Dror Tamir, CEO of Hagrol Food Tech | Disrupting Food Technology With Grasshoppers

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10X businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders, dissect what's work for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Thank you very much for joining me, your host, Scott on another episode of the sales versus marketing podcast where we speak with sales, marketing and business leaders. Today, I am speaking with Dora Tamir, who is the co-founder and CEO of Hargol Food Tech. Now, Hargol is the first commercial grasshopper farm focused on obviously grasshoppers which are nature's most efficient protein source. So I'm very, very interested to hear a little bit more about how this concept came to be and what Dora is doing. Now, Dora himself is a very impressive entrepreneur, so he hasn't exit with a previous company under his belt. Currently, he has 15 awards and we're going to speak about one. He just realized we just went from 14 to 15 in the past few minutes. So obviously, Hargol is doing incredibly well and not only has Hargol won awards, but just Dora as an individual is very impressive with several high-ranking business positions in international companies and Israeli companies over the last 25 years, previous to that, coming from a career as an individual within the IDF and the Navy. So quite a long and interesting career that has led him to be the co-founder, CEO of a grasshopper farm and obviously that's putting it lightly. So Dora, give me a little bit of background about yourself and what led you to do this. Well, I was born in a kibbutz in Israel, kibbutz money, and my grandfather was the Chairman of that kibbutz. As the Chairman of the kibbutz established two companies, one is called Galaam, which is now the largest corn processor in Israel. He was the first CEO of that company and then established a second company called Ambar, which is the largest feed producer in Israel today. He also served on the management team of that company. So I may say that industry and agriculture and food are in my blood. However, I do give most of the credit to my grandmother because she was the cook of the kibbutz and she used to wake me up around 4 a.m. every day, drag me to the kitchen and crack thousands of eggs to feed everyone. Oh my goodness. So right from like a very, very early stage, you were like indoctrinated into the world of food. Absolutely. It's pretty amazing to look back 40 plus years now and think that my grandmother used to tell me that pomegranates are the healthiest fruit you can find and you see now everyone knows that. Yeah, it's true. So I think that it's funny, like an intuition sometimes is much, you don't know where the information the knowledge comes from, but like mothers, grandmothers, they know best. And then like, you know, years later you'll see science back it up, but obviously she knows what she was doing. Absolutely. And there's one thing she did tell me, but not with intention for me to eat it was stories from the 1950s. Israel used to suffer from local swarms flying in from the desert. And my grandfather's used to grandparents used to run to the fields, trying to scare the grasshoppers away. At the same time, they saw other Jews, Yemenite and Moroccan Jews coming to the same field with sex and collecting tons of grasshoppers and eating them. So it's a very young boy, I learned that grasshoppers have food for many and that they are also kosher, but nothing really prepared me what would happen 35 plus years into the future with that. Oh, because there's obviously a far, it's a lot of steps between just like a casual, you know, certain groups of Yemenite, I think in Moroccan, you said Jews, eat grasshoppers as part of like a cultural diet, but that's a far cry from being like a mass producer. So how did you like you obviously went through a couple different careers before you you're doing what you're doing now. So walk us through, you know, I'm just going into too much detail, but just like walk us through like what led you to obviously starting this company. Well, I started my professional career as part of the academic reserve of the IDF. I studied economics and accounting and I served most of my military service of six years at the Israeli Navy Budget Department. The last position was head of the Israeli Navy Budget. A part of it was flying to the US, negotiating with companies like Boeing and others. And after that period, I moved to the next position which was head of strategy planning for Selcom, which is the leading mobile operator in Israel at that point of time of my U.S. Bell South. I learned a lot about international business and global operations. However, along that period of time of about 11 years, something continued to bother me and that was what was my real dream as a young boy which was to become an entrepreneur. So after five years at Selcom, I decided to live and become an entrepreneur. That's about 15 plus years ago. And since then, I've been involved in many startups from food to communication, medical devices and many more. But all of them, almost always, I'm being drug again and again to my passion, which is food and nutrition. So that obviously is what led to your most recent and what you're working with now. Hargal, food tech, and that is the passion of food and nutrition. So how did you, when you're building out of business? Because a lot of people love food, a lot of people create incredible companies surrounded by food and nutrition. What made you