Inside Get Joy's supply chain: Reefer trucks, dry ice, and on-time delivery

How do you get fresh, freeze-dried dog food across the country without it spoiling, and what happens when the reefer truck breaks down on the way to a trade show? 

Greg Meyers, VP of Operations and Strategy at Get Joy, joins Inside Freight to break down the real logistics behind shipping fresh pet food. Greg managed supply chain at Bark (the company behind BarkBox) before joining Get Joy, a Connecticut-based dog wellness brand built around gut health. In this episode, he covers the difference between shipping ambient, frozen, and refrigerated product; why frozen LTL barely exists as an economical option; what it actually takes to launch into 350+ Sprouts locations; and the two qualities he looks for in every broker and carrier relationship. 

If you've ever wondered why reefer freight is a different "animal" than dry van, this one's for you.

Inside Freight is produced by Fifth Wheel Freight, a third-party logistics provider based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, offering truckload, LTL, drayage, rail, over-dimensional, and expedited freight services across the US and Canada. Learn more at fwf.com.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Premium pet food category, obviously it's getting increasingly popular. We've talked a little bit about Farmer's Dog, Ollie, some of those other brands. Does supply chain or the timeliness of the product arriving from the direct-to-consumer side of things ever become a differentiator enough so to make you stand out from the other products? Or is that not really a part of the equation?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yeah, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Well, my guest today is Greg Myers, vice president of operations and strategy at GetJoy Food, a fast-growing dog food and wellness company out of Connecticut that's on a mission to extend dogs' lives through better nutrition. Greg came through his career in operations and supply chain through nearly three years at Bark, the company behind Bark Box, managing supply chain before making the jump to Get Joy, where he now oversees the entire operations and strategy function. Before Bark, he worked in operations roles at Cleanly, Roto, and Buy Next with earlier experience in purchasing and product management. I'm excited to talk to Greg today because he really sits at the intersection of two fascinating areas of this industry: the explosion of direct-to-consumer food brands and their split between direct-to-consumer and retail presence, as well as the logistics complexity of temperature-sensitive products. Getting fresh dog food from a production facility to its final destination on time and intact is certainly not a simple freight problem. And today we're gonna dig into how they actually do that. So, Greg, welcome to Inside Freight.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Kelsey.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Of course, it's our pleasure. So, yeah, like I said, you've built your career across both operations and supply chain in really varied environments, uh, startup logistics, subscription boxes, and now fresh pet food. Uh, what's kind of drawn you to operations and supply chain and what's kind of keeping you in this industry?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, so when I first started out in operations, I actually uh got a degree in supply chain. Um I know it's kind of rare these days to have a degree in something that you're actually doing. But what what really drew me to it then was the ability to do a lot of different things. Yeah. Right? It the supply chain doesn't just mean, you know, fulfillment, doesn't just mean manufacturing or shipping or, you know, lean six sigma or anything. It it could mean all of those things, it could mean one of those things.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

So I think it was kind of to keep me interested was like, hey, you're doing a little bit of everything.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

And you know, responsible for, you know, kind of the success or failure of a company, especially when it comes to an actual CPG product. Yeah. So you know, it kind of keeps me on my toes and lets me do a lot of the little different things, which I like doing.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, I love that. Keeps it keeps it interesting and fresh. For people who haven't heard of Get Joy, can you just give us a quick breakdown of who the company is, who you're serving, kind of what problems you're solving?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Sure. So we are, you know, a dog wellness brand, as you said. Um, you know, our flagship product is fresh freeze-dried dog food, and we have freeze-dried treats. We have fresh frozen meals similar to that of like farmer's dog and Ollie. Yep. And really our kind of niche here is gut health.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

