EPISODE SUMMARY
Guest: Cory Roof
Cory Roof, the CEO of Ogallala Greens, discusses the advantages of hydroponic growing for lettuce, greens, and other fresh produce. He shares his personal journey in starting a local produce business in Post/Slaton/Lubbock TX. He emphasizes the importance of nutrition and the challenges of obtaining fresh, healthy greens.
Volunteering at a food bank in Los Angeles opened Cory’s eyes to the importance of good food.
Cory's hydroponics journey started while working at Plenty, a hydroponics company in San Francisco, before returning to his hometown Slaton in West Texas.
Hydroponic greens are grown in a water-based system with the root ball attached, offering maximum freshness and longer shelf life.
The greenhouse temperature is carefully controlled to stay within the ideal range for lettuce growth, typically between 50 to 85 Fahrenheit.
The amount of nitrogen in the water can increase the heat tolerance of the lettuce plants.
Ogallala Greens began selling in April 2022 and has faced several setbacks due to a greenhouse structure being knocked down by wind.
The business is growing and aims to serve not only Lubbock but also expand to Amarillo and Midland and, possibly, the Dallas metroplex.
To order Fresh Leafy Greens through the website: https://www.ogallalagreens.com/
Contact Cory via email:ogallalagreens@gmail.com
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/cory.d.roof
. https://www.facebook.com/OgallalaGreens
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/explore/search/keyword/?q=ogallala%20greens
To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com
ruth@blairclinic.com
https://www.facebook.com/rutelin
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, welcome, welcome to What Pain in the Neck. Today I'm super excited to introduce my guest and we'll have a super interesting, tiny little bit different episode than normal. This is the What Pain in the Neck podcast. Sometimes it can be a real pain in the neck to figure out what to eat. We know that we are what we eat, and more specifically, what we absorb. We all know that greens are good for us. I have taught my kids since they were super, super little. Now that they're young adults, I've drilled into them every day, eat something green every day.
I don't mean green Skittles or Jell-O, [laughs] actual greens. Then it's like, what about food poisoning? What has it been sprayed with? How old is it? How do I get-- Greens should be fresh. Sometimes it can be a real pain in the neck to figure that part out. For that reason, I've invited Cory Roof. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Ruth.
Cory, why don't you introduce your business and what it has to do with nutrition and greens? Then we'll go into your background after that.
You got it. Thank you so much for having me here. This is so exciting. This is my first podcast. [crosstalk] This is a real joy. This is an adventure kind of. I am the CEO of Ogallala Greens. We are, not the first and not the only, but definitely the flagship hydroponics company here in West Texas. We've been open since April 2021. We've been serving the community with incredibly fresh produce, really the freshest produce possible, because it comes to you living and you actually choose when to harvest it.
It comes with a root pod, right?
Yes. Primarily what we grow is lettuces and kale and chard, really leafy greens for salads. What is special about it is that it's grown in a hydroponic environment, so the root ball comes attached. We just pluck the whole plant, roots and all, right out of the water, put it in a bag, and bring it to you directly. Some people like to put it in water in the window so it grows a little bit longer, it stays fresh. Most people just put it in the refrigerator, but as long as it's got that root ball still attached, it stays alive and then you choose when to harvest it.
Okay. Why hydroponic? What does it do? What is it? Does it work? Then also when you say it stays fresh, how long does it stay fresh for?
Why hydroponic? What a broad question. There's a lot of different reasons people get into the business. A lot of people I know just get excited about environments. People who have fish tanks, who really get excited about or grow terrariums, these are the type of people that really get into hydroponic growing. I think the reason why is because it's so exciting to have that kind of incredible control over the plant's living environment so that you can produce the healthiest, most vibrant plant possible. As a grower, there's a real joy to giving so much fertility to a particular plant. Then they, of course, return that with beautiful fruit and nutrition.
For me, I come at this more from a position like you do, which is health-focused.
