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Selling Billions of Crickets a Year · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. When Mohammed Assure was in medical school back in
0:23
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, he and a few friends heard about this contest.
0:27
Speaker 1: The team that came up with the best idea for
0:30
Speaker 1: a business to address global food insecurity would win one
0:34
Speaker 1: million dollars to launch the business, and, like lots of
0:37
Speaker 1: people before them, Mohammed and his friends soon discovered crickets.
0:42
Speaker 1: They learned that crickets are a super efficient machine for
0:45
Speaker 1: turning grain into protein. Quick comparison, a cow eats eight
0:50
Speaker 1: pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. For chicken,
0:54
Speaker 1: the ratio's two and a half to one, and for
0:56
Speaker 1: crickets the ratio is just one point three to one.
1:00
Speaker 1: Incredibly efficient. This is the part of the eating bug
1:04
Speaker 1: story that we've heard before, but the problem always seems
1:07
Speaker 1: to be how do you get a mayors to eat
1:09
Speaker 1: bugs deep crickets. Mohammed's big idea was to avoid that
1:14
Speaker 1: problem altogether. Instead, he and his co founders would bring
1:18
Speaker 1: down the price of crickets for millions of people in
1:21
Speaker 1: other parts of the world where people already eat crickets,
1:24
Speaker 1: but where crickets are not always available or affordable. That
1:27
Speaker 1: turned out to be a surprisingly hard problem. To solve,
1:30
Speaker 1: but the idea was enough to win the million dollar
1:33
Speaker 1: prize and launch the business. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this
1:38
Speaker 1: is What's your problem. My guest today is Mohammed Assure,
1:42
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of Aspire Food Group. The company just
1:45
Speaker 1: built the biggest cricket factory in the history of the world.
1:49
Speaker 1: Mohammed's problem now, how do you sell billions of crickets
1:53
Speaker 1: a year. Today's show is a story about finding your
1:57
Speaker 1: market and also about one of my favorite ideas, an
2:00
Speaker 1: idea that maybe not surprisingly has become one of the
2:03
Speaker 1: recurring themes of this podcast. The idea is this, one
2:08
Speaker 1: of the key drivers of human progress is using technology
2:12
Speaker 1: to make things cheaper. In this case, the thing technology
2:15
Speaker 1: is making cheaper is crickets bugs. When we started the business,
2:21
Speaker 1: our goal was not actually from the get go to
2:24
Speaker 1: get North Americans eating bugs. In many of the world's countries,
2:29
Speaker 1: insects are already consumed as a delicious delicacy that is
2:33
Speaker 1: highly nutritious and celebrated. But in many of those countries,
2:37
Speaker 1: crickets or other insects are just not available, not affordable seasonal.
2:41
Speaker 1: So you want to go to a place where they're
2:42
Speaker 1: at delicacy. I mean the reason they're at delicacy is
2:44
Speaker 1: because they're expensive, right, Like that's delicacy means. And so
2:48
Speaker 1: the idea was, we want to now make this protein
2:50
Speaker 1: source which is already accepted here, available and affordable year round. Right.
2:56
Speaker 1: Some of those countries I mean, I know famously Wahaka
2:59
Speaker 1: right in Mexico. What are some of the other places
3:01
Speaker 1: where people at crickets, Oh gosh, I mean in Africa alone,
3:05
Speaker 1: you have you know, Gonea, Nigeria, you have South Africa,
3:09
Speaker 1: you have Niger. If you go to the Middle East,
3:12
Speaker 1: you have Saudi Arabia, you have Kuwait. Like these are
3:14
Speaker 1: places where locusts are widely consumed. If you go to Asia,
3:17
Speaker 1: you have some of the countries like Thailand and Vietnam.
3:19
Speaker 1: And now it's not in every one of these countries.