So all of our products have uh proprietary blend of pre-pro and postbiotics. You know, I think, you know, most consumers have heard of probiotics, especially in kind of a lot of those drinks and kombuchas and things that have come out over the years. And, you know, humans have seen the correlation between a healthy gut and a healthy life. And whether that's comfortability, whether that's longevity, or everything in between. That's kind of where this company was started was, you know, feeding what you feed your dog matters. And, you know, kibble, which has been the standard uh for the last, you know, hundred years or so, right? It's essentially cooking something down to a crisp and not retaining any of those nutrients. Yeah. So what the freeze dride's doing and our fresh product is doing is really keeping those nutrients there, adding in things that will help a dog's gut and hopefully lead to just a healthier lifestyle and a longer lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah, that's all us dog owners can ask for is for our dogs to live a little longer. So Gidjoy purely started as direct-to-consumer, is my understanding, but now you're kind of, it seems, expanding into marketplaces like Chewy and into retail. How does that omnichannel shift kind of change operations and complexity as it relates to transportation?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yeah, so every channel has their own complexities, right? So whether we're talking about Amazon, whether you're doing 3P, where you're using their FBA centers, you're having to make sure that you get product to those centers, whether it be parcel LTL or full truckloads, to 1P model, right? Where they're actually buying and you're routing everything through vendor central and you're making sure that you have all the labels and everything on there and you're getting those appointments for LTL, making sure they're loading the correct POs. So, you know, and that's just one channel, right? So, you know, retail, every retailer has different specifications, different routing guides that they're looking for to make sure that they can receive their product ultimately in the right way, right? So you don't blame them for, you know, kind of having all these guidelines and SOPs because you say, yeah, well, you know, not every company has the same system, same M WMS, same receiving processes. So, you know, you try to make sure you do everything you can for every retailer so that they can receive your product accurately and properly. So some retailers are collect where they're sending trucks, so you're worried about routing properly, getting the right cubic measurements. If they're picking up 10 customers from 10 locations in the same day, and you provide a cubic footage that is half of what you're actually providing, you could throw off the entire route for the day.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

So it's really important that you're routing things properly. And then on the prepaid side, making sure that we're working with a a correct broker that is gonna handle a lot of that last mile uh logistics. So coordinating the delivery appointments, okay, making sure that the driver that they're coordinating with is arriving on time and on the right. Yeah, exactly. And especially when we're talking about reefer trucks, right? And making sure that you know the reefer truck is at the correct temperature and that that product's being received properly and that it's coming in at the right time so it doesn't sit on a dock and potentially thaw. So, you know, there's a lot of different complexities, but you know, kind of once you have a good understanding of it and you have the right broker and the right three people, I think that makes your job a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned so obviously I'm I'm on the marketing side of the business. I've been in the industry for five years now, so I've learned a lot, but I'm not the the freight broker, you know, calling the customers and carriers daily. So you mentioned the term, I think you said FBA center or FPA center. Can you explain what that is to me as someone who doesn't know what that is?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, so it's called fulfill fulfilled by Amazon. Oh, right. So Amazon, so when you're working with them as a 3P where you own the product, but they fulfill the product, they're basically acting as a giant 3PL.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yep. Okay, gotcha. That's interesting. It's a whole other side of the business that I wasn't even, you know, you don't even think about the just levels of this industry that exist on the day-to-day. So it's crazy. For sure. You came from Bark, obviously, which is a pretty significant direct-to-consumer operation that's grown, you know, dramatically over the last, I would say, especially over the last 10 to 15 years. I'm an OG fan of the Bark Box, used to get them for my dog back when he was a little bit more Sprite. Um, but it's super cool to see them in Target and Costco now. So were you kind of a part of that transition to retail when you were working there? And if so, like what did that teach you and what did you bring from that to your experience at Get Joy?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

So I when I got added to the retail team, we had already been in several large retailers. Okay. Um already in Target and had quite a presence in Target. Nice. Um, Pecco, PetSmart, and a lot of other like smaller retailers as well. But the business was really exploding. This was kind of towards the tail end of really COVID. And once you got into Target, people wanted the product, and especially Walmart. So Walmart had reached out to us. We were negotiating with them to create uh pretty much really unique lines specific for Walmart, right? And that's kind of what we did for Target and what we did for a couple other retailers. Tractor supply as well was onboarded when I was on the team. And that's really the pitch is like you're not getting evergreen product, you're getting specific lines, seasonal lines potentially, and your own specific Evergreen product that you could always order. It was really exciting to kind of see how that exploded while I was there.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, that's awesome. You touched a little bit on this in in our previous question, but can you touch a little bit more on kind of what your carrier mix looks like? You're using reefers, I assume you're using full truckload or at least LTL for like the freeze-dried product. Is anything coming from overseas and you're utilizing drayage? Are we using rail? I'm just kind of curious like how much you're touching across the modes.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Sure. So nothing international. Uh, we have explored purchasing some raw materials from there, packaging specifically. Yeah. You know, they even with customs, even with tariffs, if you're ordering at a large enough quantity, there is some real savings there.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

