Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 4: Harry Rietze; From Smokehouse Dreams To 4 Million Pounds

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Episode 4: Harry Rietze; From Smokehouse Dreams To 4 Million Pounds · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  Douglas: Hi, thanks for joining us for this episode of Doug Has Questions.
• 0:03
  Douglas: If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe.
• 0:07
  Douglas: We're available if you want to watch us on uh YouTube or if you just want to listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and each episode goes live on Thursday morning.
• 0:20
  Douglas: So I hope you enjoy this episode and we're happy to have you listening.
• 0:26
  Douglas: All right, welcome to Doug Has Questions.
• 0:30
  Douglas: Today's guest is Harry Reetz, owner of Haynes Packing Company.
• 0:34
  Douglas: Grew up partially in Haynes and Kodiak and Excursion Inlet.
• 0:38
  Douglas: His dad was the fleet manager out of Excursion Inlet, and so he kind of grew up in the cannery down there, and now he owns his own fish processing business.
• 0:47
  Douglas: So looking forward to delving into his life story a little bit and what brought him to uh become the owner of Haynes Packing Company, all things they've done.
• 0:56
  Douglas: Welcome to the show, Harry.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Doug.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me on.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh honored.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01
  Douglas: Thanks for joining us.
• 1:02
  Douglas: This is uh, like I was telling you before we started recording, one of the things I want to get into this is entrepreneurs, you know, people that kind of put put their life savings, put it all on the line, and try and create a business where it's either different from what other people have done in a different spot.
• 1:16
  Douglas: And I think after Haynes Packing left, I think it was 1972, that they took the canning equipment, moved it down to Excursion Inlet.
• 1:23
  Douglas: Yeah, good memory.
• 1:24
  Douglas: And there really wasn't uh, well, you know, this building used to be Circuit Canning Company.
• 1:28
  Douglas: That's right.
• 1:28
  Douglas: And so I did the research on the tour.
• 1:31
  Douglas: And so I I know I I remember a little bit about the canning industry in Haynes.
• 1:36
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:36
  Douglas: Um, but then moving that down to Excursion Inlet and you bringing a lot of that back because Excursion Inlet hasn't been running lately for the last few years, and you're moving a significant amount of product out of uh the old Haynes packing facility.
• 1:52
  Douglas: It's you've added on, you've remodeled some of it.
• 1:54
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:55
  Douglas: Um, but I'd like to get into that story with you what what brought that about.
• 1:59
  Douglas: But let's let's go back to your early before we get there, let's go back to your earlier childhood.
• 2:04
  Douglas: What was it like growing up with uh your dad was the fleet manager for at Excursion Inlet?
• 2:11
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:11
  Douglas: So your summers were down there.
• 2:13
  Douglas: Yep.
• 2:13
  Douglas: At what age did you start getting involved with helping out around the cannery?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: So uh yeah, we were he was the fleet manager for uh actually worked on the excursion dock prior to that.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: So my mom and my dad ran the excursion dock when I was four and five years old.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we were down at excursion.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think we only spent two, maybe three summers down there as little kids.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we actually had a nanny while they were working on the dock.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: They were working 18, 16, 20 hours a day.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: So um they they didn't have time to take care of us, so they'd hire a nanny while they were running the dock.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so we got to got the experience as little kids growing up there, got to go to the mess hall and eat with the crew and walk around the whole prop property and go up to the lake, and it was more of a recreation trip at you know, experience at that point because we were so young, we didn't really understand the work side of it, but it was a super, super cool camp, remote camp setting to grow up in.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we my sister and I both have really fond memories of of that whole experience, and it was really neat being out there as a little kid.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then, so after I was, I think, six six years old, my last summer out there, and then we moved to Hanes.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: My dad took the fleet manager job in Hanes after that, and that was still for Ward's Cove.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um, he had an office in town, and then he ran the cannery at that point since they had stopped canning in 1972.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the cannery was just a maintenance facility for the Gillnet fleet, so they did supplied web oil filters, you know, all the basic boat parts, and they actually had a grocery store out there too, and people could load up on their groceries and and supplies before the opener.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, so he was the facilities manager but also the fleet manager for Southeast.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that was his that was his gig.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then after that, he did that job until about 2000.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, he kept that job um after they bought the property.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: So Wards Cove put the property up for sale in 2000, and uh my uncle and my dad decided to buy it, um, bought the property, and they started building the plant that we're operating in now.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: They started construction in 2001 and completed in 2007, so our first year of processing was 2007 up there.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 4:13
  Douglas: Um, and then so at and so when they when they originally built the facility, what would what was the idea behind that?
• 4:20
  Douglas: What were they going to do?
• 4:21
  Douglas: What processing were they gonna do out there?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so since my dad was the fleet manager for Wards Cove, the idea was he wasn't gonna compete with his company that he worked for.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: He said we're just gonna start a small smoking operation.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: So our plan was to put in two commercial smokers and buy a small amount of fish from the fleet um and run a commercial smoking operation.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the original plan starting in 07.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: But um it turned out that the the smoked salmon market was pretty hard to tap into, so it was a it was a hard one.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: So we uh started developing it.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: He he had a hard time getting his recipe from his his plywood smokehouse that he had worked around forever and had a great recipe.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: My dad made awesome smoked fish, and he couldn't get that to replicate in the big commercial smoker, and I didn't really grow up smoking, it wasn't my passion or hobby, I didn't know it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had we had a hard time getting that to transfer over, and so it kind of the smoking kind of lost lost interest a little bit.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: And at that point, I had gone back to excursion inlet and worked there.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'd been done three years at the at the excursion inlet plant, so I learned kind of production, heading, gutting, filleting, all that kind of side of the business.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I got back and he wanted me to do smoking, I kind of started getting more into the the volume, you know, heading, gutting, fillet side of it.
• 5:38
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 5:38
  Douglas: Before we go too much further, I don't think it's anything your dad or you did wrong.
• 5:42
  Douglas: I've not heard anybody that's been able to replicate the fish, the taste of the fish they can get in the plywood smokehouse alongside the riverbank or down along the beach in a commercial smoker.
• 5:52
  Douglas: It's it's it tastes so much better.
• 5:54
  Douglas: Yeah, it's impossible to replicate in a if somebody finds a way to replicate that in a commercial smoker, yeah, they're gonna corner the market because there's nothing like it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell my dad he said that.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: He'll like that, he'll like that shout-out.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's true.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: It is true, and that's you hear that a lot in the industry.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to it's hard to transfer that over.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: So uh that's what we ran into.
• 6:12
  Douglas: It's just the different dynamics of it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 6:14
  Douglas: So, but I If am I wrong that during college and stuff, didn't you work at Excursion Inlet?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: I did, yep.
• 6:20
  Douglas: So what was so paying your way through college, so you get out of high school, yep, paying your way through college, you go to Excursion Inlet.
• 6:29
  Douglas: What was your job at that point down at Excursion?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I got hired at Excursion as the warehouse uh supervisor.
• 6:34
  Douglas: So I I went in and I was actually I wasn't actually sorry to brought in, but was that the first time you were back there since you were six when you were down there as a kid?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got I I did work on a tender and I went in there.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: I did I had like a like a three-week tender contract where we delivered in there.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I did have a little bit of experience going back and visiting, but that was my first time going back and working as a you know full-time full-time employee.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Full-on, yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: So my first year I got hired to stack cans in the warehouse.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: So the canner, uh the canning line puts all the cans out in a big warehouse and in a big stack and they cool, and then they come in and they have to get restacked on pallets and wrapped and then sent to a warehouse for labeling.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: So they had a we had a 12 or 14-person crew in a warehouse just taking cans and stacking them on pallets and wrapping them.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I did that all summer one year.
• 7:19
  Douglas: And then the second- is that all hand stacking or is there a machine?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's a big magnet, it's a four by four magnet, and you you pick them, they come in on these big metal trays, and you pick them out of the trays with a magnet.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: And you dump them on a conveyor belt, and they go down the conveyor belt, and they they inspect the cans, and the bad ones come out, and then they go another magnet, they put them all together to make a perfect, you know, four by forty-eight by forty pattern.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: Magnet comes down, picks them up, takes them over, and sets them on a pallet, and then you put a slip sheet in between each layer.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you get these, I can't remember how many it was twenty-four or twenty-two layers of cans, and then they get a shrink wrap and then into a van.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I did that for two summers.
• 7:56
  Douglas: So they don't get labeled at the plant here, they go somewhere else to get it.
• 7:59
  Douglas: Exactly.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Too expensive to have the labeling equipment in Alaska, so they just they call it a bright stack.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they bulk stack them on pallets and they ship them out to Seattle Warehouse, and then they can decide what label they want to put on them in case they get a sale for a different label.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: They can it gives them a little more versatility on when they when and how they label it.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: How they label it and everything.