Okay. Well, that's good. Because you were talking about people come at it from different ways, that was going to be my follow-up question.
Absolutely. Hydroponic food is really flavorful because it comes out of these perfect growing conditions. For me, it really is about the nutritional aspect of hydroponically grown food.
How did you get interested in nutrition?
I came to it through volunteering when I was in Los Angeles. When I worked as an insurance salesman in LA, I would take my team once a week to a homeless shelter on Hope Street in downtown, right off of the Skid Row area. We would volunteer with this Catholic soup kitchen. After several months of that, I began to realize how important food was for communities. These food centers really are sort of the hotbed for communities, whether you're in a traditional middle-class environment like we have here in Lubbock. We're very, very excited about our restaurant scene here in town. It kind of is the lifeblood for the culture in Lubbock.
That's for sure.
Yes.
Lots of restaurants.
This is true even in the homeless communities. We really found that this service center soup kitchen was where this whole group of people really identified as their community. For me, it was about community, but I got educated basically from the people that worked there on how important the nutrition was and how important the food that they served to these people were. Because we would get all kinds of stuff in and they would be very, very selective about what they were actually handing out to their guests. It was something that blossomed from there.
I worked with a company called Plenty for many years, which is a hydroponics company, but more of a San Francisco startup, fancy gadgets kind of a place. It really felt very removed from community. That was one of the reasons that we came to Lubbock, was to share the nutritional power of hydroponics with a place that really felt community oriented.
Okay. From Los Angeles to San Francisco to Lubbock, post-Slaton, you said community, but why here?
Well, this is my community.
Oh, you grew up here?
Yes.
Oh. [laughs] Okay. You've come full circle.
Yes.
Somehow I thought you were from Los Angeles. I guess all this time I missed that.
I guess I don't have much of the West Texas accent. Yes, I was born here and raised here for about 10 years, and then my family moved to Ohio. We spent many summers with my cousins running around Slaton, swimming pools and ponds and fishing and baseball in the street and that kind of thing here in Slaton. Many years later, I wanted to move back to my hometown. I've got six aunts that all live in the same town, Slaton. My mother was a triplet, which in West Texas practically makes you a celebrity. Everybody in Slaton knows who the Feathers are, my mother's family. It really is nice to be in a place with kin.
Your cousins were more like brothers or sisters then maybe?
Oh, yes. Yes, yes. We share.
Okay. How did you go about getting started, essentially starting over in a new career and to set up your operation? You had this dream of taking what you had learned about nutrition and maybe more specifically about hydroponics?
Yes.
Is it easy to just start a hydroponic greens operation?
No. Oh, boy. No.
Why don't you paint the picture of what you had to go through and what it looks like?
I worked for Plenty for four years, which is this startup out of San Francisco. I worked actually in Wyoming, where they hid their research and development department. San Francisco is full of tech journalists and they wanted to keep their research and development--
You were on the cutting edge of research?
Yes. I worked in R&D. We ran, while I was there, over 700 experiments on brassicas and lettuces. The plants that I work with, I know them very well. I've grown them in multiple different conditions, different nutrient treatments, different light treatments, different temperature settings. All kinds of different ways that you can grow a plant, I have grown these particular plants through my research and development experience at Plenty.
Cory, tell us, how do you get a healthy green plant? How do you know what is a healthy green? There's pests and spraying.
Oh, absolutely.
How do we know that it's a healthy plant? How do we get a healthy plant? Then, maybe, why is hydroponic versus-
Conventional.
-growing it in the ground? I have a little backyard garden, I could probably stick that root ball that you bring and stick it in the dirt, I would presume. What would be the difference if I put it in water in my windowsill versus shoving it in the ground in my backyard?
Every living being really has a perfect environmental condition to live in. Just like all air conditioning is generally set at 72 degrees, but most people like it either a little bit warmer or a little bit cooler than that. 72 is this number that we've landed on to make every-- It's like an agreement, but it doesn't make everyone--
Compromise kind of.