You know, uh the some of the manufacturers that we use for packaging here. Obviously, turnaround time is the you know most ideal um, you know, value add there. And quality is obviously good, and and you have a little bit more assurances there versus international. But so that so we're not doing anything international. We do ship some LTL. I try to do as little of that as possible, mostly because you know, the amount of time that it takes to get from one location to another, and you don't know how many times that's being offloaded and into an another distribution center. So, specifically for the ambient product, uh, we do do a little bit of LTL, mostly truckloads, because pretty much anything over about eight pallets is just makes sense to get a full truckload over LTL anyways, cost-wise. And then you have more security and and safety there as well, and you know, timelines are a lot shorter. So we do do that for the ambient product. On the frozen side, frozen LTL doesn't really exist in a way that is economical right now. Even shipping one palette from here to California, so New York to California, it's gonna cost almost as much as just getting a direct truck. So I try to utilize uh reefer box trucks. Um, they are cheaper, and especially with the origin of the tri-state area, we do have so much opportunity here versus other places across the country where you know you you don't have access to these reefer box trucks, especially.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

So that's what we've been kind of doing. And then there are cases where, you know, if I'm picking up from our co-man in large enough quantities, especially over 12 pallets that you know won't fit on a on a box truck, we're getting reefer, regular referral chocolates.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah, nice. Very cool. Kind of speaking about, you know, going across the whole US, it looks like you guys have uh several different production facilities across the U.S. Correct me if I'm wrong, but how are you kind of maintaining product consistency when everything's going at a slightly different you know length of time? Or what are some of the, I guess, like standards that you have in place to just ensure that consistency across the board no matter where it's going?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

So are you referring more to like the production of the product or the distribution of the product?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

I guess I should say the distribution of the product, like getting it to the end consumer.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Totally. So uh we use One3PL right now. Uh they have three locations for us across the US, one in Indianapolis, one in New Jersey, and one in California. Nice. This allows us to have about a 98 to 99% two-day coverage using like home FedEx home delivery or regional carriers. And regionals especially have been important to this business. You know, especially there's certain locations where, like Florida, for example, unless you have a warehouse that's further down south, you weren't getting FedEx home delivery in three days, in two days. It was always three days.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

And when it comes to the reefer product that we're that we're shipping, this frozen product has to have dry ice and the liners, and there's only a certain amount of time before that dry ice sublimates and the product starts to thaw. So two days is really the max. But because of the locations of our facilities, we're able to do it over 50% of our orders are going one day TNT.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

So it's able to kind of help save us on dry ice so we don't have to put as much dry ice in there, and also a better experience for the customer. And even if there is a one-day delay, we're talking about going and delivering on day two versus day three.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah. Give you a little bit of extra insurance on that timeline.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, that makes sense. And then for inbound shipments, when you're manufacturing the product, are you guys sourcing those and managing the transportation of those, or are your suppliers managing the transportation of those?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Uh a little bit of both. So it depends on who we're working with. Yeah. Um, sometimes they will handle the transportation, it's built into the price.

unknown 12:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Other times it is me coordinating the truckload.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

So it looks like you just launched in over 300, over 350 even sprouts locations nationwide, like last month or April-ish time frame. Um massive accomplishment for the organization. Congratulations. What kind of operational prep you know is is involved in a rollout that large and kind of how far in advance were you guys already talking about this and planning for it?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, so it's something that large, inventory is like the main priority. Yeah. Right. So when we are signing an agreement like that, we are essentially dictating to a degree the launch date. Essentially, you gotta have to look at what POs in production, what inventory you have, and what the likely forecast will be for a rollout like that. There's a lot of challenges there, right? You don't always get forecast from the retailer as quickly as you may need it to be able to place a PO to then move forward. So it's a lot of guesswork, unfortunately. And that's kind of where that starts. From there, you're working on EDI setup, right? How are you getting orders transmitted? Making sure it's going through your EDI provider correctly, learning how to use their nuances of their what they need, right? Everybody needs an acknowledgement, but what kind of labeling do they need? Right. Where do you get those labels? Do you generate those labels or does they come through your EDI provider? And then getting a routing guide, right? Those are the things that you want to get done as quickly as possible so that you're ready. The last thing you want to do is send a routing guide to your 3PL right before you send your first PL.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

And they have questions and they, you know, you have a lot of the times you don't have too much time before the retailer might come and pick that up. So you want to try to get everybody kind of as prepared as possible. And even then, there's usually some issues that come through.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Um yeah, I imagine there's always a surprise or two with a launch that big. You can't plan for everything, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