• 8:17
  Douglas: So they if they've got one brand that's selling better than the others, they can just throw that label on it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: So that was my that was my job, and then after two years in the warehouse, I got bumped out to I was kind of done in the warehouse and I got offered a job on the dock, offloading fish, running fish pumps and cranes and that sort of thing.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I um jumped out there and did the did the dock for one my last summer out there.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then at that point, when I was done with my dock job there after that, my third year, my dad said, Hey, we're we're ramping up in Haynes, we're ready for you to come back and will you come take over the plant in Hanes?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that was 2007.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: So um that was our first year processing, so I jumped back up and got sucked in to the family business.
• 8:58
  Douglas: I know another feeling.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yes, you do.
• 9:01
  Douglas: So um when you came back, what you guys were were you still trying to do the smoke fish, or were you moving on?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, that was that was our first year starting it.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: That was just first year starting smoked fish.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: First year, yep.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we had two employees, and I think our goal was to buy six or eight thousand pounds of round fish that year, and we were gonna turn it all into smoked and sell it, and uh it just kind of the the trajectory had changed year after after that.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: It just didn't really uh didn't go that direction.
• 9:27
  Douglas: How much did you do that first year?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think about that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think we hit our I think we hit our target, we hit the goal volume-wise, but sales the the sales side was the was the struggle.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: We we got the process figured out and we we kind of worked our way through that, but the actual finding the markets and getting a wholesale smoked salmon account or multiple accounts set up was that was the challenge.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we started slowly phasing out of that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: So to that going into the 2008 season, yeah, what was the plan for that one?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: More of the same.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: We we probably we probably uh did I don't know five or six seasons of just kind of trying the same thing, you know, just investing and trying to explore markets.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: We did a lot of cold calling, did a lot of shipping samples via FedEx out to to customers, just have them try it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And um it just uh it was it was tough.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was a tough, tough, tough time uh getting it going.
• 10:12
  Douglas: But what what was the what was the feeling like where you're working with your dad and your uncle, got a couple employees, yeah, and you're seeing the struggle where you're putting all this effort in.
• 10:23
  Douglas: Yeah, but there's really the the the money coming back, the revenue coming back in for all your efforts isn't commensurate with the level going into it.
• 10:33
  Douglas: Yeah, it was brutal.
• 10:34
  Douglas: Yeah, it was tough.
• 10:35
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 10:36
  Douglas: How did you guys how did you keep going with that?
• 10:38
  Douglas: Were you and your dad having common?
• 10:39
  Douglas: Did you guys talk about that?
• 10:40
  Douglas: It's like, man, this sucks.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: How are we gonna a little bit, yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm coming from excursion, I was making a fairly low wage at excursion, but we were getting you know 100 hours a week there, so a lot of overtime.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: So when it came up, I think I started at like 14 bucks an hour or something at the plant working for my dad, and I was thinking, hmm, I'm I've got a lot more responsibility here.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm you know, you got me at 14 bucks an hour, dad.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't I don't know how this is gonna work.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is this is gonna be your business someday.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: So this is this is you know that we're building this together.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh, I wasn't really seeing it there for the first you know, six, eight years.
• 11:10
  Douglas: But we it's hard to see when you're not when you're putting all the effort in, you don't know when that break is gonna be.
• 11:15
  Douglas: Right, right?
• 11:16
  Douglas: You've got your plan, right?
• 11:17
  Douglas: I think it's a great plan because I've I've had some of your dad smoke salmon, it's excellent.
• 11:21
  Douglas: Yeah, so you think that that's gonna be like a no-brainer.
• 11:24
  Douglas: People are gonna buy this product, and then when you go out to the market and it's not happening to keep going back the next year, it's like, okay, we're gonna do this again, we're gonna do this again.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: We just kept going for it, you know.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: We just kind of kept trying and kept making little we had we had some different products that we were trying, like a salmon pepperoni and uh we did uh smoked bellies and we do, you know, all these little specialty things.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: And what we found with all the little side projects was that it it kind of just took more time and energy to to um than it did than you actually got your money out of it, you know.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: So it was um it was a lot of loot, a lot of dead ends we found over that that first part of running the business, and um and it wasn't until we started actually buying and selling headed and gutted fish or filleted fish that we actually started able, you know, started making a profit.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it took a while.
• 12:13
  Douglas: How many years was it before you started doing the H and G and the fillet?
• 12:17
  Douglas: I think it took six years.
• 12:18
  Douglas: Six years.
• 12:19
  Douglas: We did six years.
• 12:20
  Douglas: Was your dad still working for Wards Cove at that time?
• 12:22
  Douglas: Or what was the what was the point?
• 12:23
  Douglas: Because if he didn't want to compete with them, was it just like, man, we're sick of losing money on this and we need to do something else?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or kind of so I was pushing for more.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: So he he still had his job with Words Cove, so he was kind of still wanting to do the low volume thing, and at that point, that after six years, I had I had fully taken over the management, and I said, Well, I thought it was time to increase our volume and actually run a viable fish plant and kind of move forward and and go that direction.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so he he got jumped on board and was was supportive.
• 12:53
  Douglas: So how did that change?
• 12:57
  Douglas: You have a facility that's built for smaller production of smoke process smoked fish, yeah.
• 13:04
  Douglas: So very you know, it's different than H and G line or fileting line for at a much larger volume is what you're hoping for.
• 13:15
  Douglas: Yep.
• 13:16
  Douglas: That first year when you're switching over from trying to do the smoked salmon to the H and G and some of the fileting, what was that?
• 13:23
  Douglas: Did you that went or did you redo the whole plant?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was prepared for it or we kind of did a slow methodical add on them.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was basically all just equipment, you know, equipment and space, which was you know, concrete and adding onto the buildings and and seafood processing equipment is not cheap.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we kind of just every year we'd add something, you know, a auto header or a a gutting machine or a you know another conveyor or whatever it was, and we just kind of kept methodically adding adding equipment to build up to what the Haynes fleet had for fish.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: But it took that that was like a another s probably five or six year process to get to where we had enough equipment to actually buy from most of the fleet on this on this end of the canal.
• 14:01
  Douglas: So as you were going through that, I mean like your first year when you're doing head and gutted and filleting, what percentage is filleting, what percentages is head and gutted?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: We we actually started out doing mostly fillet, um, because we we didn't we didn't have the volume to do head and gut.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of a volume game.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so we didn't actually have the the setup to to do head and gut fish.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we were doing just just a basic amount, a little bit.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're probably 90% fillet for the first three, four years.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then we and then we got the machines to do head and gutted and started buying more.
• 14:32
  Douglas: So you're doing six, you're trying to do six to eight thousand pounds when you're smoking it.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 14:36
  Douglas: Your first year filleting them.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 14:38
  Douglas: How much pound did you put through the plant?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Probably sixty to eighty.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have to go back and look at the records.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: So ten times the volume.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: 10x the volume, yeah, when we started filleting.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of how much more crew did you need?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um double.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think we kind of slowly progressed from you know three to four people to six to eight to twelve, and then I think when we were filleting it towards the end of our our first round of fillet line, we probably had um 16, 18 employees, something like that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:06
  Douglas: And did you see that first year?
• 15:08
  Douglas: Did you see an instant switch that there's now there's money coming back and this is a viable thing, or was it a couple years that we did see the struggle with that?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: We saw our gross revenue growing, but we were also investing back into the plant with equipment.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: So all that money was going back in.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: So it didn't really I don't think we actually made a profit until 2016.
• 15:25
  Douglas: I think it was our first year actually making a profit because we were just so they bought the property in 2001, yeah, started building, had the had the building up in two and functioning 2007.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 15:37
  Douglas: But then it wasn't until 2016 for the first profit.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: 15 years.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: 15 years, yeah.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 15:43
  Douglas: But how many how many people actually do that?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:46
  Douglas: To keep to keep, you know, seeing that having in your mind that there's a there's a there's something at the end of this, yeah.
• 15:54
  Douglas: We've just got to keep plugging, we just got to keep doing the work.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: I guess in our defense, we didn't start actually processing until oh seven.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess that was only nine years.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Nine years of processing.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a long time.
• 16:04
  Douglas: Still, it's an investment.
• 16:05
  Douglas: Because I remember watching you guys do it doing the dirt work for the building, putting the building in, yeah, starting that.
• 16:10
  Douglas: But even if it's nine years from when you start processing, yeah, it's still a long time.
• 16:15
  Douglas: It was a long time, yeah.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when you say it that way, it's kind of like, yeah, it was a it was a grind.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a grind for sure.