think, oh, I remember that there was something there. And I'm going to, because I know, I know that there are cultures in the world that are not time-based in Toronto. And obviously, Toronto, grasshoppers are not a common food. I think there's other cultures that are probably a little bit more acclimatized to eating insects than the North American culture. So did you think, like, I'm going to take this to market in Israel? This is a great idea. Like, what was that, sort of, the thought process that brought you to introduce grasshoppers on mass to the world? Well, the thought process actually started at my previous startup called Plate My Meal, which dealt with obesity prevention. While I was working on that startup, I learned that about protein deficiency in Asia and Africa, about one million people today suffer from protein deficiency. And then I learned that the global demand for protein is actually expected to double while existing protein sources are reaching their limitations. So I realized that this is a huge problem, but also this is a huge opportunity for an entrepreneur. So I started looking for alternative protein sources. Everywhere I looked, I looked at cultured meat, I looked at algae, plant-based protein, they didn't make sense to me. Each one of them had its own pros, but mainly its own cons. And I was looking for the optimal solution. And then I remembered the story of my grandparents about the grasshoppers. And I realized, well, this is a very interesting protein source, because there is existing demand for it, mainly in Africa, Asia, and Central America. However, the qualities in terms of sustainability, in terms of health, in terms of taste and flavor are pretty amazing. How can I make someone in the developed world in North America and Europe consume grasshoppers? And what I was thinking about that, I realized that there is a company in Israel that is called Kifol. What they did about 40 years ago, they took plant-based products and they made schnitzels out of them, which now sounds really familiar with impossible foods and beyond meat, but this company did it 40 years ago. It is now owned by Nestle. And I said, well, we can do the same. We can just take the grasshopper protein and make schnitzels out of it. And the moment I thought about it, I said, well, this is what you call steak salsa. Now, if you are a Hebrew speaker, you can get the joke because steak is a steak and salsa is a cricket. However, and I just rushed to the laptop and I wrote steak salsa. We need more protein that is healthy and almost sustainable. We are going to make schnitzels out of it and we will do it with grasshoppers. So that started a little bit over six years ago. And I am really honored to say that today we already have sausages made of grasshopper. So that was easy. I agree. And now you have made meat substitute products. Speak about when you are bringing this to market, it makes sense in your head. I can understand how you connected the dots. You have lived through the industry. You had the experience even from a very young age that obviously grasshoppers were something that could be consumed, but you spoke about developed world. So speak about how you can market this product and bring it, obviously you have done it successfully, to the developed world without that, I don't know, that knee jerk response, if that is the best word or do you understand that? I would use the yak facto. The yak facto. That is the major challenge in the developed world. First, I believe that once you add the grasshopper protein in the form of a powder into finished products such as energy bars, sausages, milkshakes and many, many more products, the yak facto is not as strong as it is while you're trying to consume the old instincts. That is one thing. Second thing is you have to remember we are still a small startup and educating this huge population in North American Europe is probably too big for us. So for us the strategy is actually work with big guys with traditional food companies, food producers, develop with them, eat food products and take them to market along with them and use their power to actually educate the market. When we started six years ago, no one was willing to talk to us. However in the past three to four years the market has completely changed and you can find companies like PepsiCo announcing that they already have the retos with insect protein or IKEA announcing that they will replace the meatballs, the Swedish meatballs and the restaurants from beef to insects or even go to a marinara game at the ballpark. For the last three seasons, they've been serving all grasshoppers as a snack. So the world is changing fast and we are best positioned through the demand from our market. I agree. I think that the strategy that you took to market is very smart through the larger companies. Now how do you obviously you're going to get this question a lot? So I don't feel bad asking how do you compete with the meat substitutes? Why would people choose insect proteins that have any sort of yacht factor over a meat substitute that people are probably probably don't understand the chemicals that are going into it. So when they see a chemical on a package to them, it's just white noise and it goes right over their heads. So there is no yacht factor. Obviously, I think that the chemicals are probably not great for them, but a lot of people don't think that far into what they're eating. But you said the yacht factor. So how do you compete with the substitute meats and the fake meats and the