It's a compromise, yes.
Okay.
All plants sort of live in that condition when they're in the environment. A tomato plant. The perfect temperature and environmental humidity for a tomato plant really only exists between April and June. Then after that, it's too hot and dry for the tomato plant, so the tomato stops producing tomatoes between August and September. Then maybe will pick up growing again in late September through the end of August, and then it gets too cold, so the tomato plant dies at that point.
Well, what we do is we provide that perfect 72 degrees for that tomato plant all times of the year and it gets the exact right amount of light all times of the year, so it is constantly in this perfect environment for production. Then you give it the nutrients that it needs. When you give it the exact nutrients it needs, you don't waste money or any of the plant's energy on the other nutrients.
That's how the hydroponics work, it's just straight infusion of nutrients?
Right. The plant's root balls are suspended in water and then we add nutrients to the water, a very particular nutrient mix for each specific plant, very targeted, and then they bring it up out of the water through their roots. In this way, there's no need for soil or what we in the industry call media, which can get very expensive. The real advantage over growing it outside would be that we can control the temperature and the humidity, but also there's no pest pressure when it's inside, so we don't have to spray it with Roundup or any kind of insecticide, which, of course, residue of that insecticide gets into the plant, it stays in the plant and then you ingest it in your body.
When we think of hydroponics being ideal for plant health, we're also you know considering human health there because what goes into the plant is ultimately what goes into the human body.
Yes. Then your greenhouse, we'll talk a little bit more about that next, you have a cooling system to get that ideal temperature?
Yes.
I had some stray lettuce growing in my backyard, but as we are recording this, it's over 100 degrees outside and so the lettuce is growing but it's not tasting very good when it gets that hot.
Yes, this is very true. Lettuce will get bitter. Typically, heat is a signature for the death cycle for lettuce, so it'll move into the reproduction phase. When it moves into the reproduction phase, it puts all of its chemical energy into creating the flower and the stamen to create the hormones to attract insects. It doesn't care about the leaves anymore at that point. It's like, "I've got an agenda. I've got one thing on my mind here before the end."
What you're really tasting is that the plant is performing chemistry in other parts of the plant and then basically pumping those wastes, the stuff that it doesn't want, back into the leaves because it's leaving the leaves to die. That's why they're bitter and that's why they taste like that.
You don't have that problem in your greenhouse?
Right. The temperature never rises high enough to give the signal to the plant, so it doesn't start that process.
What is the temperature range? You said there's an ideal and then there's a range.
Sure.
How how do you keep your greenhouse?
The plants that I grow partner very well. Kale and collards and Chinese cabbage, they all fall into this category called brassicas. Brassicas generally play very nicely with lettuces, because they both want the same temperature, humidity, and nutritional treatments, so all the plants that I grow in my system all grow needing about the same conditions. Between 50 Fahrenheit and around 85 Fahrenheit is the ideal growing range for lettuces and brassicas.
Really, if you're north of 78, you're probably stretching it a little bit, but our greenhouse, if it's 104 outside, it'll run at about 82 degrees inside. We're on the high limit of that, but we can also treat that a little bit with increasing the nitrogen. If there's more nitrogen in the water, then the plants can tolerate a higher-- They just have a higher heat tolerance. There's a lot of different variables that we play around with. It's really the engineering method that we're doing. This isn't precision science, there's just adjusting knobs until we get the right environment.
Okay. All right. I was just out there to see your operation and it was very interesting to see your cooling system, and also the large tank, the feeding tank. Maybe briefly tell us how that works.