• 16:23
  Douglas: But the reason I bring that up is a lot of people look at successful businesses, yeah, and they look at the end product, yeah.
• 16:31
  Douglas: They're like, oh wow, they're yeah, they're making bank.
• 16:34
  Douglas: But they don't look at the years that it takes to get there.
• 16:38
  Douglas: Yep.
• 16:39
  Douglas: Where you're going into the winter or whatever, you get to the next spring, you go into the bank to get money to buy fish, to to it's like, okay, we we have enough money to buy this piece of equipment, we have enough money to buy this piece of equipment, and it's not just like a wholesale, here's everything we need.
• 16:56
  Douglas: It's very rare for people to have that kind of capital to just put it all in at once.
• 17:01
  Douglas: Right.
• 17:01
  Douglas: It's usually that slow build, and you're putting everything you can back into it because you got that vision, and you're just hoping that vision pays off.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh yeah, 2017.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: I remember we we invested, it was our first big chunk.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: We kind of upgraded our head and gut line and our fillet line, and we we knew we needed to, if we were gonna support a 40-boat Haynes fleet, we needed to have you know real equipment.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: We bought a fish pump, an ice machine, and uh an automatic header and gutter the in the same year, and I think it was like four or five hundred grand that we put in in 2017.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: I remember we had every amount of like available capital that we could borrow was kind of we were maxed out and it was I it was pretty stressful that 2017 and 2018.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: I remember being right to the hilt on on capital, and it was like, but um we we powered through it and made it made it work.
• 17:53
  Douglas: So when are you the sole owner now or do you're still partners with your dad and your wife and you are the soul?
• 17:59
  Douglas: When did you buy out your dad and your uncle on that?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was 20 uh 14.
• 18:05
  Douglas: Okay.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 2014 or 2015.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember.
• 18:08
  Douglas: And is that something that they were like, yeah, Harry's got this covered, we we can step back and do something else, or were you kind of pushing for you wanted to be more in control of that?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I think at that point they realized we hang on, uh you're good now.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, all right, so the car alarm was going off, so gotcha.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think at that point they had realized that um they we weren't profitable up until that point, and so they kind of thought, well, we're gonna we're gonna let you run with this and let's let you have the nonprofit.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's kinda yeah, it's you know, yours to to take over, and so we ended up um ended up buying them out, you know, kind of over a few year process.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um but we got we got some a favorable, you know, favorable buyout term at that point, but it was was not not profitable up until that point.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it was so it was a challenge.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:01
  Douglas: So is that what's that like being in business with your wife?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's good.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, really good.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: She's support very supportive.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, very supportive.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: She understands the industry.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um her dad is her dad was a long time fisherman.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Her dad is a long time fisherman, exactly.
• 19:17
  Douglas: She's the one that started circuit canning company here, wanted to do the museum.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: So she understands the summertime, the kind of all all in for this for the salmon season and all in for the fishing season.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so she's been she's been great, great partner.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Douglas: Look looking at the growth of Haynes packing and the different things that you've watching from the outside as you've tried different things.
• 19:39
  Douglas: Because you had Big Al's salmon truck, yeah, food truck.
• 19:43
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 19:43
  Douglas: That was a big popular thing because this is great fish and chips and stuff.
• 19:48
  Douglas: When did when did that when did you start that and how long did that run for?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I bought that out of college.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um I kind of wanted to try a fish and chips cart because I'd seen them and I it seemed attractive.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So we we uh found uh found a fish and chips cart in Portland after I graduated college, and I think we paid 12,000 bucks for a nice food cart and bought it and started actually down in um Albany, Oregon, because I went to Oregon State and Albany was the next town over.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually got permitted and set up there and operated in in Albany in the winter, and it was it was brutal.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we were doing 12 or 15 orders a day, and it just wasn't wasn't a good a good scene.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought we tried that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: We did one winter down there and then um decided to bring it up to Haynes and run it up here.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it was it was fun, it was it was a good run, but it was kind of a an extra thing to to to manage from the plant, you know, breading fish and having to having to manage a cart.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: So eventually when we when we um increased our volume with the plant and and got a bigger crew, it was kind of uh just an extra that we didn't want to have to manage, so we ended up ended up selling that.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:52
  Douglas: And so the other the other aspects is you've grown this.
• 20:56
  Douglas: You got a store in Whitehorse.
• 20:58
  Douglas: Yep.
• 20:59
  Douglas: It's in its second location now.
• 21:00
  Douglas: Yep.
• 21:01
  Douglas: Second Yep.
• 21:02
  Douglas: So that was when you first decided to go to Whitehorse, what was the what was the thought process on that?
• 21:09
  Douglas: Trying to because a lot of Canadians come down here.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 21:13
  Douglas: And did you think you'd get that that business up there and just have it so they don't have to make the drive or yeah, as you know, Canadians love their fish, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: They love they love fish.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: They love fish.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: They love fish.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think it's just a little too far for them to come down and get it, you know, regularly.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so um we we saw them coming down and they were supporting our store in Haynes buying fish from us, you know, starting in 2009.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think we had our retail store here in town, and we could see the the demand that the Canadians love fish.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we thought, well, why don't we try to take fish up there and we're so we're close enough where we could run up there once a week and sell?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we started the permitting process and um opened up.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think we started selling up there in two thousand thirteen.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was our first year.
• 21:54
  Douglas: Um so we what's that like trying to get fish across the border?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um
• 22:00
  Douglas: You got pretty well dialed in right now with all the paperwork?
• 22:02
  Douglas: It's dialed in right now, yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming it's not easy.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: No, getting the permitting, getting the the import license and the extra territorial registration, all this stuff to get started was a pain.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: But once you get it, once you get it figured out, it's it's kind of an auto yeah, it's not bad.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not bad.
• 22:18
  Douglas: Has uh have the tariffs the the fight between Trump and Canada has that affected your business and it has not.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't we haven't paid any tariffs.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: No, we've been yep.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's considered a grocery item, so no tariffs yet.
• 22:31
  Douglas: What about the response from your Canadian customers?
• 22:34
  Douglas: Are they holding the fact that you're in the United States against you?
• 22:36
  unknown: No.
• 22:37
  Douglas: To any level that you can tell?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: No, they haven't.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I feel like we're we're we're neighbors.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're so close.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: Haynes and Whitehorse, it's we're kind of it's it's a different scenario than than uh than other parts of the country, and I I think that we still are supported and we've been up there for it's been 12 years now.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I think they see us as kind of part of the community and um and they've I feel like we've had continued support, which has been good.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Douglas: I've I've heard that comment from several Canadians who've come in the store this summer.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:06
  Douglas: That they're like, Yeah, we're not gonna go to the United States, but we're still gonna come to Haynes and Skagway.
• 23:09
  Douglas: Yeah, exactly.
• 23:10
  Douglas: It's yeah, I think we're exempt.
• 23:12
  Douglas: Kind of family.
• 23:13
  Douglas: Yeah, exactly.
• 23:14
  Douglas: The relationships you build up being so close over the years with the number of them that come down here as frequently as possible, and then you know, less going up there and you see the same people, whether it's at a softball tournament, basketball tournament, or just shopping up there and stuff.
• 23:27
  Douglas: It's there's a lot there's a lot of business between our communities.
• 23:31
  Douglas: Absolutely.
• 23:32
  Douglas: Yep.
• 23:33
  Douglas: And now you've got down in California.
• 23:37
  Douglas: Yep.
• 23:38
  Douglas: So what what what what I understand a white horse, but then the California deal, that's totally different avenue there.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Why why why did it start?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Why why yeah, how did that start?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we went down there for vacation five years ago.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: We wanted a a a close place where you could fly out of Seattle and not have to go international, you know, somewhere to go get some sun in the winter.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we we'd never been to Palm Springs.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we flew into Palm Springs, and Palm Desert is about 15 minutes from Palm Springs and rented a Airbnb down there and stayed for 10 days, loved it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the next winter we had wanted to do a little longer, so I think we went down for two or three weeks and rented an Airbnb, loved it.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And after our second or third trip down there, we realized this is this is pretty pretty nice down here.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and of course, I'm always looking at fish markets and looking at different ideas.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I mentioned the idea to Jenny, and she said, No, no, I don't think we need another store, and not a chance.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And but after, like I think after our third trip down there, we started looking at the the lack of Alaskan seafood in that area, and we're like, wow, okay.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I I slowly kind of worked on her a little bit, convinced her to maybe open a store down there, and she said, Well, if we're gonna be down here running a store, we need we need to be the kids were gonna be down here, and so the kids are gonna be in school down here, and so we decided to start spending our winters down there and bring bring the kids down for school, and so um it was a combination of wanting to get some sunshine in the winter and finding a good market for fish that kind of both led to led to moving down there if that makes sense.
