none of the stereotypes are true, certainly. And that’s all that people have in their mind, they don’t have a lot of deep- The other thing that I learned is the labels, too, don’t tell you much. And then when you go meet people, you realize how much variety there is. I remember a typical thing a farmer will say is like, I’ll say how do you do it here? And they’ll walk through everything, and they’ll kind of always be like at least that’s how we do it, I don’t know how other people do it. Because it’s so much about adapting to your land and environment. And that’s very different in North Texas and Montana; it’s totally different. So, your practices are going to be totally different. The breeds are going to be totally different, the challenges. 

Neil Dudley: The forage is different. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Everything is just so different. 

Neil Dudley: Yeah, everything is just so different.

Joe Heitzeberg: I think it’s fascinating. I think it’s that part’s really, really fun to learn. And you’ve just got to go meet people and talk. And you’ve got to do it in long form content. You can’t do it on a little green sticker. 

Neil Dudley: That’s right. Here we are – long form content. One thing we’re doing with the podcast, we kind of pick themes monthly. The theme when we roll this particular conversation out is going to be Our Table. So, we want people to understand how Pederson’s feels about the world, America, inclusiveness, all those things. Do you have a perspective on that? Would you say, how does a Crowd Cow tackle-? It is a real hot button topic these days, and I think it is certainly getting highlighted because it needs to. 

Joe Heitzeberg: I think it’s about bringing people together around a meal. Food brings you together. Think about it, if you’re in a corporate setting in a meeting and then lunch starts, that’s the time when everybody kind of relaxes and they’re talking to each other as people. It can be an intense negotiation. There was actually someone who academically studied negotiations where there was food served versus there were not. And negotiations where food was served all ended up as better, win-win negotiations that resolved with a better value for everyone. Food is just a powerful way to settle people down, calm, bring them around, open up, and be more open-minded. And so, we’re not a political company. We don’t take sides and we don’t tell people what to do. We’re the opposite. We’re helping people take a journey. We’re helping people- We’re facilitating people to get together. We’re facilitating people to be empowered with better choices through more information and transparency. So, it really is just about setting the table with wonderful things and helping people bring together. So, I feel like that’s our role. I remember once I was with- it was my first grain finished farm for beef, we’d all at that point been grass fed, grass finished, which is the big buzzword. And we were out in Eastern Washington, it’s a lot drier. And the reason it was grain finished was because he’s like, well, that’s what we can grow out here, we grow the corn; it’s right there. And I was like where’s the feed lot? He’s like it’s right here. And I was like this is amazing. I’ve got to tell people that. I asked him why don’t you do grass finished? You’ll make more money. He goes because it’s so dry here. I’d have to haul the grass over the mountain pass in big semi-trucks. I’d have to irrigate do all these practices that are not environmentally good for my land. There’s the corn, Joe, I grow it right there. And I was like this story needs to be told because people kind of hear grain fed and they think feedlot, and that’s not the case. They think concentrated feedlot and bad practices and all that. And the beef was wonderful. But he took us up on horseback because they let them graze way up in the mountains. They have all this – over five generations of their family, they’ve horse traded to a lot of land that goes way up in the hills. Beautiful out there. We are on horseback, kind of like moving pasture, cattle from one pastor to another. I’d never done that before. It was amazing. We came back down, I’m telling this story, and I’m like I am so grateful. Thank you for spending the day with me and telling the story. I can’t wait to- And he looked at me and he goes actually, what you’re doing is important because nobody comes to visit me and tells my story and hears that stuff, and you’re able to put that out there. I honestly think what you’re doing will help bring the country closer together. And what he was kind of saying is like we’re here in maybe a red part of the state and you’re in a blue part of the state. He was probably thinking you’ve got all these – at the time, our business was small – you get all these Seattle customers who want to buy the right thing and be green and all this, but they don’t really understand the people in the rural areas, and they don’t meet them. And so, they rely on these shortcuts and stereotypes. It’s kind of BS. He didn’t say any of that. That’s what I think I was interpreting or thinking about. And I was like yeah, you’re right, people got to shake hands and commune around the table and meet people and talk, and you just realize there’s great people out there just trying to make it work wherever they are with what they got. And it’s pretty inspiring. 