Sure. Most greenhouses operate on using a cooling wall system. Most people understand that as basically a swamp cooler. You just run water over a corrugated field, usually cardboard, sometimes steel, and then you place a fan in front of it to pull the cooling ions off the water and into the air. It's a really simple system. People have been doing it probably since the 1800s. I don't know, a very long time. It's a very very simple system that we use to cool the greenhouse, but what is special about it is that we're here in Lubbock. A lot of growing environments like down in East Texas and in Dallas, or even Florida, they can't use cooling walls because the humidity--
It's too humid.
It's too humid outside. Our dry air actually really makes this place an excellent environment for green housing because it's very easy to use this old-fashioned cooling system for our greenhouses. It's that system that we use to maintain the environment
Yes. Then you talked about adjusting the nutrients-
Yes.
-in the water based on the temperature. Why don't you talk about how the nutrient system works with the hydroponics?
Absolutely.
Then when you're done with that I'm going to switch gears a little bit-
Sure.
-and ask you about something else.
There's just a lot of different ways to do it. I've played around with a lot of different systems. Right now what we're doing is what is called direct dosing. That's where we take the chemicals and we pre-mix them in like a 5-gallon bucket and then we put that 5-gallon bucket directly into our system. What we're doing is putting a bunch of nitrogen powder on a scale and measuring it to 250 grams.
This is different than some systems where you can design a computer to dose a little bit of it every hour so it's always at the exact perfect level. Whereas we dose twice a week, so the nutrient level in the water drops a little bit throughout the week and then it spikes when we put it in and then it drops a little bit throughout the week. There's several ways to do this, but basically what you're doing is targeting exactly which nutrients the plant wants and dosing specifically those nutrients.
Now, our plants are always in the leafy green grow-out phase. We're not trying to grow fruit and we're not trying to grow flowers, so we use a lot of nitrogen. Most of what is in our system is nitrogen with a mixture of basic micro and macronutrients, things like calcium and molybdenum, sulfur, and minor ions that the plant needs plants need but not in abundance.
If you get to fruiting phase or flowering phase, say, I was growing tomatoes or blueberries on my hydroponic system, then we would need to be putting nitrogen in the beginning of the growth cycle and then after two months switching over to something that was heavier in potassium or phosphorus in order to make the fruit. That way, our growth cycle is really quite simple because we only have to worry about the one phase of growth, which is very, very nitrogen focused.
Yes. Essentially, you specialize in that.
That's right, yes.
There's multiple episodes on this podcast about how to specialize, you do fewer things and you do those things better. The more you specialize, the more you know about fewer things.
This is a big focus of our business. Of course, I've begun growing tomatoes but we are focusing on the lettuce product. We don't intend to turn this into a big market farm or get goats and cows, we are sticking very, very specifically to the hydroponic lettuce product and expanding out from there. We want to sell here in Lubbock and then move into Amarillo and Midland and then, of course, further into Texas like the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
Oh, okay. All right. Actually, that is perfect lead into where I was headed next. Why don't you tell the story of how you got started, just some of the things you've had to go through, some of the things you've experienced, and then lead into where you're going with it.
Thank you.
Then also, how do we find you and buy these great greens?
Thank you.
All of that. The story of where you started, where it is now, and where it's going.
When I worked with Plenty, the pandemic happened, 2020--
Is that when you moved back to Slaton, was 2020?
I guess, yes. Yes. August 2020 is when I moved back to Slaton.
Right in the thick of it.
Yes, it was. It was certainly during. We planned to move a little bit later but my boss had found out that I was planning on doing this, and when he pulled me aside, he was like, "Hey, you should go do this sooner than later." Sticking around the laboratory for another two months when you've got dreams. He was very encouraging to let me go. In fact, the last week I was at work, he said, "Hey, we've got some equipment in the back, you should ask my boss if you can have it." I said, "Well, that's great."
Wonderful.
I wrote an email and he said, "Well, you should ask HR." I wrote another email and they said, "You should ask legal." Then legal said, "You should ask the C-suite." I wrote probably six emails that day on my last day of work. Then two weeks later, they sent a contract saying, "Hey, we'll sell it to you for $1."