3:24
Speaker 1: There are certain you know, cities or municipalities or areas
3:28
Speaker 1: where insects are widely consumed because of their geography or
3:31
Speaker 1: their climate, and others less so. But fundamentally, it's a
3:34
Speaker 1: very large percentage of the world's countries that have some
3:36
Speaker 1: history of consuming insects. So what you want for your
3:40
Speaker 1: for your mission really is a place where lots of
3:43
Speaker 1: people are hungry, you struggle to have enough food and
3:46
Speaker 1: where eating crickets is already normal exactly. That's that's right,
3:50
Speaker 1: and that that was our focus from the beginning. And
3:52
Speaker 1: so if that was the focus, this is why not
3:55
Speaker 1: build the factory there? Yeah. So one of the challenges
3:59
Speaker 1: we've faced is we actually tried. So when we first
4:01
Speaker 1: started the company, one of my co founders moved to Ghana,
4:05
Speaker 1: and one of us moved to Wahaca, Mexico, and I
4:08
Speaker 1: moved to Austin, EXUS where we were starting to pilot
4:10
Speaker 1: cricket farming. And the challenges we faced is both the
4:14
Speaker 1: talent that you needed to have placed there in order
4:16
Speaker 1: to build the capability, not just the engineering talent but
4:20
Speaker 1: also the entomology talent and the understanding of how to
4:23
Speaker 1: grow those insects at scale, and the agricultural requirements to
4:28
Speaker 1: regulatory requirements of a lot of factors were very challenging
4:32
Speaker 1: to be able to pull off for a bunch of
4:34
Speaker 1: like expat foreign students. Okay, so you tried. So the answer,
4:38
Speaker 1: as you tried, the answer is too hard to Yeah. Yeah,
4:42
Speaker 1: for us, for us as a founding team, given our
4:44
Speaker 1: specific circumstances and given some of the realities we were
4:48
Speaker 1: we were experiencing at the time, and now when we
4:51
Speaker 1: when we decided, okay, well we're going to produce crickets
4:53
Speaker 1: in North America and you know, focus perhaps on shipping
4:57
Speaker 1: overseas to some of these markets, that's when we also
4:59
Speaker 1: started to see this opportunity. And part of this was
5:02
Speaker 1: driven by inbound requests. So back in twenty fifteen, right
5:05
Speaker 1: around when we built our factory in US, our very
5:07
Speaker 1: first facility, there was a bunch of startups that we're
5:10
Speaker 1: getting funding on, like shark Tank and a whole bunch
5:13
Speaker 1: of others that we're getting, you know, funded on Kickstarter
5:15
Speaker 1: very successfully, that we're making, you know, protein bars from
5:17
Speaker 1: crickets or other snacks from crickets that we're reaching out
5:20
Speaker 1: to us asking us if we can supply them. So, okay,
5:23
Speaker 1: you realize you aren't going to be able to build
5:25
Speaker 1: a factory somewhere people already eat crickets. You're thinking maybe
5:29
Speaker 1: you'll ship them there, but but you also think, well,
5:32
Speaker 1: you've got the crickets anyways. People are kind of into
5:34
Speaker 1: crickets in the US right now, and you actually try
5:37
Speaker 1: this sort of plan B move where you sell bags
5:39
Speaker 1: of crickets like chips in the US, right, tell me
5:42
Speaker 1: about that. So the idea was simple. It was to
5:47
Speaker 1: so try to go on one side where you are
5:50
Speaker 1: so explicit about the fact that this is a cricket
5:53
Speaker 1: that you actually present it as a snack in whole
5:55
Speaker 1: cricket form. Right, So you take these crickets, you roast them,
5:58
Speaker 1: you apply seasoning like you know, it's like chips seasoning, right,
6:02
Speaker 1: like barbecue or sour cream or whatever, and they would
6:05
Speaker 1: be consumed not dissimilarly to something like jerky in the
6:08
Speaker 1: sense that it's a very meaty, high protein snack that
6:11
Speaker 1: is savory. And it was very interesting to see the
6:14
Speaker 1: response we got because you sort of had like a
6:17
Speaker 1: certain percentage, and I would say, it's a small but
6:19
Speaker 1: extremely dedicated, you know, very devoted following of people who
6:24
Speaker 1: found this to be super nutritious and delicious, but of
6:26
Speaker 1: course and also made it like their whole identity, like, hey,
6:29
Speaker 1: call me cricket, I'm the cricket that I love to
6:31
Speaker 1: snack on crickets. Ask me about crickets. Yeah, that's right.
6:34
Speaker 1: And they were remarkably popular amongst children in particular. And
6:38
Speaker 1: then you had on the flip side. I would say
6:40
Speaker 1: a much larger percentage of people whom that was too
6:44
Speaker 1: much in terms of like just visually seeing a cricket
6:47
Speaker 1: and being able to pick it up and eat it.
6:48
Speaker 1: I don't want to eat a bug. Seems like that's right,
6:51
Speaker 1: not that surprising response. Yeah, so okay. So at this point,
6:54
Speaker 1: like plan A, build a factory where people already eat crickets.
6:58
Speaker 1: That didn't work. Plan B, sell crickets to people in
7:01
Speaker 1: North America. That's not going great. But then there's this
7:04
Speaker 1: moment when you kind of get your big break. Tell
7:06
Speaker 1: me about that. We were actually at a food in Anaheim, California.