• 25:11
  Douglas: It totally makes sense.
• 25:12
  Douglas: I need to figure out a way to sell Alaska sporting goods somewhere down in the form in the winter time.
• 25:17
  Douglas: Come on down.
• 25:18
  Douglas: You got you got room in your shop that could sell some bedcases or some outdoor clothing?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 25:26
  Douglas: Has it worked the way that you it has been.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the goal was to try to do a try to try to make it a three-year payoff, so equipment investment in the store.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're we're just into year two now, and it's looking like our our sales numbers are growing, and we're gonna we're gonna hit our have a have it all paid back in three years and then hopefully be profitable after that.
• 25:45
  Douglas: So it cracked me up because you told me you were gonna do that, and I knew you're moving forward with it.
• 25:50
  Douglas: And then I think I told you this one day I get this a text from one of my college roommates whose parents are down in that area, and he sends me a label, a picture of a label, one of your smoked salmon.
• 25:58
  Douglas: Yeah, he goes, He goes, What the hell is this?
• 26:00
  Douglas: Because it has the Haynes Alaska's back up, Haynes, Alaska.
• 26:03
  Douglas: He goes, Do you know anything about this?
• 26:05
  Douglas: I was like, uh actually.
• 26:07
  Douglas: I do quite I do I do know quite a bit about it.
• 26:09
  Douglas: I said, You need to shop there regularly.
• 26:11
  Douglas: It's a small world.
• 26:12
  Douglas: Yeah, it's like like once a day or whatever.
• 26:14
  Douglas: So yeah, he's he's moving to Arizona now, so you're gonna lose one of your customers.
• 26:18
  Douglas: Oh man.
• 26:19
  Douglas: But uh yeah, in the last few years, I think he's he's spent quite a bit of money in your shop down there.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks for it.
• 26:25
  Douglas: I I told him go back often.
• 26:27
  Douglas: Yeah, thank you and and spend more.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no problem.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing how how good or how how well word of mouth works down there, you know, like in those in all the communities and and how tight the desert, there's probably a million people in that circle, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, La Quinta area.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think in the winter there's a million people, and they like when once the word they start they start, you get a good review and it kind of spreads, it's just people come in.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so and so told me about this.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they told me about your store.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And they said we had to come in, and just we get that a lot, and it's been it's been awesome, super, super helpful for the so when you're out of Haynes in the wintertime, you leave what mid-October when you get the plant shut down?
• 27:03
  Douglas: Middle to end probably the end of October.
• 27:06
  Douglas: Then you head down.
• 27:07
  Douglas: Do you spend quite a bit of time in the store, or do you just let your staff and you kind of go and check out the stuff?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: I try to go in every morning.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, check in, yeah, five days a week.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, go ahead, drop the kids off at school, and then I go to the store for a couple hours and check in and just kind of interact with customers and I enjoy that.
• 27:21
  Douglas: Does that help?
• 27:22
  Douglas: Do you think that helps that hey, I'm the guy overseeing the plant that's producing this project?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: I do, I do, and they all have you know Alaska specific questions or you know, Haynes specific questions, or oh, I was up there on a cruise two years ago and I stopped in Skagway and I or I stopped in Haynes and I went to this store.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of overlap.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, probably I'd say one customer a day has been on a cruise, you know, to Haynes that has been to one of the you know businesses we know, and so it's like it's there's a lot of fun, fun stories that go into that.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I I enjoy that side of it.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:53
  Douglas: So look, what are you just doing H and G still at the plant?
• 27:58
  Douglas: Or what else what other products are you doing now?
• 28:00
  Douglas: You're doing crab, right?
• 28:01
  Douglas: You're cooking crab?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're cooking crab.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: So that crab starts October 1st, so that's our last season of the year, our last product that we that we um buy for the year, and that's usually October 1 through through October, right, and end of October.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so yeah, dungeness is the end.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: So salmon, halibut, dungeness crab.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um we do a little bit of local shrimp in the spring.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um we buy a little bit of black cod and ling cod.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um those are I guess our main main species that we buy.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: But most of what we do, we're mostly a salmon plant, so 95% of our volume that we run it through the plant is salmon.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and 80% of that is chum salmon.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we're kind of a chum, a chum plant.
• 28:48
  Douglas: 2007, you wanted to do six to eight thousand pounds of smoke product.
• 28:52
  Douglas: Yep.
• 28:52
  Douglas: Five, six years later you decided to go to H and G and you did sixty to eighty thousand.
• 28:58
  Douglas: Yep.
• 28:58
  Douglas: Care to share how much you're probably all all species this year.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of pound did you go?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of so our total, I think we did four million pounds this this season.
• 29:09
  Douglas: Four million pounds of all species.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 29:12
  Douglas: So I I know it's been added on a little bit, but not a whole lot as far as square footage, right?
• 29:17
  Douglas: We did, we probably we've probably doubled our square footage.
• 29:20
  Douglas: Doubled your square footage?
• 29:21
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 29:21
  Douglas: Well, still you doubled your square footage, you add a little different equipment, but you went from a place that was designed for seven six to eight thousand pounds, and you need your four million pounds.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:30
  Douglas: And in the summertime, are you not doing cooking crab at the same time?
• 29:37
  Douglas: Because there's the June 15th or August 15th, you've got Dungeon S season, yeah.
• 29:41
  Douglas: Same time you got salmon coming in.
• 29:42
  Douglas: Yep.
• 29:43
  Douglas: So balancing those because at the at the same facility.
• 29:47
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 29:48
  Douglas: That's got to be just chaos trying to get four million pounds through their hair.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty chaotic.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is chaotic.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: You should come out and check it out sometime.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you come out in July and I'll give you a chance.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: I do need to come out in July because it's it does get chaotic.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: And they it starts uh like a lot of times the crab and salmon will start yeah the same day.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so we got we got we're gearing up and you know working out kings on equipment on the both on both products, and that can get a little a little uh crazy, but it make it we make it work.
• 30:14
  Douglas: And what what's your crew size now?
• 30:16
  Douglas: How many how many employees do you have out there?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: Four million pounds room.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think we had uh sixty in July or full sixty full crew of sixty, yeah.
• 30:24
  Douglas: You went from four or five to sixty.
• 30:30
  Douglas: I did not realize you had sixty people working out there.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's impressive.
• 30:35
  Douglas: Yeah, a lot of um congratulations.
• 30:38
  Douglas: Thank you.
• 30:38
  Douglas: Yeah, four million pounds and sixty people in what'd you say?
• 30:44
  Douglas: You bought the business in 2014?
• 30:46
  Douglas: 2014.
• 30:48
  Douglas: 2014, so 11 years.
• 30:49
  Douglas: Yeah, you've got a business.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Keeps me out of trouble.
• 30:53
  Douglas: That's well, you don't have time to do anything other than I'm surprised.
• 30:57
  Douglas: I mean, this began in the middle of September, and you've got time to come and sit with me to do this.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's we're slow now.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're snow, we're slow now.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it's summer, I don't get to town much.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's why we're gonna go.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, I hardly ever see it in the summer.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of just live out there in the in the in the cannery.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:13
  Douglas: Do you see much more growth on the horizon from what you're doing now?
• 31:16
  Douglas: Are you pretty much tapped out on the amount that you're gonna be able to do?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think our goal was to just support the Haynes fleet and not not expand out of that.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think we're pretty much there as far as as far as infrastructure and equipment and what we what we need to to do that.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think we're we're kind of just honing in on that and and that I don't I don't see any any additional growth.
• 31:39
  Douglas: As far as poundage, but I've knowing you, I'm I'm you don't have to say anything here.
• 31:43
  Douglas: I I can pretty much guarantee you've got other ideas going in your head.
• 31:47
  Douglas: Not really.
• 31:48
  Douglas: Really?
• 31:48
  Douglas: No, I really think you've got something going on.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think just efficiency.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think now that we've got got the infrastructure that we need and the crew, I think it's just kind of honing in efficiency and making our making the operations smoother, and I think that's kind of the goal.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um increasing margins a little bit and just kind of tightening up a little bit and um ho honing in.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them comes from out of California.
• 32:12
  Douglas: Most come from California?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um most actually Oregon, Washington, Texas, uh, a few from California, kind of all over all over the U.S.
• 32:20
  Douglas: And are they coming back?
• 32:22
  Douglas: Same ones.