For sure. But as long as you kind of check off those boxes, a lot of the onboarding of new retailers, whether it's a five-store location or a 300 plus store location, a lot of those check boxes are the same. Um, the really the main difference is placing a PO and inventory, uh, depending on the size of the whether you can share specifics or not share specifics.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Do you does GetJoy have plans to work their way into additional retailers in the future, I would imagine?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Or absolutely. So retail is becoming a really large part of what we're trying to do. Obviously, there's a lot of growth on the DDC side of the business. There's a ton of growth on the Amazon side and Chewy side, but retail is really an untapped market. We went from primarily targeting independent pet, which is like your mom and pop local pet shops, right? Maybe small small chains that are all being serviced by national distributors or local distributors, to really focusing on more of a larger retail big box slash grocery. And I think that's really like an untapped market. The grocery side of the business, especially for pet, they're all looking to kind of improve on what their offerings are. And they want a a a not low-end option, right? They're looking for something that, you know, especially in like a sprouts, for example, you know, that is like a certain kind of consumer.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Absolutely. Right. More of the whole consumer.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Exactly. You know, you're probably it's probably rare that you have somebody that's going to shop at Sprouts, it's going to spend the money that they can on sprouts, and then buy a, you know, hundred-pound or a 50-pound bag of dog food that's cost $50, right? Or $80. So, you know, we think that we're really kind of tapping into that market, trying to kind of win these bids and do it through our kind of value prop of gut health, really where we're differentiating. You know, we have competitors that have a lot more sales than we do, that have a lot more relationships than we have, but we've been seeing small and large wins really through primarily of just like our story and the quality of the product. I think any salesperson will tell you that when you have a good product, it's a lot that makes it a lot easier to do their job. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Yeah, absolutely. And and gut health in general, obviously, is just very important generally speaking, but also is, for lack of a better term, trendy in the last five years or whatever. And it's kind of the thing that everybody's talking about when it comes to like health conscious individuals. So it makes complete sense that it would transfer to the dog owners of the world.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Right. And I think well, you know, it's really educating that market. You know, Farmers Dog did uh a really great job of educating the kind of normal dog parent of some of the benefits of fresh food.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

And, you know, that's why they're as big as they are. Yep. And you know, Ollie and Nom Nom and a lot of those other competitors, on the freeze-dried side, there's always been some, you know, large competitors as well that really have a foothold there, but you know, they're not doing the exact same thing that we are, especially focused around gut health. And I think it's really educating the consumer of the signs that their dog are showing them that they think are normal because maybe when they were a kid their dog did that, and you know, they just kind of don't think about it, you know, more than once. So, you know, a dog that's licking their paws, right? A dog that you know has diarrhea multiple times a week, right? That is not normal.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, if it was happening to a human, we'd all be highly concerned. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Exactly. So, you know, and there's a lot of people, and not to any fault of theirs, is you know, poop is like is a very good indicator, right? And a lot of people have fenced in backyards and they don't see what their dog's doing. I grew up that way, you know. I I you know walked around when I was 13 and picked up poop in a backyard, but you know, we never like saw it. Being in New York City and having a dog that you have to walk multiple times a day, you know, you've seen everything. Exactly. So you can kind of correlate back to what did they eat and what is their stomach, you know, not able to handle. Maybe that's cheese, maybe it's peanut butter, maybe it's you know, a fruit, a vegetable, right? Things that are safe for dogs to eat, but doesn't work with your dog. And our food is it kind of eliminates a lot of those factors, also strengthens their gut so that they can eat those things. So if they do get in and eat, you know, you would you want to feed them a piece of cheese or a pup cup, right? For example, you can do that because you know, you've been feeding your eating long enough time that it helps strengthen the gut health.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Out of pure curiosity, where is your largest customer base? I'm curious if it's in a more metropolitan area just because of what you were just saying.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, I would say the northeast is the largest density. Part of that is because we are a Connecticut-based company.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