Neil Dudley: That whole story is just great. I hope a lot of people get to hear that. Because I don’t understand what it’s like to live in the inner city – Seattle, downtown, whatever. I don’t get it. I don’t know. I don’t know that experience. Somebody has to teach it to me or give me insight in some way that I can actually like process. It’s the same thing for somebody that doesn’t understand farming, ranching, and what the realities are. Now look, there are bad farmers and ranchers. There are people that take money over doing the right thing, integrity. I say it like take money over integrity. There are. By and large, that is such a small fraction of the people. And sometimes it does end up- maybe even the really big multinational companies foster that feeling in people by the way they act and the way they make billions of dollars, and then that feels wrong. But telling the story is really awesome. Now, what’s the best way to cook a steak? Now I hate to just jump around so fast, but that’s the way I do it. I swear, I listened to a podcast with you on one other time, and you were telling your favorite way to cook a steak. Did I dream that, or was that you?

Joe Heitzeberg: Probably. I haven’t changed it much. I’ll say the best thing you can do probably for the layman getting into it, and it’s really easy to [inaudible 14:10] quickly, but it’s just to know, just go and read about the different cuts first. Because the beautiful thing about steaks is the different cuts will vary a ton and flavor and texture and how you might want to cook them and understanding that is really important. Otherwise, you might take a cut that looks like- Like top round, it looks like a New York steak. If you cook that like a New York steak, you’re going to be severely disappointed. But that’s the best cut for beef jerky, or if you’ve got a slow cooker, and it’s got such an incredibly dense flavor to it. But I would say for the Hollywood cuts, that’s the steakhouse, you’re talking about New Yorks and ribeye steaks. Of course, everybody says they want the tenderloin, but I’ll give you a secret, like tenderloin’s the premium cut – and it is tender, and so you pay more for that tenderness – but the reason it’s so premium in terms of cost is the cow just doesn’t have much tenderloin on its body, so supply and demand. In other words, when I look at a New York and a tenderloin and a ribeye, and I see the price difference, I honestly don’t think that one must be better, that much better. I actually think that one’s a lot more expensive because the supply is so much smaller. That’s all. And so, I think people sort of- a good beef chef will, they’ll never have tenderloin as their favorite cut, I’ve noticed. 

Neil Dudley: Now, but you hit on a really great thing. I want to give you my experience in my family. I have three daughters. One wants the ribeye, one wants the filet, and the other one doesn’t care. But the oldest one likes the fat. The middle one doesn’t. She loves the tenderloin because she doesn’t see fat. It’s tender. It’s still flavorful and good, but she doesn’t- So it’s so awesome that an animal can provide you so much variety, so many different experiences in eating and great nutrition.

Joe Heitzeberg: The fat is flavor. So that’s kind of the catch term. I think people get scared of the fat a little bit, but if they can realize the fat’s the flavor and embrace it. If you got a little bit of fat cap hanging off, you leave it on there when you cook it, it’s just going to be juicer and delicious. I think people will look at that fat and they get a little grossed out, some people. A ribeye steak is going to have more of that, the big chunky stuff going through it. It’s why you need a steak knife, ribeye. If you don’t like that, New York would be my recommendation. The fat’s a little tamer. It’s a little even, but you still get that flavor. That’s what I would go. Denver steak is one that people don’t know typically, but it’s awesome. 

Neil Dudley: You’ve got Ben shaking his head like crazy over here. So, you know, Ben’s an ex-meat department. He ran a meat department. He’s a big meat head. So, everything you’re saying has got a big smile on his face.

Joe Heitzeberg: Skirt steak I love. Now you look at a skirt steak, it’s weird. It kind of unrolls into this big thing and it’s thin and people look at it. It can be chewy if you don’t cut it right or cook it right. You want to put some lemon juice on it or orange and pepper and put some Tabasco and some orange juice. Let it marinate, let that acid tenderize it, and then cook that thing. And there’s nothing more delicious and flavorful than a skirt steak after you’ve marinated it and seasoned a little, it’s just a wonderful, love that. I love skirt steak for that reason. Most people don’t even know what it is.