• 32:22
  Douglas: I've I recognize a lot of the same faces each year, but there's probably some turnover too.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit of turnover.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're probably like a 90% retention on repeats, and that's another connection with excursion.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: So when they shut excursion down, um they were gonna ship a lot of those folks over to Petersburg to the Ocean Beauty plant.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I had worked with them when I was out there at Excursion, and so I knew a lot of those people, and so when they were gonna ship them to Petersburg, they didn't want to go to Petersburg.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so they called and they said, Hey, did you have stuff in Haynes and you work in Haynes?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so we kind of recruited a bunch of the really good people from Excursion, and they they've been awesome, and they've been back every year, and we have a really great core group of people that know what they're doing, and um it means we don't have to train new people every year, and just it's it's been awesome.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: So super, super lucky there.
• 33:09
  Douglas: That's how you get financial savings when you don't have to train people over and over.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep, and they just show up in the spring and they know the program and they're they they like Hanes, they like to be here, which is awesome, and they um we must yeah, we take take good care of them, so they're and they take good care of us.
• 33:25
  Douglas: So are you are you are your kids interested in the business at all?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: I hope so.
• 33:29
  Douglas: Um I know they're still pr I I know they're still pretty young, but I'm sure they're the house is right across the bay from the plant.
• 33:35
  Douglas: I'm sure they're over there quite a bit checking on what to coming to visit dad.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: They I had my son had some he had some gloves and gear and stuff on, and he was he was actually cleaning salmon the summer, you know, paying five bucks an hour to come over and clean fish at the table, and he he likes it.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: He was into it.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, and I I'd like him to I'd like to think he'd want to take over, but uh we'll see.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: See what he does.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wants to do.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 33:59
  Douglas: Did you ever feel pressure from your dad to follow in his footsteps?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: He so he had been building from 2001 to 2007 before we had you know ran a fish through the plant.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: There was like a six-year period where they were just kind of getting the plant ready, and he was really he was recruiting me pretty hard, saying he wanted me to come take over and be part of the business.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I definitely got got recruited very hard.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:26
  Douglas: So how how old were you in 2001 when he first started this project?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was like eighth grade.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Eighth grade?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:31
  Douglas: So through eighth grade through college, you were getting the recruiting pitch to uh that's a good thing.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so that was just kind of my plan.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like when I was, you know, from eighth grade on while that was going on, I just you know, okay, as soon as it's ready, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be there taking over the plant, you know, and that was kind of just what I what I was planning on doing, I guess.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:53
  Douglas: So I'd never thought I'd come back to run the store.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 34:58
  Douglas: No.
• 34:58
  Douglas: Growing up in it, my I, you know, from young age started coming down and we'd get freight in our evenings after school.
• 35:06
  Douglas: You'd come over, help at the store, you go home, get dinner.
• 35:10
  Douglas: Sometimes you'd have to come back, put more freight out.
• 35:12
  Douglas: There's some really cool times there, family times, because my mom and dad, sister, our dogs were usually at the store and playing with them, and so it wasn't all work, it was a lot of a lot of good times.
• 35:22
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 35:22
  Douglas: But I did I didn't I didn't want to be in retail.
• 35:26
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 35:26
  Douglas: I didn't I I think I kind of wanted to get out of out of Haynes and do something else.
• 35:30
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 35:31
  Douglas: And so I just just looking back, it kind of cracks me up that uh I'm here.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: What year did they start the store?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: Doug?
• 35:42
  Douglas: 71.
• 35:43
  Douglas: 71, okay.
• 35:44
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 35:44
  Douglas: Both mom and dad is teachers.
• 35:47
  Douglas: Um my dad, he when he came up here, he kind of got into a construction company with some other people.
• 35:53
  Douglas: At that time, he was selling some stuff out of the A-frame by our house.
• 35:57
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 35:57
  Douglas: And he just kind of got tired with a lot of the politics and teaching and stuff and wanted to do something different.
• 36:03
  Douglas: And he figured, you know, he he liked to hunt and fish, so why not get a sporting goods store?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:08
  Douglas: And at the time, everybody was, he said a lot of people gave him a bad time because he was so far out of town.
• 36:14
  Douglas: It was a block past where the school was.
• 36:17
  Douglas: Like, oh yeah, it's way out of yeah, it's way out of town.
• 36:21
  Douglas: And then I was like, I think it's we're part of downtown.
• 36:24
  Douglas: Yep.
• 36:24
  Douglas: But yeah, it's just like a 24 by 48 building he put up and um leveraged it to the hilt, and and that was kind of uh the running story.
• 36:34
  Douglas: You know, another opportunity comes up, let's borrow some money, let's add on, let's do this or this, and yeah, and that's kind of what led us into this building.
• 36:42
  Douglas: Here is uh in uh when AP closed down, I think it was 2002.
• 36:49
  Douglas: It was actually the first year in a long time that the store had been profitable, and we had some money at the left at the end of the year and allowed us to buy some equipment to put in the meat market and expand into the groceries.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:59
  Douglas: And then that kind of started taking over all the sporting goods space.
• 37:05
  Douglas: And then we're the building we're at, like we talked about before, this was originally a circuit canning company museum, yeah, with uh your father-in-law Jim.
• 37:13
  Douglas: He brought all this equipment from the late 1800s, early 1900s, yeah, reconditioning.
• 37:19
  Douglas: It was really cool, but cruise ship stopped dock dock docking in Haynes, and so it carried it on for a few years and then moved the equipment to Ketchan, and they wanted to get out from under the building, and so we we bought the building from them.
• 37:33
  Douglas: And and I st I still remember when they're building this, I walked into it one day, and it was him and Henry Chatney, and I was like, Jim, we can't put a cannery in here.
• 37:43
  Douglas: I said, This would make a much better sporting goods store, and he laughed at it.
• 37:47
  Douglas: But then then I think it was spring of 2009 when he got back from uh the east coast um from Pennsylvania.
• 37:54
  Douglas: He came, he said, I want to see what you're doing with the store.
• 37:57
  Douglas: And and he I brought him in here and he's like, You know you're right.
• 38:00
  Douglas: I was like, What are you talking about?
• 38:02
  Douglas: He says this does make a really cool sporting goods store.
• 38:04
  Douglas: I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten all about that, but he's reminded me a couple times of that now.
• 38:08
  Douglas: Yep, but it is you know, kind of like you're talking about.
• 38:11
  Douglas: You there's been so many times over the years when you see that next opportunity and you don't know when you're gonna get some money back out of it.
• 38:24
  Douglas: You just know you just it's like, hey, this is what we're gonna do, and you think it's gonna turn around in a year or two, but sometimes it's four, five, six years because then this comes up or you need this.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:37
  Douglas: We weren't gonna do any refrigerated stuff at the store, it was just gonna be dry goods and the meat department.
• 38:42
  Douglas: But then everybody came in, how come we don't have milk?
• 38:44
  Douglas: How come you don't have cheese?
• 38:45
  Douglas: And we didn't have any money.
• 38:46
  Douglas: I said we're just buying all this used piece of crap equipment, and then you're coming in all hours of the day because stuff's breaking down and just the stress for 10 years was like nothing I would ever want to do again.
• 39:00
  Douglas: It was brutal.
• 39:01
  Douglas: Yeah, absolutely brutal.
• 39:02
  Douglas: You could see the you could see where it's growing into something.
• 39:05
  Douglas: It's like, yeah, the revenue's increasing, but the amount of headaches and the stress and the work hours during that period.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now now the refrigeration system you have over there is top-notch, right?
• 39:16
  Douglas: It's uh it when that was something when we decided to put that in.
• 39:20
  Douglas: Yeah, when they were up here talking to us about it.
• 39:24
  Douglas: I our friend Mike Bakoviak, I had him come because like I need somebody that can interpret between the refrigeration and English.
• 39:32
  Douglas: Yep.
• 39:32
  Douglas: And uh they're they're talking about different what about this?
• 39:36
  Douglas: What about this?
• 39:36
  Douglas: And I was like, Mike, which one's gonna be the best one for maintenance?
• 39:39
  Douglas: He goes, That one.
• 39:40
  Douglas: I was like, okay, that's the one I want to do.
• 39:41
  Douglas: And the guy goes, because people usually don't do that.
• 39:44
  Douglas: He's like, why not?
• 39:46
  Douglas: I said, because it costs more.
• 39:47
  Douglas: I was like, is it gonna make it easier to maintain?
• 39:49
  Douglas: And is it gonna when when you guys come here, is that gonna save me money each time you guys come here?
• 39:54
  Douglas: Like, well, yeah, in the long term it's gonna pay off.
• 39:56
  Douglas: I said, Well, that's the one I want to do because I've had 15 years of dealing with broken stuff.
• 40:03
  Douglas: Whatever's the easiest to maintain.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: I just want it to work.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sign me up for that one.
• 40:07
  Douglas: That's the one I want.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep, we do the same thing.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you're happy with it?