[laughs] Okay.
I said, "Great. Oh, yes." I was in Texas by that time but my wife was still in Wyoming. I drove back after two weeks to check out the equipment that I had bought. It was crazy, Ruth. You wouldn't believe it. It was probably $200,000 worth of hydroponic equipment.
Wow.
It was enough equipment to grow 25,000 plants at any given time. You would need a half-acre greenhouse to harbor all the equipment that I have.
Wow. How many acre greenhouses did you have?
I didn't have a greenhouse at all at the time. I got very fortunate with this payload of equipment. Right now we're using about a fifth of it. We have the capability to expand 5X from where we're at right now.
Wow. Great.
Before we need to go purchasing new equipment on the market. We got very fortunate with that. I think that that was one of the key factors for our admittance into the Accelerator program. My wife moved down to Lubbock a few months later, we had all this equipment and so I joined the Texas Tech Innovation Hub and went through their program. Their program lasts one year. It's called the Accelerator program. If you get in, they'll give you $25,000 and coach you for your first year through your startup.
Wonderful.
Yes. It was amazing. It was the best hand-holding and teaching experience I've ever had in my life. They really put you through the wringer on the broad spectrum of things that you need to learn when you are a first-time business owner.
I don't know if you know this, but maybe you do having been part of it, can anyone apply to this program?
Oh, yes. They're very encouraging for locals because most people that apply come out of the grad school programs at Texas Tech. It's a lot of medical innovation or internety-type things like starting a website or web-based development. When there are locals that have businesses focused in the community, those businesses get, I don't want to say special treatment, but they attract a lot of attention inside the program. I think that that was the real benefit for me is, one, I was creating a physical product to sell to the local community and, two, I was a local entrepreneur that was planning on staying in Lubbock.
There's a lot to be said for local food that doesn't have to travel far. It's great for the environment, it's great for our body.
Yes, without a doubt. I guess I forgot to touch on that. One of the big things that makes our produce so special is that it doesn't travel on a truck for 1,000 miles. When we think about that, our mind often goes to the carbon footprint first, but for me, and coming back to our point here, it's about nutrition. When you harvest something and it stays outside of sunlight over what can be up to a three or four-week period, it loses rapidly its nutritional value. The longer it stays uneaten, the less nutritional value it will have. Being able to harvest it yourself and having it grown right here is actually a pretty big factor when we're speaking about nutrition.
In my case, I buy greens from you and you bring it to my door. When I get it in the afternoon, typically, how old is it?
Three or four hours.
You said it's in the root ball.
Oh, yes. It's very much alive.
Okay. That was a little parenthesis, but back to the Accelerator program.
Oh, yes. I guess I would just encourage anybody in Lubbock that has a business plan and are serious about it to consider that. They are interested in unique ideas. These are startups, not exactly small businesses. If you want to open a brake shop or an insurance agency, there's a platform for that, those things have already been done. That's not exactly a startup, per se. If it is something a little challenging and new and interesting, I think that they would be very excited to hear from people in the community. I know a couple of other community members that are going to be applying this year.
That's great. That's how you got started.
Exactly.
Where did it go from there?
We began selling in April 2022, so a little over a year ago. We immediately had a setback because the structure that we had built, our greenhouse in Slaton got knocked down for the first time. It took us about two months to rebuild.
It got knocked down why?
Because of wind. We had a 75-mile-an-hour wind come through and hit the greenhouse in just the right spot and it caused a structural breach. Basically, the bars that provide the skeleton of the greenhouse, they bent, so the structure wasn't viable anymore. We had to replace the cross bars and reinforce all of them.
Start over, basically.
Start over. Then we were back in the market by mid to late August and were really just deciding how to market the product when I met you in September last year. You're really one of our very first customers. Since we've met you our home delivery program has grown exponentially.