7:12
Speaker 1: We had at the time a large company that primarily
7:16
Speaker 1: focuses on pet food, looking for human grade ingredients so
7:20
Speaker 1: they could sell some premium thing like give your dog
7:23
Speaker 1: chicken that's as good as the chicken you eat, that
7:25
Speaker 1: kind of thing exactly, And that led to was this
7:28
Speaker 1: unbelievable rabbit hole where we became to understand that Over
7:33
Speaker 1: the last decade or so, there has been a two
7:36
Speaker 1: major trends in pet food. The first has been the
7:38
Speaker 1: humanization of pets. Pets are no longer this furry thing
7:41
Speaker 1: that greets you and makes you feel good. It is
7:43
Speaker 1: a member of the household, and in most households, the
7:45
Speaker 1: favorite child. Yeah. And as a result, when that's your philosophy,
7:50
Speaker 1: that means you feed and clothe your pets accordingly. Yeah.
7:54
Speaker 1: And the amount of money that people are spending on
7:57
Speaker 1: their pets a staggering And by the way, pets represent
7:59
Speaker 1: about one in four calories consumed when it comes to
8:01
Speaker 1: animal products in North America. So just to be clear,
8:05
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of the meat calories and consumed in
8:09
Speaker 1: North America is consumed by pets. That's correct. Okay, let's
8:14
Speaker 1: go back to Anaheim. So you're taught in the some
8:17
Speaker 1: pet food company, yes, And they come to us and
8:19
Speaker 1: they start asking us about you know this this cricket protein,
8:23
Speaker 1: and you know what are we feeding as as human grade?
8:24
Speaker 1: Oh yes it is. Okay, Well, tell us about sustainability,
8:27
Speaker 1: and we start describing the sustainability benefits, and their eyes
8:30
Speaker 1: just flash and they start describing to us the challenges
8:33
Speaker 1: their customers are facing because they're sort of in a
8:35
Speaker 1: moral an ethical dilemma that a lot of their customers face,
8:38
Speaker 1: who are mostly millennials, the largest pet owning demographic by far,
8:42
Speaker 1: face this dilemma where on the one hand, they want
8:44
Speaker 1: to feed their pets like their humans, and that's benevolent,
8:47
Speaker 1: but then most of what they have to choose from
8:49
Speaker 1: to feed their pets is not very environmentally ecologically healthy.
8:53
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing. Two dogs are, you know,
8:56
Speaker 1: omnivores that preferentially consume meat in their diet, and cats
8:59
Speaker 1: are carnivores. So there's also a challenge with just using
9:02
Speaker 1: purely plant based or vegetable based. Yeah. Right now, if
9:06
Speaker 1: you're like a center left millennial, you want to do
9:08
Speaker 1: the right thing for your pet and do there I
9:10
Speaker 1: think for the earth? What do you do exactly? And
9:13
Speaker 1: so this was the opportunity. Now, the next question this
9:16
Speaker 1: customer asked me is well, how what's your volume today?
9:18
Speaker 1: We're very interested. This customer is a big pet food company. Yes,
9:22
Speaker 1: that's right, and well and they also manufacture and distribute
9:24
Speaker 1: to other pet food companies as well. Okay, so they
9:27
Speaker 1: ask us, you know, what's your production volume today? We said, well,
9:29
Speaker 1: our production volume today is you know, maybe low hundreds
9:32
Speaker 1: of thousands of pounds a year. They said, oh, okay,
9:35
Speaker 1: well that's that's too bad. We said, well, why why
9:38
Speaker 1: is it too bad? They said, you know, the guy
9:39
Speaker 1: said to me is like, Muhammad, You're not going to
9:41
Speaker 1: be able to move the needle in the pet food
9:43
Speaker 1: market unless you get to a million pounds a month
9:45
Speaker 1: or more because the demand is very significant and the
9:50
Speaker 1: production the way you produce in terms of like the kibble,
9:53
Speaker 1: et cetera, has always done at significant scale, and my customers,
9:56
Speaker 1: even if they do a test launch in just one market,
9:59
Speaker 1: that's like millions of pounds of a required product. So
10:02
Speaker 1: of course I immediately said to that person and said, well, listen,
10:04
Speaker 1: there's like clearly a value in a philosophical alignment between
10:08
Speaker 1: you know, the market you represent and our mission as
10:12
Speaker 1: a company. So I mean, if we were to have
10:14
Speaker 1: the resources and capacity to scale to meet that volume,
10:17
Speaker 1: is that something you would commit to? And they said,
10:20
Speaker 1: we would sign today, you know, a commitment if you
10:23
Speaker 1: were able to meet that volume and if you were
10:25
Speaker 1: to meet that demand. And in fact, that is what
10:26
Speaker 1: led to us being able. Now with this significant demand
10:29
Speaker 1: in hand, we were able to justify building a commercial
10:32
Speaker 1: facility that can lead to us meeting that market. So
10:35
Speaker 1: you're gonna sell billions of crickets a year for pet
10:39
Speaker 1: food startups in the next year, or so yeah, yeah,
10:42
Speaker 1: exactly when are the first crickets going to go out
10:45
Speaker 1: the door of your factory headed for a pet food factory?