• 40:13
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 40:14
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 40:15
  Douglas: It's like any moving thing.
• 40:17
  Douglas: There's every year you have to have somebody come and there's something going wrong with it that needs to be fixed.
• 40:22
  Douglas: Uh refrigerate pinhole refrigeration leak or something.
• 40:26
  Douglas: But no, it's good.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 40:30
  Douglas: Any very good for us.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Any big add-ons or or expansions for olroots?
• 40:35
  Douglas: Not at the not at the moment.
• 40:36
  Douglas: Not at the moment.
• 40:37
  Douglas: Not at the moment.
• 40:38
  Douglas: I can't think of anything I want to do yet.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing you want to disclose.
• 40:41
  Douglas: Nothing I can disclose.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Fair.
• 40:44
  Douglas: So getting getting back to fisheries as you're looking out into the future.
• 40:50
  Douglas: I both of our businesses are relying on healthy runs coming back.
• 40:56
  Douglas: Yes.
• 40:56
  Douglas: I don't sell lures unless there's fish on the river or halibut out in the bay.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 41:01
  Douglas: Do you see concern over that with like this year with the low sockeye run on the chilcoot side?
• 41:07
  Douglas: I know you said majority of yours is the chum, which is a lot of it's a hatchery run.
• 41:11
  Douglas: Correct.
• 41:12
  Douglas: Probably a little bit less sensitive to to some of the changes we're seeing out there, but yeah.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Do you lie awake worrying about that?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like the the chilcoot was was definitely troubling this summer.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was um we're hoping that it's a fluke, it was a 10-year fluke, and that that next year the returns will will be back to normal.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um I know the fishing game did a good job of shutting that whole side down.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't allow commercial fishing at all on that side, you know, the entire season.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that uh definitely helped um keep keep, you know, there was there at least there wasn't it wasn't an overfishing, you know, issue.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um the chill cat seems like it's doing really well on all species.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I know they hit the King, the King forecast um above that, and the Koho and Chum are doing awesome this fall.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I think um I feel like it's a cycle, and I think that um we're we're feeling pretty good about the the runs currently, specifically on the co on the chill cat.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: On the chilcat side.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yep.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think halibut, you know, halibut's a federally managed uh fishery, and they are so tight on their quotas and their their management that um I feel like they're they're they would they won't allow overfishing on on a lot of that side, the the federal side.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um crab is all is regulated by size and by males only, and I feel like crab's a cyclical fishery as well, and I think that's just up and down.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that we're I think that we're sitting sitting okay on on resource.
• 42:45
  Douglas: Do you see do you see any issue?
• 42:46
  Douglas: Because I I hear a lot of uh the commercial fishing captains talk about Halbut, especially that the amount of catch in the charter fleet, yeah, that there's really not a regulation, there's not really a cap number on that, that or when things get adjusted down, the commercial guys seem to take a bigger hit on that than the charter fleet.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 43:08
  Douglas: Do you think that's something that needs to be addressed somehow, or are you gonna leave it up to the fisherman to carry how and how how do you see your role in that as the guy that's buying the fish?
• 43:17
  Douglas: Do you get involved in the politics off of that?
• 43:19
  Douglas: That's a responsibility.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you just kind of leave it to the fisherman?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: I should.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: I I should be more involved.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it it is kind of scary when you go out to Elfin Cove or Pelican and you pull in those coves.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: I took my boat out there last spring in May, and I went out and you pull into those coves and you look at the amount of you know half a million dollar aluminum charter boats that are in there, just stacked, you know, ten wide, and and then you go to the Juneau airport on a you know any morning on a in during the summer, and you just see the amount of wax fish boxes that are stacked up on those carts flying out and all coming from the lodges.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's troubling, and that that definitely makes me want to get more involved, um, knowing how much how much of the resources going out of state um on with charter.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: um charter people but um it's uh it's it's yeah it's something we're we're definitely keeping an eye on in the I I don't I I don't mean to criticize the charter boat industry yeah but I think there needs to be more balance to it.
• 44:14
  Douglas: I think if somebody's coming up here to go f fishing for something yeah they need to there should be something that they can take home.
• 44:22
  Douglas: Like you were saying going in the Juno Airport and seeing the number of boxes that a group is taking back is I think at some point we have to recognize all of us even even here locally some of the people that the amount of fish that they take it's like do you really need all of that?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:41
  Douglas: Yeah I used to do that I used to try and it's like man I'm I'm gonna need a whole bunch of fish to get through the winter and I noticed I use like six or seven sockee yeah for just me myself that's how much I'll eat in the winter time.
• 44:53
  Douglas: Yeah seems like a reasonable amount it's but when you're putting up 20 yeah you get to the next year and you got a bunch of freezer burn stuff that you're throwing away or giving it to the Eagle Center for the Eagles and stuff like that.
• 45:03
  Douglas: And so I I several years ago I started doing that.
• 45:06
  Douglas: I was like okay how many fish am I actually eating?
• 45:08
  Douglas: Yeah and now it doesn't really pay for me to go out to catch that many.
• 45:13
  Douglas: I'll go with a friend if they want to go out there but I'll just go since your shop's right at the end of the block here I'll try and just go down there and grab it because it's the it's when you're doing 20 or 30 fish yeah let's go out and put a boat and go up.
• 45:28
  Douglas: I still like doing that just because it's fun being out on the water.
• 45:30
  Douglas: Yep.
• 45:31
  Douglas: But yeah for me I I don't put very much fish in the freezer anymore.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah I think it's definitely uh it's definitely part of the the charter experience they you know you you spend the money to come up on a charter and you you kind of they feel like they're getting the value by how many boxes or how many pounds you can take back with you and I I feel like that um that model is kind of definitely it's a little bit it's a it's a mindset.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's a mindset.
• 45:56
  Douglas: It's a mindset and I you see that a lot of times because people talk about how many halibut they've got how big the halibut are it's all whoever puts up the most yeah is quote unquote the winner.
• 46:08
  Douglas: Yeah but I think it's you get what you need.
• 46:10
  Douglas: Yep.
• 46:11
  Douglas: And then if you have some friends, yeah give your friends some fish.
• 46:15
  Douglas: Nothing wrong with that if you like being out there and they don't have a boat or something.
• 46:19
  Douglas: But yeah there comes a time that we need to make sure we've got enough resource for a few years from now.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: Same page.
• 46:25
  Douglas: Yeah definitely yep to where what avenues are there for you to get involved?
• 46:32
  Douglas: Because I know there's the USAG and the Haynes Gilnetter Association are they s I think they're separate.
• 46:39
  Douglas: But is there is there an option in there as a processor or is there a processor group that works on that?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I could go to the Board of Fish meetings and be there and and um I I'd have to get a board seat to actually you know put a put a vote in but um probably going to the meetings and listening to the the task force meetings and um you know uh showing up to those is probably the next step for involvement um for what what we how we could represent the fleet up here and and that's definitely something that's on on our on our plan list um to to get more involved for sure.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah but the task the task force is in in the spring and march and it's kind of all the groups get together and they you know go through everything and um allocate the poundage and it's it's it would be a prudent prudent for us to show up there for sure.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 47:33
  Douglas: Yeah because that's the you don't have a lot of control over the product until the fishermen catch it.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah exactly zero control over it.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly yeah exactly free market can go anywhere.
• 47:44
  Douglas: Yeah yeah exactly how how tough is that with competition I I think looking on the outside for me looking at it you don't have as probably as much competition as you used to but when you first started yeah War Cove was still an excursion yeah and you still had PFI I think when you still started and so you got different people and you're trying to get people to bring the fish to give them to your tenders instead of somebody else was that a delicate balancing act because usually in order to get people to switch you got to up the price.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly that cuts again that it cuts in your bottom line the list of the players from back in the day too that's a good memory.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah PFI that's a that's a yeah that's a classic so yeah we had to when we went to go buy we had to yeah definitely had to jack the price to get people to to sell to us and that was a that was a way to to get boats and then now we've got the crew we it's we've got the the Haynes fleet like they want to sell their fish to Haynes to see the tax dollars come to Haynes.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: So we and we have a tender service is a big is a big part of that equation so if you can provide you know the best tender service boats would actually rather sell to you I mean to not have equal fishing.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Aren't from here tender is tender is the boat that transports the fish from the fishing grounds from the gill net boat to the plant.