beyond meats and all this stuff? That's a great question. And we can tackle it from two different angles. First one, let's talk about health and sustainability issues. The technology beyond meat and impossible foods are bringing to the market is pretty amazing. They take plants and make it feel like eating real meat, which is incredible. However, when I look at it, I think they took the technology too far because they took a single ingredient for the product, the border, replacing it with a 17 ingredient highly processed product, which is unhealthy for you and probably unsustainable because of the very complicated supply chain. Now, it's not me saying it. You can just go and look what John Matthew from Old Foods Market said. He said, we were the first one to put them on the shelves. We are the first one to take them off the shelves because we will not provide unhealthy foods to our customers. So I'm trying to figure out, well, actually, what is the message for beyond meat and impossible foods? They're not healthier. They're not more sustainable. They can only claim we're not killing cows. But also, that claim is not completely true. Well, they do not kill cows, they do kill tons of insects, trillions of insects because you cannot grow plants without killing the insects with pesticides. You kill them in a nasty way. These insects are just being wasted in the field. They contaminate the soil, the water, and even small animals that come and eat them. So if you look at it, eating grasshoppers is more you mean than any plant-based diet because we use the entire animal, nothing goes to waste. We do not use any pesticides and fertilizers, and even the way we harvest them is that in a you main way. We are actually following the recommendations of the European Union, minimal harm done to animals. We use the fact that these are called blood creatures. We drop the temperature, we fall asleep, and only then we freeze them. There is no stress in the process of the animals. I like that you highlighted the fact that because so I eat, obviously, I eat lots of meat. I enjoy meat, and I do feel that a lot of people that don't eat meat or choose not to eat or consume meat and are big fans of beyond and whatnot. I find that there's a little bit of shock value in the messaging against meat, which I don't think is warranted because I really I've heard that argument. I've researched a little bit about the argument you just made where plant-based is not killing less life. It's just it's not something that you're going to see in a dramatic YouTube video, and that's something that I think has lost on a lot of people. I definitely am aligned with what you're saying. I think this is a very interesting way of looking at it because I've never really thought of an alternative to meat. I've never eaten a beyond. I'm not a huge fan of the concept, but I never thought of anything else. I was like, I'll stick to meat, I'll stick to burgers, I'll stick to chicken, steak, whatever. Let me tell you one thing. We decided to choose a different strategy. What we did, we want to make the product healthier and more sustainable, but we still want to keep the exact same experience for you as a consumer. We want to eat meat, so let's enjoy meat. What we're doing, we're taking meat-based products like sausages, and we are replacing a portion of the protein with philosophers protein. This makes the product healthier and more sustainable. There is no additional processing, we're just mixing the basic crossover powder into it. We started with about 8% throttle protein and we increased it to 12%, 25%, we already reached 25%. For you as a consumer, the sausage will feel exactly like a beef sausage, you will not be able to tell the difference, but eventually it would be much healthier for you and more sustainable. I would also say that if you're doing a 45% lean protein source, because I can't imagine that there's any fat in grasshoppers at all, the overall nutrient profile of the sausages now much healthier too. Exactly. There's only 10% fat in grasshoppers, 50% of fat acids, omega-3 and omega-6 that you really need, so it's really healthy for you. Where do you want to take your company next? Now I've considered a serial entrepreneur. What would be the next step for you? Right now, our production capacity is relatively low. We have four operating facilities in North and Israel, but still the demand we see for our products is much higher than our production capacity. I would estimate about 60 times higher than our capacity. So the question is how do you deal with it? One option is raise a lot of money and try to make that demand. Another option, which we choose is to try to target niche markets, niche in the markets that can generate much higher margins, much higher revenues per kilogram of grasshoppers. And especially if these niche in the markets are where you can identify early adopters that could actually accelerate your sales in the future. And we did identify three niches. The first one are athletes. And we are developing sports protein powders. We do that in a joint venture with Novak. Novak is the largest food producer in Israel that is online. China is rightful. And we expect by next quarter to introduce the first prototype. Second go for products. We discussed mid-replacement products. We received a grant from the Israeli Ministry of Health and Innovation Authority to develop healthier sausages. And we are negotiating with US-based and European-based sausage companies a joint venture to continue the development and also manufacturing and distribution of those products. Last category, which currently I find most exciting is nutritional supplement. The fastest growing category nutritional supplements today is gummies. In the US alone, it's about 5.7 million dollar market. 