That's actually what got me interested in talking to you as I've been looking for a home delivery fresh produce ever since I moved to Lubbock. I think that is a unique concept for what you're doing here.
Thank you. CSA and home delivery isn't the most creative idea, but I'm here to make this business work and whatever platform we can find to meet the market is what we'd like to do. Really, people have responded so positively to it. For that reason, United, their produce, it lacks variety and it certainly lacks the freshness that a lot of people in town are looking for. The Farmers Market, Lobbuck is a pretty spread out town, people don't want to drive from campus all the way out to Wolfforth to buy a couple of carrots and some lettuce. Our plan is to bring it directly to you. Through some very simple marketing on Facebook and then a lot of personal networking through the Chamber of Commerce.
That's how we met, was through the networking event at the Chamber of Commerce.
Yes. We've developed a very passionate community that care about the product pretty intimately. They're calling me if they don't get my text on Thursdays.
Okay. There's one thing we haven't touched on. A lot of times when I get my delivery, there are some pretty interesting mushrooms.
Oh, yes. Let's talk about the mushrooms. I love the mushrooms. Those are harvested the day before by a good friend of mine, Zane Loveless, who runs the mushroom department of Ogallala Greens. He's just an incredibly brilliant scientist. He has an incredibly large collection of mushroom spore samples. If he's in the grocery store somewhere and sees an interesting mushroom, he'll purchase it and pull a sample out with a syringe and then cultivate it at his own house.
[laughs]
He is a very, very clever mushroom cultivator. Primarily what we sell is blue oysters and lion's mane, just because they're identifiable and very popular in the market right now. Lion's mane has neurogenerative properties, which have made it very popular right now, and then blue oysters just have that classic mushroom look and taste that I think enhances any meal.
I love mushrooms.
Oh, great. Okay.
Yes. I have asked you a bunch of questions based on what I know but I don't know what you know. What is it that you wish everybody in Lubbock or anyone listening to this show would know?
I guess I wish that they would know that having local produce will improve your quality of life. I don't mean to say if you ate a salad every day your blood pressure would be better and so blah, blah, blah, health stuff. What I mean to say is that, if you know how to cook and prepare and eat vegetables, then when you're sitting in the office in the afternoon, you'll be thinking, "Oh my gosh, I have this beautiful dish to prepare when I get home. I've got this thing to look forward to because of the quality of the food that I have to make it with." In that way, having better food, particularly fresh, healthy food, will improve the quality of your life because you'll be more excited about what you get to eat.
That's beautiful. Thank you so much for your education and for bringing fabulous stuff to Lubbock but we can't end without figuring out how do people get their hands on your greens. Oh, also, what about the future? You said about expanding. Oh my goodness-
Let's talk about that for a second.
-we left out a whole third of your question.
We plan to saturate the Lubbock market. We have a goal we're trying to reach, a specific number of clients that we're looking to meet here in the Lubbock market. Of course, we want to move into Amarillo and Midland because they're nearby markets. Demographically they're very similar. They're similar-sized cities. Unlike the other half of Texas, the metroplex in Houston, out here we don't get a lot of the fancy products. We don't get a lot of the high-quality life stuff.
That's true. That's true.
This is why we want to move into these markets. Not only because we think that there's a lot of interest there, but because we would like to serve them as well.
If I live in Lubbock, which I do, and I want to shop from you, or maybe I'm listening to this in Midland or Amarillo and I want to get ahold of what you do, what do I do?
ogallalagreens.com. You can order there. What I would suggest is trying out the $20 delivery box, the veggie box. There's a variety of stuff that comes in that. If you are interested in picking and choosing beyond that, that would be perfectly fine, but most people just like that regular vegetable delivery. You can order on our website. You can also check us out on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok here soon. Of course, you can reach out to me via Gmail at ogallalagreens@gmail.com.
Cory, thank you so much for-
Thank you.
-what you do for our local community.
I appreciate that.
Thank you for your time.
This is so much fun.