10:49
Speaker 1: In three months? In three months? Okay? Yea, And couldn't
10:52
Speaker 1: you say what pet food company is buying crickets? You'll
10:57
Speaker 1: find out very soon, Okay. I mean the only pet
11:00
Speaker 1: food company I've heard of is Purina, so I'll just say,
11:03
Speaker 1: is it Purina? No comment? Interesting? And it's not just
11:10
Speaker 1: one It's not just one pet food brand, by the way,
11:15
Speaker 1: So okay, plan See this pet food idea seems promising
11:20
Speaker 1: for a few reasons. One is, pets eat a lot
11:23
Speaker 1: of meat, which I didn't even really think about much
11:26
Speaker 1: until I had this conversation with mommy, so there's a
11:29
Speaker 1: real environmental problem to solve it. And also, bugs are
11:33
Speaker 1: clearly not grows to most of the dogs and cats
11:36
Speaker 1: I have known, at least, like if my dog found
11:38
Speaker 1: a cricket on the sidewalk, he'd eat it. But now
11:43
Speaker 1: that Mohammed has found his cricket demand, he has to
11:46
Speaker 1: come up with the cricket supply coming up after the break,
11:49
Speaker 1: how do you build the biggest, most high tech cricket
11:52
Speaker 1: factory in the history of the world. Now back to
12:01
Speaker 1: the show. Earlier this year, Mohammed and his colleagues opened
12:05
Speaker 1: a giant cricket factory in London, Ontario, Canada. From the
12:09
Speaker 1: outside the factory, it just looks like a big white
12:12
Speaker 1: industrial building, and on the inside, to a large extent,
12:15
Speaker 1: it also looks like a big industrial building. You know,
12:18
Speaker 1: think of like robots moving around palettes with big plastic
12:22
Speaker 1: bins on them, But inside each bin is tens of
12:26
Speaker 1: thousands of live crickets. Is it allowed when you go
12:29
Speaker 1: to where the crickets are is allowed? Not yet? You know,
12:32
Speaker 1: we expect that once we get to full production capacity,
12:35
Speaker 1: you'll have a nice sort of comforting, soothing chorus of chirping. Actually,
12:40
Speaker 1: a group of crickets is called an orchestra, which is
12:43
Speaker 1: why we've named our facility here in the orchestra. Okay,
12:48
Speaker 1: tell me about the place where you're sitting right now.
12:50
Speaker 1: Where are you talking to me from? Our facility is
12:53
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand square foot mostly factory with
12:57
Speaker 1: a headquarter office component, and it is the world's largest
13:02
Speaker 1: fully automated cricket production facility, largest fully So does that
13:08
Speaker 1: mean there's a big not fully automated cricket production facility. No,
13:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't. This is just a very comprehensive description. It
13:16
Speaker 1: is the largest cricket farm and it also holds the
13:18
Speaker 1: record of largest automated cricket farm. It also holds the
13:21
Speaker 1: world record farm. So you're talking to me from the
13:24
Speaker 1: biggest cricket farm ever in the history of the universe. Well,
13:27
Speaker 1: I don't know about the universe, but certainly planet Earth. Good,
13:30
Speaker 1: good point. And when did it open? And we began
13:36
Speaker 1: production this past month. Cricket number one arrived this month, correct?
13:43
Speaker 1: And when are you going to get to cricket whatever
13:45
Speaker 1: one billion? Yeah, later this year, towards the end of
13:49
Speaker 1: the year. Okay, just because the crickets have to make
13:52
Speaker 1: more crickets. Is that what happens? Right? That's right. So
13:54
Speaker 1: a single female will lay somewhere between one hundred to
13:57
Speaker 1: two hundred eggs per week. So the reproductivity of the
14:00
Speaker 1: crickets is pretty remarkable, and the rate at which we
14:02
Speaker 1: will grow will be quite exponential. So let's talk about
14:06
Speaker 1: this factory like, are there are there sort of tricks
14:10
Speaker 1: or efficiencies you're gaining or is it just more crickets?
14:14
Speaker 1: You know, you can ten x the amount of crickets,
14:16
Speaker 1: and you don't have to ten x the amount of staff.