4 billion dollar profit is for adults. So we developed gummy bears with grasshopper protein. And we made them honey flavored because John the Baptist used to eat grasshoppers with honey. So now we have a very healthy food product that is also sustainable but can also deliver an amazing story from the Bible. It's like John the Baptist, it's biblical food and be more healthy and save the environment. And we rebranded the entire line of products that we have among these products. We call it biblical protein. We expect to launch the first product, the gum is in the quest by the end of the month. That's very good. And is that more or less how you you've taken this product to market? It's through like these brand partnerships and whatnot. That's really how you've been successful. Well, it's part of it. When you are startup, you have to be as focused as you can on what you do best. And for us, it's growing grasshoppers. So going out and trying to develop sausages or gummies or sports protein powders, we make you lose focus and you won't be able to develop your business. You will spend your funds and you will never reach any goal or target. So reaching the market with those products, the only way to move forward was joint ventures with leading food producers. However, I give most of the credit to where we are at to our R&D team because many companies or many entrepreneurs around the world know about the potential of grasshoppers and many tried forming them and failed. We were the first to be successful because of our team that was able to identify exactly the needs and the way grasshoppers live, develop the entire closed environment that supports their growth year-round, accelerate their incubation. The eggs incubation of the grasshoppers for 40 weeks in the wild to 2 weeks in our incubators and then develop innovative cage infrastructure that enables the world to vertically making the entire population super efficient. And you mentioned something that I thought was very interesting and I don't think enough people focus on this. This lesson can be sort of extrapolated to many different scenarios. So you mentioned to focus on what you do best because if you aren't, you're going to be spinning your wheels, you're going to be wasting your time and your money. So in your background and your history, how did you learn that lesson? Because that's a very, very powerful lesson and I agree with you completely. Well, as I mentioned for the last 15 plus years I've been a serial entrepreneur. I was involved in medical devices and communications and in many startups, the team did nothing include all, let's say, all the relevant experts. For example, in one of the communication companies I was involved in and I did come from a communication company, but again I knew about strategy, maybe finance, maybe marketing, but I knew nothing about transmission and we never had such an expert on the team, but it didn't be hard to move forward when you're lacking that knowledge and know-how. So that is one thing and you're trying to develop your business while you're not focusing on what you're supposed to do best, which is communication. And is that something that you took to heart that was very important for you as you were building out your company now? Absolutely. I came up with the idea. I was 100% from a company I originally called Stake Taza and I wanted to raise money and started building the business. And for me, the first step was build the right team. So I went out shopping for two persons. One is a person that knows what grasshoppers are and is able to grow them. And that is Hanana Viv, the second partner in the company that for over 30 years has been growing and breeding and also eating a wide range of insects. And the third part is the treatment that specializes in food and nutritional supplement regulation because that's also a big issue of building the business. That's smart. So you basically, and he's also not a good lesson, that can be sort of agnostic of industry. You're very niche, but agnostic of industry to really fill the parts of the business that you aren't an expert in or that you may be very strong in, but you're not like the best in. That should be your founding team. And that's something that I think you did very well. Absolutely. Don't hire your friends, hire experts. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that multiple times, almost to the point where it's like don't hire anybody you know because you're not going to be, you're not going to be getting the most out of that person and it's not going to really help you take the business to where you need to take it really. Exactly. I would add one more thing about that. You know, when I started ahead 100% of the company and after I met Anan and Ben, I made them full partners from then one. And I think that is the smartest decision I ever made in a business because it took us almost three years to raise funds from an investor. Three years of working full time on a startup without getting paid only wasting money and time. And you can go something you want only when you have full partners on the team with you. Yeah, I agree because if if you didn't have those people as partners, I love this saying it's better to own a part of something than all of, than