• 49:03
  Douglas: So a larger boat they go out meet the gill netters transfer the fish bring it back to you.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly yep so that that service is almost worth as much as the as a better price because the fishermen can keep fishing and they don't have to you know stop and wait for a tender to come by and if you can provide good tender service they um they value that so we've kind of had a a really good tender fleet for the last four or five years and it's it's kept kept our our fleet happy how many tenders do you employ?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have four four of them?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: Four tenders on yeah yeah wow and that's ranging from different sizes from 5000 pound packer up to 130,000 pound packer and they um take is that four for the whole season or is there two just kind of start and then when you get the heavy boat harbor fish you get four and then you exactly four at the peak.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: So we start one the first week two the second week and then they kind of all overlap and then July and August we've got all of them on charter.
• 50:02
  Douglas: Okay.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: So yep yep.
• 50:05
  Douglas: What it what do they do the rest of the year?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um most of them the tenders mostly tie up they they kind of make their whole season in the in the summer and they they so the ones that you have for two months that it's just a July and August contract they can make yeah we're kind of the exception um most of the other boats will go long lining or go you know do other fisheries Dungeness crab or um other things but the ones we have specifically are they kind of just tender.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:31
  Douglas: Okay.
• 50:32
  Douglas: Yeah yeah but most of them participate in other fisheries that's one of the looking back on it like we're talking earlier when I did the um historical research for the canning museum that there's there used to be eleven different locations where there's canneries in Hanes.
• 50:52
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 50:53
  Douglas: And usually they were right at the mouth of the river.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:55
  Douglas: Because they're going out with sailboats.
• 50:58
  Douglas: And then you know you bring in the diesel and they can go a little bit further so you can you don't have to have the cannery right there you can go a little bit further and then you get ice as soon as you can make ice then you can go so it's just consolidation of these canneries just based on technology because you can get the fish still into a can or into a freezer keep it fresh with your slush ice or whatever compared to in the day that every day they would bring it back.
• 51:22
  Douglas: Yep yep that advancement is pretty cool that everything used to go in a can all the whole the whole fish all of it yep yep yep and uh my favorite's Pyramid harbor the one in pyramid harbor there's there's still the piling sticking up at low tide still stuff over there yep yeah and you can go dig in the woods because Jim had your father in law he'd found some of the sheets of where they'd stamped out the lids for the cans.
• 51:43
  Douglas: Yep that some of that copper was still over there.
• 51:46
  Douglas: Yeah super cool yep and one of my favorite stories on that was out at Chilcoot the cannery out there they got busted by the territorial government I don't know it was the federal government territorial government at the time because it's a hundred and some years ago um before it was statehood but they got busted at the cannery because at night they'd put these boards in the river and it brought the fish into the plant so they didn't have to pay the fishermen or anything for them.
• 52:14
  Douglas: But there there's a way that they were just kind of directing them into some kind of a water source that fish laddered them right in it.
• 52:19
  Douglas: Fish laddered them right in and padding the bottom line.
• 52:22
  Douglas: I hadn't heard that one but yeah yeah no I thought that was pretty ingenious illegal as hell but yeah pretty ingenious way to for whoever was doing that I don't know if he got a bonus based on profitability or what but that was a good way to get it.
• 52:34
  Douglas: No kidding until he got caught.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: Until they got caught yeah that's pretty tricky.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah what where was that?
• 52:41
  Douglas: Out of Chilcoot.
• 52:42
  Douglas: Oh wow yeah there's cannery out of Chilcoot back in the day.
• 52:46
  Douglas: Yeah long time ago is that where the culture yeah I think it's where the culture camp is uh just just below I think it was down down below um right as you go in there there's a cannery there.
• 52:55
  Douglas: Okay yeah right at the mouth of the river.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: Jeez so yeah there's one there there's uh the where the sawmill is yeah there's or the old sawmill there's one there there's two in front of town um there's where uh Pyramid Harbor you're at Pyramid Harbor pretty much where Lindy's house is there's a cannery there yep car's cove car's cove there was one there yeah four five there's three others I can't because I remember there was eleven and now I'm blanking on where the other ones were but yeah I can't remember where I saw it but they're all over there's a picture of a like a 220 foot schooner anchored up in pyramid harbour or in cars cove yeah um all the way up in the bay and now you drive by there and it's just there's no there's no way you could get a boat in there with all the the silt with all the glacial rebounds and glacial rebound yeah yeah you look at that picture and you think no there's no way that ship is in that cove but it's it's in there it's huge.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah pretty wild.
• 53:51
  Douglas: When I was a kid they were gild netting up to pyramid harbor in the fall for cohos and chum yeah you'd go out there and you'd see the boats setting right out there and there's yeah there's no way you get in there now.
• 54:00
  Douglas: Yep yep crazy yeah I think we've got the double we've got the the glacial rebound coming up and then we've got the also the silk coming out of the chill cat so on that side you've got the you've got it rising from both there's a guy for the state um I don't know if he's a contract based source or whatever he was here this summer and he stopped in the store and I asked I was asking what he does and he was here to do the measurements on that we're the second fastest we're the second greatest isostatic rebound in the world.
• 54:29
  Douglas: No kidding second fastest wow where was the what was the first I he told me I can't remember where it was but uh yeah it's like almost an inch a year yeah now it's it's ridiculous it's crazy.
• 54:41
  Douglas: Wow wow yeah it's all those glaciers melting and then yeah earth rising yep and changing all that wetlands and stuff to harder ground and and that and that's one that I talk to the biologists all the time it's like what kind of effect is that having on the fish yeah because as you're you're getting up into the upper chilcoot with their spawning area and things like that is is that why we don't have as many fish going in the glory hole?
• 55:06
  Douglas: Is there a way that we can because the land is actually it's harder for them to get up in there.
• 55:10
  Douglas: Yeah you don't you you you take some of those wetland areas and then you add the beaver in there um have we just with natural tendencies or the natural formation of earth and the way that it's rebounding now is that prohibiting the salmon from spawning in the areas that were the most productive in the past and is there a way for us to go in there and change that yeah can we dig that out a little bit you don't want to I understand their unwillingness to damage a natural run but is there a way we can help that spawning area become as productive as it was in the past that's a that's a good question.
• 55:46
  Douglas: Yeah you don't have the answer for me I don't have I don't have the answer to that I wish I did no sorry sorry keep asking but nobody's had that yet I thought for sure you'd have a good reason to we can go up there with a little excavator up there and dig it out and it'd be worth a while for you.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: It would be yeah more fish coming into the at least figure out what we need to do.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: What we need to do yeah yeah so what else we got oh what else we got what did what did I miss?
• 56:16
  Douglas: Gosh I don't know any other any any other burning questions for me is like you guys just talk about work like and building the cannery and whatever what do you do for fun like what do we do for fun what do we do for fun we when you get off work do you get off work yeah do you get yeah well in the in the so in the summertime I'm assuming you're like head head to the grind wheel nose of the grindstone all summer long cranking it out but you've got to have some time with the wife and kids.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: I do yeah I do so what are the things you guys like to do my son likes to play baseball he's a big uh big baseball and soccer guy so when I go home um he likes to play in the yard so we we do we play baseball and soccer in the yard that's our that's our jam um jenny likes to hike so we'll we'll go we'll go hiking um we've got a boat uh aluminum boat tied up at the dock so we try to when the weather's nice we'll try to take over a boat ride take the kids out and go put a halber pole over or go go jigging um so those those are probably our main main recreational activities is you uh is he a mariners fan he is uh he doesn't have a baseball team I don't think he's um I don't he I I don't know who his team is actually he hasn't told me he hasn't told you no he hasn't told me he's a Buccaneers fan on football uh how how does Kid Alaska become a Buccaneers fan he liked Tom Brady Tom Brady and just now he's a Buccaneers okay now he was there when he was at that age yeah now understandable try to get him I've tried to get him on the Seahawks train and just can't can't get there.
• 57:45
  Douglas: So it's all right yeah I I can understand that.
• 57:48
  Douglas: Yep when you you're at a certain age and you develop a passion for it.
• 57:52
  Douglas: Yeah I hope he's as as much as I'd rather have him as a Seahawk fan yeah I think it's more impressive if once you pick your team you stick with them.
• 57:58
  Douglas: For sure.
• 57:59
  Douglas: Yeah and you're not a fair weather fan you're not a fair weather fan you stick with him that this is I I made my choice and regardless of what happens this is who I'm sticking with.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yep he's been with him for three years now so I think that's he's sticking it out.
• 58:09
  Douglas: He's what eight he's eight eight nine nine yeah yeah so a third of his life he's been a fan I I think there's he's gonna stick it out.
• 58:17
  Douglas: So what do you do for fun down in uh California when you're down there in the desert?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I I'm I've been trying to get into golf a little bit so I try to try to golf so I take my take the kids to school and go to the store and then if I get all my work done and I'm all caught up I I try to play golf a couple times a week down there.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of my my recreation sport down there.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: Have you talked to my nephew and my brother in law about some golf I I have a little bit yeah yeah we've discussed yeah we've discussed some golf simulators and some some some of that stuff yeah yeah do you ever get over there and play?