14:18
Speaker 1: And therefore it's just basic simple economy of scale. There's
14:21
Speaker 1: a combination of the two. Let's do this. Tell me
14:24
Speaker 1: the story at this new fancy, biggest ever cricket factor
14:28
Speaker 1: you have, like start with what an eggs? At the
14:31
Speaker 1: right place to start? If we start with an egg,
14:34
Speaker 1: or maybe with the mother laying an egg, wherever you
14:38
Speaker 1: want to start, start at the beginning and end with
14:40
Speaker 1: somebody eating cricket. Sure, how does that story go? Yeah?
14:44
Speaker 1: So sure. So the way it works is you have
14:46
Speaker 1: our breeder totes. So we have these bins in the
14:50
Speaker 1: facility that are dedicated to crickets that are sexually mature
14:54
Speaker 1: and will mate. And then effectively, the females will deposit
14:58
Speaker 1: their eggs into a substrate. That substrate will be incubated
15:02
Speaker 1: and then slow down a little I want to slow
15:03
Speaker 1: down a little bit. So you have a breeder You
15:05
Speaker 1: called it a tote, like, yes, think of it as
15:08
Speaker 1: a in the size of a palette. Okay, so like
15:12
Speaker 1: a shipping palette. Yeah, like a shipping a box. That's
15:15
Speaker 1: that's a pretty large box the size of a palette
15:17
Speaker 1: and that's the single unit that we move around in
15:19
Speaker 1: the building. Think of that as like the housing unit
15:22
Speaker 1: for a certain population of crickets multiplied by you know,
15:26
Speaker 1: many thousands of these touts in the facility, and the
15:28
Speaker 1: total of that is the total population of crickets. And
15:31
Speaker 1: so your crickets live in these boxes. And so you
15:34
Speaker 1: have sure some with with crickets that are breeding and
15:39
Speaker 1: they lay eggs, and they lay eggs and then those
15:41
Speaker 1: eggs are incubated and then they hatch. The newly hatched
15:45
Speaker 1: crickets are called pinheads, and that's because they are so
15:47
Speaker 1: small they could literally fit on the tip of a pen. Okay,
15:50
Speaker 1: how many crickets grow up in in a bidden Yeah,
15:53
Speaker 1: approximately thirty thousand are in each bin. Thirty thousand, okay.
15:57
Speaker 1: Um And those bins will now have food and water
16:01
Speaker 1: and all of the requirements that the crickets are going
16:04
Speaker 1: to need for the thirty day period in which they
16:06
Speaker 1: are going to be housed in this umility until they
16:10
Speaker 1: are ready to be harvested. So, in other words, you're
16:12
Speaker 1: putting everything the crickets need that is fully sufficient for
16:15
Speaker 1: that thirty d period. You're sealing and closing the lid
16:18
Speaker 1: and effectively not touching or interfering with or in any
16:22
Speaker 1: way interrupting this process for thirty days. You come at
16:24
Speaker 1: the end of thirty days, and in that thirty days
16:27
Speaker 1: crickets grow about eight hundred times their body weight. That's
16:30
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a human baby growing to become a
16:32
Speaker 1: t rex in thirty days. So you have at the
16:36
Speaker 1: end of thirty days now these crickets that have reached
16:38
Speaker 1: adult size, and you harvest them the way we harvest
16:42
Speaker 1: the crickets as we actually freeze them. So okay, that's
16:45
Speaker 1: the process of how you raise the crickets. And the
16:48
Speaker 1: point of building this big factory and of using the
16:51
Speaker 1: plastic toads and everything else is to bring down the
16:54
Speaker 1: cost of crickets. Right, So let's talk about cost. What
16:58
Speaker 1: is I don't know, what is a pound of crickets cost? Yeah? Sure, So,
17:04
Speaker 1: typically speaking, crickets are purchased as either a powder or
17:08
Speaker 1: in a raw material form a powder in powder form
17:12
Speaker 1: that we would take about let's say four pounds of
17:14
Speaker 1: crickets to produce one pound of cricket powder. Right, So
17:18
Speaker 1: today a pound of cricket powder will sell for about
17:22
Speaker 1: call it somewhere between fifteen to twenty dollars per pound
17:25
Speaker 1: of powder. Okay, okay, So if it's four pounds of
17:28
Speaker 1: crickets to make that powder, that means even just a
17:32
Speaker 1: pound of plane crickets is still more expensive than a
17:35
Speaker 1: pound of like chicken, absolutely, and that price is largely
17:39
Speaker 1: based on the scale challenge that this industry has had. Now,
17:43
Speaker 1: as you scale up and you introduce more automation, your
17:46
Speaker 1: cost per unitive production starts to dramatically drop, and the
17:50
Speaker 1: more you scale, the more efficient your costs are overtime.