Neil Dudley: Absolutely. Well, you do that- it’s fajitas in Texas; they’re taking the skirt steaks and making fajitas. But if you’re listening and you’ve made it this far, you just have to go watch this on YouTube because Joe’s passion is coming through. You can see it in his eyes, on his face the excitement he has in talking about the product he happens to sell. And real quick, I want to touch on, I want to ask what was it like eating A5 for the first time? Have you ever?

Joe Heitzeberg: I’m trying to remember the first time. I was in Japan when I was 20 years old; I was actually working on a farm. So, I do have a little farm background, a little weird, in Japan. I actually was from Idaho. I went to Boise High School. So, I was kind of you know; I never picked potatoes in Idaho, but I did pick potatoes in Japan. While I was there, I likely had Wagyu. I’m not sure if I had A5. But I was at that point, I was so young, I didn’t appreciate food generally as much. And everything was so new, and I was immersed in the language differences. But I do remember a few years ago when we first started Crowd Cow and I went to Japan to visit slaughterhouses and get to know people, and I explicitly went out to have- I want Kobe beef, love Kobe beef, I want A5. And you drop a lot of money for that. And it’s pretty amazing. I think the reaction I had was just a spontaneous like smile. It was weird because you just spontaneously smile because it’s wonderful. Sort of an unexpected reaction.

Neil Dudley: I totally remember my first experience. And I’m in the meat business. I’ve been raising beef my whole life. I didn’t eat a piece of A5. Look, I’m not sure anybody eats an A5 steak. You eat a piece of A5 or two pieces maybe. Anyways, the first piece I ever had was in a restaurant in Las Vegas called Bizarre Meat, a guy named, Andreas, his last name’s Andreas, or maybe his first name. Anyways, it’s a great restaurant. They served us; one of the group I was with ordered a piece for everybody, and you’re right, it’s just like butter. It was just great.

Joe Heitzeberg: It’s an amazing, it’s an amazing cut. You don’t need much to it and has a totally different flavor profile than any other beef, which is kind of fun. It’s fun to think about the breed and what the animal ate, how it was raised can that much alter the flavor. And that’s what’s really fun about meat. At the grocery store, you get a little orange sticker that says special. And it’s not the kind of special I’m talking about. When you really dive in and go uncover, get access to these different varieties, you can go on a little culinary journey with them, and it’s really wonderful, as I pointed out our customers are doing with your bacon. 

Neil Dudley: Well, that truth kind of flows through all proteins. When the animal’s treated right, raised right, fed right, given the kind of freedom to move, and all those different things that I think is very close to all of our hearts, you’re going to find out there’s just a difference in the quality. 

Joe Heitzeberg: And the great thing is I think that I think a lot of people worry about, oh gosh, cooking, I’m not that good at cooking, I don’t want to screw it up, especially if it’s a premium meat. The irony is the more premium the meat, the more you actually can just not worry about how you cook it. Like great quality meats and just a little bit of salt, and you can blow people’s minds. A5 wagyu is a good example of that. There’s nothing to it, cooking it. It’s easy and it will blow people’s minds. There are very few meats that are actually a little bit sensitive to how you cook them. Like I mentioned skirt steak; you do want to kind of marinade it a little bit. I can only think of a handful of cuts. Salmon, you don’t want to overcook salmon. But every other fish, you take Kampachi, you can’t even screw it up. Black Cod, you could cook it double, twice as long as the recipe says, you’re going to be fine. But salmon will dry out, and so you’ve got to be a little more careful. But I can’t even think – it’s a handful of cuts where you got to be careful. Or for safety reasons, you don’t want to undercook chicken. But honestly, if you have good quality meat, you’re going to have a good quality meal. 

Neil Dudley: What do you think about pork chops? I mean, pork chops seem to get a bad rap in my mind because people over cook them. If you take a pork chop and you really cook it to 140, not 160, 140, maybe even 137 or something and then let it rest a little bit, it’ll go on up, oh, it’s good. It’s really good. So that’s just a piece of the education people probably have to get done. 

Joe Heitzeberg: I think two other things people can do. One is simple, which is don’t take your meat out of the fridge where it’s fridge temperature and start cooking it. Let it come up to room temperature. It’s going to cook easier. It’s going to be more tender, juicy. Just let it rest, let it chill while you’re putting your salads together or setting the table. Let it bring up to room temperature. That’s an easy tip. Never forget to season with salt or something. Bring out the natural flavors with that salt.