• 58:48
  Douglas: No golf isn't my sport.
• 58:51
  Douglas: Yeah I may maybe it is now but you know Tyler and Ralph love playing golf.
• 58:58
  Douglas: Yeah and so when the golf course opened here I had some clubs from when I was down in Seattle to play with a couple buddies and I was like oh great I'll go out and play with you guys and couple of pros.
• 59:08
  Douglas: I I I struggled and I struggled and then I didn't with the store I didn't have time.
• 59:13
  Douglas: It got I was just too busy I didn't have time to go play golf.
• 59:16
  Douglas: And so things settled down a little bit and I went out and played once with Tyler and I he was probably junior senior in high school yeah and I outdrove him by like three feet on the first T.
• 59:28
  Douglas: Oh wow like wow I'm crushing it I played really good that day I was like hmm taking 10 years off is really improved my golf game so I thought this is something else I should probably get new clubs probably take some lessons and I did the more I practiced the worse I got and the more I struggled the more ticked off I was yep that's not a good combination it's not a good combination and I can't you know golf you have to be relaxed.
• 59:54
  Douglas: Yep you just have to go out and enjoy it.
• 59:56
  Douglas: Yep and I just kept trying to force it to get better and better and I distinctly remember this Justin and Tyler and I were out there playing and we're like halfway through a round and I just I was like this is it.
• 1:00:06
  Douglas: I'll see you guys later they're like wait where are you going?
• 1:00:08
  Douglas: I said I'm going home.
• 1:00:09
  Douglas: So that was the end that was the end of your golf career.
• 1:00:12
  Douglas: I might have played once since then but that was pretty much the end of it I was like I'm putting all this time in and I'm not seeing any improvement.
• 1:00:18
  Douglas: Fair enough now knowing that the mistakes that I was making that I was trying too hard that it should just be I'm going out to have fun with my nephews or my brother in law or friends I might be able to play better now that or I just enjoy the walk.
• 1:00:34
  Douglas: Yeah that's the point I never got to is just being able to enjoy the walk.
• 1:00:38
  Douglas: I needed to see something productive out of it.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah just just change the mindset to go out and have fun.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah don't expect results just yeah I don't have that mindset.
• 1:00:47
  Douglas: Yeah that's all that's a hard one for me.
• 1:00:50
  Douglas: There's very little relaxing because I feel I should be doing something.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I yeah the relaxing thing is could be a good exercise for you you know or a good a good thing to go out and just say no no uh no agenda just fun just fun relaxation Doug.
• 1:01:04
  Douglas: Well just sitting here talking is a step towards that.
• 1:01:08
  Douglas: Yeah because this is me sitting this long is usually not happening.
• 1:01:12
  Douglas: Yeah unless you know my one of my former jobs when I was sitting in meetings all the time.
• 1:01:16
  Douglas: Yeah but yeah other than that even at the store I'm I'm I'm up doing because I I don't like to just sit and just be mellow for something.
• 1:01:25
  Douglas: That's okay too nothing wrong with that.
• 1:01:27
  Douglas: Yeah so so golf a couple times a week what else you got going on gosh I I think that might be my my list.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a list.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah that's a good list that's not a bad list.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: We do some hiking down there hiking in the desert um and um yeah a lot of a lot of oh sports a lot of kids activities so my son's doing soccer now so he's practicing games three probably three days a week so we do a lot of a lot of shuttling kids around that's kind of basically a chauffeur when I'm down there that's my main my main job so uh but it's fun good spending time with the kids because up summertime we're busy at the plant and we don't always get to spend as much time together so it's kind of my my kid time so yeah that's good that you recognize and get that balance and spend more time with them than the trying to try and spend more time with them.
• 1:02:16
  Douglas: Yeah yeah yeah yes sir yeah and yeah just kind of on a personal thing I think I've told you this before you're you probably know it you're because your mom was a teacher yeah she was my third grade teacher yeah she was awesome yeah she was she was like top three teachers from my whole third grade you wouldn't think that would make a difference but just at the end of the year I don't think I I don't think I recolle recognized it then but just kind of seeing the emotion as she was seeing us move on to fourth grade and everything and that but looking back at it knowing that she cared as much as she did she cared a lot yeah still does she cared a lot she she still does but just seeing that in her you felt it as a student.
• 1:03:07
  Douglas: Yeah and that there's there weren't many yeah that you could feel that from there there were a few in Haynes that were pretty cool.
• 1:03:16
  Douglas: Yeah but she was one of the first that you experienced that from and uh I've I I told you this when I was asking you to be on this I want to have your mom on here sometime I want to talk to her about our teaching career.
• 1:03:29
  Douglas: So Mary when you're watching your son on this this is your formal invitation to join me next time you're in Haynes or if I can make it down to Oregon love to have you on here and thank you in person for the wonderful teacher that you are but also to hear more about your story.
• 1:03:44
  Douglas: So there's your formal invitation.
• 1:03:45
  Douglas: She'll love that yeah look forward to having her on conversation because yeah she was both your parents are I've I've known both of them my whole life and learned a lot from both of them.
• 1:03:58
  Douglas: So thanks I think we're it's I feel blessed that I had the parents I did that showed me the things they did growing up and I'm guessing you probably feel the same way that give you some pretty good opportunities.
• 1:04:13
  Douglas: For sure most definitely yep very grateful yep yes sir all right well I can't think of anything else so I can't either other than your mom two people that you think I should talk to two people who's some people that you think might be flying under the radar in Hanes they got a really cool backstory they can be an entrepreneur they could be artist whatever but just have a a neat a neat story that you don't think enough people see.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay um Stuart DeWitt would be a good one yeah he's got a lot of he's got a lot of local yeah like some people I want to get Charlie on here too Charlie Charlie DeWitt would be great yeah yeah he would be awesome um skipper skipper sparks skipper skipper sparks would be great I don't know if I could get him to sit down and talk though I bet yeah that'll be a tough one that might be a tough one that'll be a tough one but that would be a good challenge.
• 1:05:10
  Douglas: Yeah who who do you have scheduled who's the next uh I don't have anybody scheduled yet it's I've got a I've got a list of uh potential people I've I've I've got about 80 people on my list right now oh wow that are some about 10 or 12 that have said yes and it's just trying to fit their schedules and mine.
• 1:05:29
  Douglas: Some of them not all of them live here in Hanes um so trying to figure out times where I can either go to where they are or they're they're gonna be in Hanes.
• 1:05:37
  Douglas: You're gonna have your hands full buddy but 80 80 people on the list is well when when I started looking to this um one of the people I was reaching out to and they were they said you you should have at least 20 episode ideas before you go forward with this.
• 1:05:54
  Douglas: So if you're gonna go with a podcast you need to make sure you have 80 or 20 before you get started.
• 1:06:00
  Douglas: Yep and so I went home that night and I just got a legal pad and I just started to write names of people I thought I had a cool story.
• 1:06:07
  Douglas: Nice and within 15 minutes I had 50 names.
• 1:06:11
  Douglas: And some of them were I was like man I don't know if I can get that person but they're on the list.
• 1:06:16
  Douglas: They're on the list means you have a good network and so since then yeah just talking to people and that people have mentioned oh what about this person?
• 1:06:23
  Douglas: Oh yeah I need to I need to get them and it's been um pretty humbling that because nobody's seen you you haven't seen the show because none of the ones I've recorded yet have aired not yet we haven't we haven't well because I want to get a buffer before we put them out there but to trust me to come in and talk to me before anything's out there nobody knows what this is going to be like.
• 1:06:46
  Douglas: Yeah I trust you but the but the number of people that have said yes without seeing this yet um puts a little extra pressure right it's inspiring but it also puts a little extra pressure there that can't screw this up.
• 1:06:59
  Douglas: Yeah you got it.
• 1:07:00
  Douglas: But yeah so it's been great and hopefully I'm learning with each one of these that uh each one gets a little bit better over time but I appreciate you having the faith and uh trust in me to come and hang out and have a conversation about your life and your business.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely I appreciate the invite and thanks for thinking of me.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: You bet.
• 1:07:18
  Douglas: Looking forward to see what else you have coming on.
• 1:07:19
  Douglas: Thanks buddy you bet.
• 1:07:20
  Douglas: Thanks Harry thank you that was good thank you guys thanks for watching this episode of Doug Cad's questions.
• 1:07:27
  Douglas: Just a reminder if you've enjoyed the conversation today please like subscribe and we're available on YouTube if you want to watch us if you just want to listen it's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you have new uh episodes being launched every Thursday so thanks again for watching or listening and following us we appreciate your support