17:53
Speaker 1: So for us, the premise always has been that if
17:56
Speaker 1: you look at the math like on paper, if crickets
18:00
Speaker 1: use less land, less water, less energy, less food, then
18:05
Speaker 1: really the inputs that are typically the largest driver of
18:08
Speaker 1: cost when it comes to livestock production, if they are
18:10
Speaker 1: much lower for crickets, then therefore crickets should be much
18:13
Speaker 1: less expensive. It's pretty simple math. The reason they're not
18:17
Speaker 1: is because the scale at which you're producing crickets today
18:20
Speaker 1: is so small and your labor cost per unit is
18:22
Speaker 1: so high that obviously your price is quite significant. This
18:25
Speaker 1: is why this facility that we've just built is such
18:28
Speaker 1: a massive step, because we are going to be able
18:31
Speaker 1: to dramatically increase the affordability of our crickets within the
18:34
Speaker 1: next twelve months. And to put that in perspective, you know,
18:38
Speaker 1: if a pound of cricket powder today sells for about
18:40
Speaker 1: twenty dollars, within the next twelve months, it'll drop below
18:44
Speaker 1: ten dollars, and we anticipate that within the next three
18:47
Speaker 1: to five years we will actually be close to the
18:50
Speaker 1: five dollars per pound mark. You seem confident in those
18:54
Speaker 1: in those predictions. So you're saying the price a year
18:58
Speaker 1: from now is going to be half what it is today. Yes,
19:03
Speaker 1: how do you know? How do I know? The reason
19:07
Speaker 1: I know is because you look at what is driving
19:09
Speaker 1: the cost today of twenty dollars per pound, because you
19:11
Speaker 1: know you're lost yet granularly, So there's two reasons you're
19:18
Speaker 1: expecting the price of crickets to fall in half in
19:23
Speaker 1: the next year and what in half again a few
19:25
Speaker 1: years after that? Basically is that right? If I understand it.
19:29
Speaker 1: One is just scale. You just have a really big
19:32
Speaker 1: factory now and it's more efficient, fewer dollars of labor
19:36
Speaker 1: per cricket. Two, you're just getting better at raising crickets.
19:43
Speaker 1: You're getting figuring out how to be more efficient. Is
19:45
Speaker 1: that right? Yes, we gather. We will be gathering about
19:49
Speaker 1: thirty million data points every single day on everything like temperature, humidity,
19:53
Speaker 1: light intensity, sound, pressure, and understanding how each one of
19:56
Speaker 1: those things maps to growth. So if I see a
19:58
Speaker 1: certain cluster of touts in my orbins in my facility,
20:01
Speaker 1: that I see a five percent increase in yield compared
20:04
Speaker 1: to a different control, and I look at the underlying
20:06
Speaker 1: data and what was actually happening in each bin. A.
20:09
Speaker 1: I know what this is happening in each bind because
20:10
Speaker 1: I'm capturing that data, and B I can look at
20:13
Speaker 1: the nuances of what those differences are and then immediately
20:15
Speaker 1: set that new baseline. When we first started, I think
20:18
Speaker 1: we were getting so out of thirty thousand crickets, we
20:21
Speaker 1: were getting maybe something like two pounds of yield. You
20:24
Speaker 1: got a box full of crickets, a box of thirty
20:26
Speaker 1: thousand cickets, thirty thousand baby pinhead crickets, and by the
20:30
Speaker 1: end of a month you get two pounds. Okay, now
20:33
Speaker 1: we're close to twenty pounds per bin and that and
20:39
Speaker 1: what was Is it because of more of the crickets
20:43
Speaker 1: are surviving? Now? Is it because they're bigger, is it
20:46
Speaker 1: something a combination of the above. So figuring out, for example,
20:50
Speaker 1: what is the optimal feed where do you ideally place
20:52
Speaker 1: the feed because a pinhead cricket is so small, So
20:55
Speaker 1: even like the particle size of the feed matters. If
20:57
Speaker 1: you have your feed is not crushed into a certain
21:00
Speaker 1: particle size, it may be difficult for the crickets to
21:02
Speaker 1: eat it. Water water access right when they're When you
21:05
Speaker 1: have a cricket the size of the tip of a pen,
21:07
Speaker 1: it can literally drown in a drop of water. So
21:09
Speaker 1: how do you ensure that it can drink water in
21:11
Speaker 1: that very fragile state in its early days and still
21:14
Speaker 1: be able to access water when it gets older and larger?