Neil Dudley: Now, when they get their meat frozen from Crowd Cow, do you recommend they put it in the refrigerator to thaw? 

Joe Heitzeberg: You can, you can do that overnight. That’s convenient. But honestly, my favorite way, if you’re talking a New York steak or a ribeye, I honestly cook it straight from frozen. I know that sounds crazy. But I will take it out of the freezer, put it on the counter, let it kind of thaw on the surface just a little bit, rip it out of the package, salt and pepper it. I will take that frozen steak and sear it in a hot oil with a high temp, like avocado oil or something, sear the heck out. It it’s like frozen solid, I’m searing it. And I’ll take that whole pan right into the oven at around 300 degrees for like seven or eight minutes. Perfect medium rare every time. And nobody would- It’s incredible because I can go from I think I might want a steak like right now to like 20 minutes later, perfect medium rare right from the freezer. The other thing you can do is leave it in its packaging and you can put it in a big glass bowl in your sink, put lukewarm water over it, totally submerge it. And just for like 15 minutes, it will be perfectly thawed out. It’s a very quick thaw that way. So, I always do those two things and I never thaw in the fridge just because those are easier, and I can be spontaneous. I don’t like to have to plan because if you put it in- the problem with fresh meat that you might get from the grocery store that you thaw in your fridge is how long has it been at fresh temperature? Fresh temperature is where bad things can happen. It’s degrading in quality, or if you’ve got food born- issues can happen. Now when it’s frozen, it’s processed, it’s frozen, it’s locked in that freshness forever. It hasn’t been freshly transported to the grocery, fresh sitting out for days, fresh in your fridge for how many days? I don’t know. So, for me, I think the peak quality is when it’s been frozen and you slack it real quick with that water bowl thaw, or if it’s a New York or a ribeye or something like that, you cook it right from frozen. Burgers, you can cook burgers right from frozen, no problem.

Neil Dudley: Yeah, I do that all the time. The burger thing is just really easy. Just watch the juices. The juices tell you everything you need to know. Okay, I love all that. I do want to get to at least one business topic. I mean, you have built a business, you are running a business. So, what is your biggest struggle? What is Crowd Cow experiencing that is that real nugget you need to crack in this market right now?

Joe Heitzeberg: So many, and you asked the question of getting into this as a tech geek guy – you didn’t say that, but I said it – and for me, it’s like I’d only done businesses where it’s software. There’s bits and bytes, not atoms and physical. I’ve got millions of pounds of perishable meat floating around the place, all over the country. And it’s perishable. You got to ship it on time, you got to get it there, you got to pack it. We don’t get into the farming or processing; we have partners. And I totally respect their world too, because I remember I went to a farm once that the first farm ever visited where they kind of gave us the tour. We’re like, wow, this is amazing. They’re giving us the tour; they know about us. It was our first year. And he got to one point of it, he said we’re really investing a lot in AI this year. And I was like artificial intelligence? Oh no, no, artificial insemination. What it taught me was everything in the farmer’s world and the butcher’s world is just as sophisticated as my world software. But they’re just different worlds, and we need to partner together. But to answer your question, the struggles are really scaling, supply, logistics, shipping, particularly this year. You can read about it in the front-page headline news – it’s all over front page right now – there are ships sitting at port, there’s labor issues, there’s Delta variant, there’s trucking break- supply chain, out of stock stuff going on everywhere. And all that impacts- I had a text message with a vendor the other day, and they said, you know, Joe, our label guys that do like the labels that go on our things, they’re the biggest label guys in the country, and they supply the label thing, they ran out of plastic last week. That’s never happened, that a big company runs out of plastic.

Neil Dudley: There’s unprecedented things happening on all fronts. Like, okay, you have everything in place, ready to go, the truck driver gets halfway there, pulls over and goes home. Like, I mean just crazy stuff. And that’s a little bit of an extreme example, but something similar. Dry ice is just a really hard commodity to come up with. Everything is strained as fuel prices go up, as oil prices go up. 

Joe Heitzeberg: I’m glad that we started this company six years ago and not one year ago because I don’t think you could get dry ice if you didn’t already have a company. Nobody’s going to sell it to you.