all of nothing, right? So if you don't have those partners, they're not going to be committed to the same extent that you are. Right. Yeah. No, that's very good. I want to, whenever I, we covered a lot about your career, about Grasshopper, which I was very interested to chat with you about this. So thank you. I wanted to, before we finish, just speak about some sort of like lessons learned across your career, but I wanted to give you the floor before we transition. Is there anything else about Hargol Food Tech that you wanted to bring up that I didn't dive into? Well, I think, I think we covered almost everything. I will add one more thing. Although we talked about how we penetrate the US and maybe European markets with innovative food products, eventually, we want to be able to feed the entire world. So while we are launching these new high end products, we continuously work on improving our production efficiency, reducing our production costs. And we do expect in the coming years to be able to establish Russell performs across Asia and Africa and feed the masters. No, that's very, that's very ambitious, but it's very impressive. And you know, I say ambitious, but look at what you've done so far. So I think that like you're, you're going in the right direction, for sure. What I wanted to, what I wanted to tee up because obviously you've been successful, you've worked across a couple different startups. I want to frame for people that are younger in their career, your journey. So a couple, these are very vanilla questions, but I really do enjoy them. So for example, what would be one lesson that you would tell your younger self about business entrepreneurship that you've learned? Actually, I'm saying two things all the time. One is don't wait, go out and start doing because in order to be successful, you have to fail and fail a lot. So you have to start young. I wish I could start the younger 10, 15, 20 years. This will bring success much earlier. That is one. Second one is if you want something to be done, go out and do it. And for me, that's my, my day today. Very good. I like those two. Those are very, those are very good. And I agree as well. What would be one skill? It could be something like a sales strategy or a sales skill or it could be something that could be something like a leadership quality that if you want to be successful in a career or in entrepreneurship, people should try and learn or improve on. What's like a very, very important skill set? I would say being able to sell. It's not about selling your product. It's about selling yourself because at the beginning, all you have is yourself telling the story. And you cannot find someone else to tell the story for you. I noticed many entrepreneurs bring someone else to be on stage to tell the story to show the presentation to speak on the video or talk to investors. Well, probably they will not get investments. They will not be able to move forward. You have to face this anxiety and just go out and find a way to sell yourself. You can start with your relatives, with your spouse, with your parents, with your friends, practice on them. They will be the greatest crowd you could ever have. And when you ready, go out and talk to others. But it has to be, eventually, it has to be you being able to sell yourself and your business. Very good. I very much agree too. And lastly, where do you go to learn? So do you do podcasts, books? Do you have somebody like a mentor that you really enjoy if you want to sort of expand your own knowledge? I would say yes to all those sources. You can find online today so much information and background and exciting things to learn. One more thing that is really inspiring to me and that is listening to people on the radio. I'm trying to listen to politicians, to businessmen, to regular people and trying to figure out how they deliver their message, trying to figure out how it feels for me what their message delivered and they convinced me. And then I'm trying to implement what I think was working for them. That goes back to the importance of being able to sell, sell yourself. Not only it's not, yes, it's selling but it's also talking to others because every time you talk to your partners, to your investors, to your employees, you're selling yourself. You have to be able to deliver a message and motivate them to do what you want. So it's about being able in a convincing way. Very good, very good. And lastly, if people want to get in touch with you and connect with you or learn more, how do they reach out to you? Is LinkedIn email what's the best way? They can find me easily everywhere. They can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. My details are, my content details are on the web on hardwellwebsitehardwell.com. I'm trying to respond to everyone personally. Very good, very good. So that's all I have. So thank you, Dora. I appreciate it very much. This was obviously another great episode of the sales versus marketing podcast. As always, if you haven't already, please, please like, please subscribe. Please leave a rating. Any ratings fine. As long as five star rating, you can find this podcast stream and download it wherever podcasts are available. And you can also see it on YouTube. As always, have a great week, have a productive week. And we will speak again soon. Bye now. Thanks for listening to the sales versus marketing podcast brought to you by ROI Overlord, delivering strategy, technology, and insights to both sales and marketing leaders and teams. Global.