21:17
Speaker 1: And how do you optimize the number of crickets? Wait,
21:19
Speaker 1: what's the answer to the water one? How do you
21:22
Speaker 1: do that? That's a trade secret? Is it really is
21:26
Speaker 1: a cricket trade secret? It actually is a cricket trade secret? Yeah,
21:31
Speaker 1: So like is the end? Can you tell me what
21:33
Speaker 1: what's going on inside the bin? Or it's like that's
21:35
Speaker 1: a literal black box, Well it is. It is in
21:38
Speaker 1: many ways of black box because that's ultimately when you
21:41
Speaker 1: think about all of the intellectual property of the company.
21:43
Speaker 1: It kind of comes down to not just what you
21:45
Speaker 1: have in the bin and where it's placed, but also
21:47
Speaker 1: what there are the decisions around how you've done that.
21:50
Speaker 1: So I think if you look at the major difference
21:51
Speaker 1: between what we've done and what we've learned compared to
21:53
Speaker 1: virtually any other cricket farming operation in the world, and
21:57
Speaker 1: there is quite a few the differences. We are the
21:59
Speaker 1: only cricket farming operation that has devised a successful way
22:04
Speaker 1: of farming crickets in a fully enclosed bin, and that
22:08
Speaker 1: allows you to do so many interesting things. Now you
22:10
Speaker 1: can stack the bins. Now you can have a lot
22:12
Speaker 1: more efficient packing in your facility, the way you're moving
22:15
Speaker 1: it around, and presumably it makes it super scalable because
22:18
Speaker 1: you just close the box and go away for a
22:21
Speaker 1: month and come back exactly. And also the other aspect
22:24
Speaker 1: of scale that is crucial is you know, a lot
22:27
Speaker 1: of startups I think get too hung up on IP
22:29
Speaker 1: in the early days, right because you have to you
22:31
Speaker 1: have to kind of put your elbows out and prove
22:33
Speaker 1: why you're different, why you're so special, specifically if you
22:35
Speaker 1: want to attract investor dollars. But as you get as
22:37
Speaker 1: you grow up as a company and you want to
22:39
Speaker 1: scale up. Actually it becomes a disadvantage for too many
22:42
Speaker 1: things to be customed because it's very hard to modularize.
22:45
Speaker 1: It's very hard to scale. Ideally in our case, when
22:48
Speaker 1: we focus all of our ip on what's happening inside
22:50
Speaker 1: the bin, now we can make everything else off the shelf,
22:53
Speaker 1: right the factory conveying systems or off the shelf, because
22:56
Speaker 1: the unit of the bin is a palette, and we
22:59
Speaker 1: universally know how to move palettes around inside warehouses, inside factories.
23:03
Speaker 1: So that allows you to take advantage of so many
23:05
Speaker 1: already proven, already you know, de risk technologies and to
23:09
Speaker 1: focus your core competency on the thing you know best,
23:12
Speaker 1: which is what's actually happening inside these bibs. So, in
23:15
Speaker 1: a sense, outside the bin, it's just a generic factory
23:17
Speaker 1: and you can use all the generic factory technology that
23:20
Speaker 1: already exists. Yeah, it's a super super cool factory. Hopefully
23:23
Speaker 1: you'll visit one day. And robots got like robots driving
23:26
Speaker 1: them around and yeah, yeah, lots and lots of robotics,
23:28
Speaker 1: lots of robotics, lots of you know, factory conveyance. That's
23:32
Speaker 1: a fully automated sensors, computer vision, that sort of thing.
23:35
Speaker 1: So you had this original idea of basically bringing down
23:40
Speaker 1: the price of crickets for people in places where people
23:43
Speaker 1: already eat crickets. You still working on that, yes, So
23:48
Speaker 1: for us, that's the that's the North compass. The problem
23:51
Speaker 1: we found when we did the math in the early
23:53
Speaker 1: days is to profitably sell crickets to a single of
23:57
Speaker 1: mother of three children in Kumasi, Ghana, you have to
24:00
Speaker 1: have an unbelievably tight operating cost structure, and we're not
24:05
Speaker 1: even there yet with this facility. So what we eat,
24:08
Speaker 1: what were my view and my vision long term is
24:11
Speaker 1: that within the next five years we will finally hit
24:14
Speaker 1: the cost floor that allows us to now be able
24:17
Speaker 1: to build a facility at scale in the Middle East,
24:20
Speaker 1: in Africa to actually meet the demand in some of
24:23
Speaker 1: these markets. And what's really heartening is we actually received
24:25
Speaker 1: an investment at the end of last year from a
24:27
Speaker 1: fairly large Korean food and beverage company that is interested
24:32
Speaker 1: in building out a factory in Korea that distributes to
24:35
Speaker 1: many parts of Asia and where the ultimate objective there
24:38
Speaker 1: is to address food security and to meet the nutrition
24:40
Speaker 1: requirements of populations but profitably doing so. And that's when
24:44
Speaker 1: we began to drip. And how much does the cost
24:46
Speaker 1: of cricket production have to fall for it to be
24:48
Speaker 1: a real protein food source for people in the developing world?