Neil Dudley: You needed some kind of access already, because there’s a million people you call, and hey, we’d like to do something, sorry-

Joe Heitzeberg: So, I talk about bringing people together for dinner and somebody has got a birthday, or they haven’t seen their cousins because it was COVID, and they’ve got your meat coming, but the one item they really wanted wasn’t there and why? And it might be because of any one of those things, like the driver just left or the plastic ran out at the place that does the bacon, whatever. And it’s impossible to explain that to people because it’s just impossibly crazy right now. And we’re doing a pretty good job of navigating that stuff because we’ve got a great team that works really hard to try to anticipate everything.

Neil Dudley: I would say just shout out to your team, Karen, and the people that we work with day-to-day. So, did you have experience, were you building human teams along the way while you were doing the software stuff? Is that something you knew about? 

Joe Heitzeberg: Teams, yeah, but getting the expertise within merchandising and fulfillment and operations was not a domain I’d ever spent time in. I’ve worked with software engineers and product managers and designers, and it’s different. How do you interview for skills that you don’t have yourself? There’s a steep learning curve to do something. But I love that. I wanted to do it for my kid and to show him where his food comes from and all that stuff. But also, because it’s a great learning adventure to do something challenging and meaningful. So yeah, I got an overdose on that, I think.

Neil Dudley: Joe, you’ve been gracious. We did schedule this very quickly. You jumped right on. And I want to say thank you for that. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your insight. Ben Warren, you’ve been listening, is there- see, now almost every time we’ll get off these interviews and Ben’s like, Neil, you should have asked him this. Okay so, Ben, is there a thing that I’ve missed along the way? I mean, it’s been a great conversation. What else?

Ben Warren: No, I just wanted to add that hanger steak is the best steak in my opinion. And that steak needs to be cut a certain way to be as tender too. That’s another thing. But it was cool to hear about the moving your world from a software point of view to a business that involves shipping and perishable product, and that was what I was hoping to hear, and I did. And it was really great to hear about all that. I thought it was a cool journey.

Neil Dudley: I think that’s one reason we like to have multiple people from the Pederson side and Ben’s got a different perspective than me. It gives us a chance to get a little more value for whoever listens. There’s multiple perspectives here for somebody to share and that’s exciting. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Really fun. I’d love to do an Instagram live stream with you guys if you’re into that.

Neil Dudley: Absolutely. Ben is our producer of the podcast. He also works within our marketing team so he can coordinate those kinds of things. We’re absolutely interested in all that, just anything to help people, introduce people to you. You introduced people to us. I mean, let’s do it. 

Joe Heitzeberg: It would be fun to interview you guys and do like you just cooked a lot of bacon for everybody and they’re excited. Now you’ve got this bacon grease; here’s what you can do with it. That’d be fun. 

Neil Dudley: Oh, and that makes me think, we just had a charity event called Bacon Bash, Texas, where we cooked something like five or six hundred pounds of bacon over one weekend. 

Ben Warren: A lot of grease.

Neil Dudley: Yeah, a lot of grease, and the ways people were using grease, there’s just so much innovation like in some of these events where you just give somebody 15 pounds of bacon and tell them make whatever you want. Ah, it’s fun. So much fun. Matter of fact, put it on your calendar – 2022, October, third Saturday in October, we want to have you come to the Bacon Bash.

Joe Heitzeberg: That’d be awesome. I’d love to. I was born in Austin, Texas, so I love getting back there, back to Texas. 

Neil Dudley: Let’s make sure we don’t forget to bring that up a little closer to time. 

Ben Warren: I’ll get with you on the Instagram live thing, too. That’s a great idea. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Awesome. Well, thanks for having me on. And that was a lot of fun. 

Neil Dudley: All right, great. Joe, team Crowd Cow, thank y’all so much. Keep it up. You’re killing it. We love being a part of that and just giving you all our support and love we can. 

Joe Heitzeberg: Thank you so much.

Neil Dudley: Hey, everybody, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Pederson’s Farms podcast. It’s been a blast bringing this to you, and I sure hope you enjoyed it and found value. If you did, tell a friend, share it out on social media, hit that subscribe button, or go check us out at pedersonsfarms.com. We sure hope you do. And thanks for being here.