24:54
Speaker 1: I would say it would have to drop another thirty
24:56
Speaker 1: to forty percent from where we are today. Okay, And
24:59
Speaker 1: how long is it going to take you to do that?
25:02
Speaker 1: I am optimistic within the next five years will be there.
25:07
Speaker 1: I love it when stuff gets cheaper. In a minute,
25:10
Speaker 1: the Lightning round, we have lots of questions about bugs.
25:21
Speaker 1: That's the end of the ads. Now we're going back
25:23
Speaker 1: to the show. Let's do the Lightning round. Let's just
25:27
Speaker 1: do ask questions. Okay, indeed, um, first insect? I ate? Sure?
25:35
Speaker 1: You want to do that one? You could ask me sure?
25:38
Speaker 1: How about what was the last time what was the
25:41
Speaker 1: last time you ate an insect? This weekend? Cricket powder
25:45
Speaker 1: in my pancake makes with kids. Does it even taste
25:49
Speaker 1: different or is it just like pancakes with protein. It
25:52
Speaker 1: doesn't taste any different. Crickets taste like what they eat.
25:55
Speaker 1: And so you have this very very kind of mild
25:57
Speaker 1: flavor that's kind of corn in it, and it's odor
26:01
Speaker 1: and texture, and we blend it with flour. Doesn't you
26:03
Speaker 1: can't tell any difference. Um, you're tired of the sound
26:08
Speaker 1: crickets make? No, I'm not. You like it? You like
26:12
Speaker 1: it still? Yeah, it's it's souping sound. Can you make it?
26:17
Speaker 1: I can't know, and if I did, it would not
26:21
Speaker 1: be seething. Why do you think is the most underrated insect?
26:32
Speaker 1: I'd probably say ants. I think I think bees get
26:36
Speaker 1: a lot of credit, but but ants have an unbelievable
26:40
Speaker 1: role they play ecologically to sustain our ecosystems. Um. And
26:44
Speaker 1: I'm just amazed at how powerful they are relative to
26:47
Speaker 1: their body size and the way they can act in concert. Right,
26:50
Speaker 1: the way they can act in concert. Yeah, as a team,
26:53
Speaker 1: the teamwork is just for me personally. I can't get
26:56
Speaker 1: enough of ants. What's your second favorite insect after crickets? Um,
27:02
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed I really enjoyed palm leavel larva in Ghana.
27:07
Speaker 1: Very tasty. How do you just eat them? How do
27:10
Speaker 1: you eat them? It's like you skewer them on a
27:12
Speaker 1: shish kebab and then you consume it no differently than
27:16
Speaker 1: you would like a chicken shish kebab or a beef
27:18
Speaker 1: like you added to a stew or rice or with
27:20
Speaker 1: a pieta bread or something like that and or gelaf rice.
27:23
Speaker 1: In that case, it was very tasty. If everything goes well,
27:27
Speaker 1: what's a problem you'll be trying to solve in five years.
27:30
Speaker 1: There's over one million species of insects in the world
27:33
Speaker 1: that have been identified, and I believe every insect is
27:36
Speaker 1: a source of some natural superpower raw material. We've happened
27:42
Speaker 1: to match crickets to protein. We know that honeys and
27:45
Speaker 1: bee and silkworms and silk. Imagine all the other raw
27:48
Speaker 1: materials and all the other insects that are yet to
27:50
Speaker 1: be discovered once you know how to produce them at scale. Well,
27:53
Speaker 1: what's give me one or two that are on your
27:56
Speaker 1: short list, then I'll tell you what. There's a specific
27:59
Speaker 1: species of insect that has been shown and has shown
28:03
Speaker 1: very promising potential to actually biodegrade pet plastic in other words,
28:09
Speaker 1: literally eats plastic and produces glycola on the other end.
28:13
Speaker 1: That's very exciting. Muhammad Ashure is the co founder and
28:20
Speaker 1: CEO of Aspire. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo,
28:25
Speaker 1: engineered by Amanda ka Wong and edited by Robert Smith.
28:29
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
28:31
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.