So I think you know, a lot of word of mouth uh has helped grow the company, especially from the beginning in the Northeast. I also think it it'd be naive not to mention, you know, price point and household medium incomes, right? And uh the Northeast does have that on the higher end. But we have identified markets all across the country that we've been pushing into with these marketing teams, boots on the ground, trying to do some pop-up events in a lot of these cities in the south and in the Midwest and the East and the West Coast, try to kind of expand that user base.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Very interesting. Um, kind of pivoting here a little bit back to the transportation side of things. When you're evaluating a transportation partner, and it sounds like you guys have some good ones just from what you've you know been chatting about. What are some of those non-negotiables you're looking for outside of, you know, they can deliver on time? That's an obvious non-negotiable. But what are other things that you guys are looking for to ensure that they're a true partner in the long haul?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah. So, you know, are we are we also referring to like the brokers themselves that I work with or yeah, just kind of everybody under that carrier umbrella, the brokers and the carriers themselves. For sure. So I think there's like two factors that you start with like right off the bat. Having done it at like a very large scale at Bark and then doing it at the scale at Get Joy, a lot of the core tenants are the same. You're looking for somebody that you trust. So trust meaning trust that, you know, when you schedule a truck with them that they're gonna get it there on time, they're gonna get it to the destination on time. Right. The second part of that is trust with price. You want to make you it's very easy for a broker to build in margin. You don't see what that is, right? That could be, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20, 50. You don't get to see what that is. You're not seeing the bids that they're sending out sometimes. And you know, especially if you don't want to be that in the weeds. I think trust that your broker is going to get you a fair price, yeah. But also not necessarily the lowest price because that doesn't mean that you're gonna get the quality that you want.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, you don't want the cheapest carrier necessarily.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Exactly. Exactly. And you know, sometimes there are cheaper carriers that have great service and that they're highly rated and they're winning every bit they probably bid on because of. Um, so I think you know, trust is just really the main thing. Um, and you know, kind of when you find a broker that, you know, sees the value in your business and knows that, you know, hey, like this, you know, get joy is small now, but you know, we've seen business grow a little bit over the last couple years and they could turn into a hundred million dollar company, and now this business goes from fifteen thousand dollars a week to a hundred thousand dollars a week.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

You know, and it's kind of you know having a partner, like a true partner there. And I'm lucky enough to have found somebody that you know we met when we were at Bark. He was young, he was hungry, and you know, really impressed me and impressed people at Bark as well. And when I ended up moving over, he ended up jobs and you know we connected pretty quickly and things have been very easy since he makes my job a lot easier. He does a lot of the work that I'm sure some brokers don't do.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Uh just communicating appointments and calling and you know calling warehouse managers and you know when something's going wrong like handling those things with very little input for myself. So it's really like having a Church station employee like Tori, for example, right? That, you know, was able to kind of handle those problems and he's able to just do that without me having to worry about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Well I hope he gets to listen to or watch this so he gets these great compliments because that's he knows don't worry. Well yeah you want somebody who's like truly an extension of your team like you said that's like invested in the business invested in the growth of the business because then you can trust them. Absolutely what do you uh know now about building those relationships with carriers, transportation partners, brokers, whoever it might be that you kind of wish you would have known earlier in your career.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

I think there's certain questions that you want to ask.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

You know, everybody can sell you the same story. Obviously an RFP can kind of weed it out a little bit. You really want honesty. Like I said anybody can bid on something at the lowest price that they bid in their system and kind of fool you to a degree. So I think just like knowing the right questions to ask as far as like you know what do they value, right? Are these experienced carriers that they're working with? Do they have issues? What do they do when there is an issue? And how do we work together when inevitably something's gonna go wrong.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Kind of pivoting into my next question, what does that look like when something goes wrong for you guys? You kind of, you know, a lot of your product lives and dies by that on-time delivery. So you know let's say something happens whether in or out of your broker's or your carrier's control. Can you maybe give like an example of you know one of those more on the edge of the worst case situations and kind of what happened and how your team handles that sure I can give you two.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

So you know especially with a reefer truck there are instances where you know it's going to break down potentially on the road and you know they are I would say my experience they're trying to troubleshoot it as much as they can before they let me know. One of the things that I kind of impart on the brokers that I've used in the past is, you know, don't just come to me with the issue. Come to me with some sort of options for a solution.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah or I'm already looking into X, Y, and Z and we can maybe do this. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Exactly. Because I'm gonna lean on their expertise. You know, obviously as the years have gone on I've experienced a lot more different issues that have come up and how to troubleshoot them and what's worked and what hasn't worked.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

But ultimately I'm relying on them to fix that issue. And there are times where you know you have to pay more money to do that. There's times where they're covering that cost. So had some trucks break down, miss appointments. That's where having relationships with your 3PL, having relationships with your co-men, having relationships across the board really help. Yeah. You know, some 3 PLs are really strict on appointment times. You miss it and they're not going to receive you or they're gonna charge you a lot of money to receive you outside of that time frame. So you know kind of building those relationships really helps make that a lot easier. Another example was we were shipping down to Florida for an expo okay our we have a like a 1972 Volkswagen van that is branded like completely for Getjoy. We actually have four of them. So they're very cool retro we get people that come up to us at shows that uh no exaggeration are like putting in offers to buy them uh they grew up in them their uncle had one their parents had one their grandparents had them uh so it's really funny and we're like no let's talk about dog food and they're like don't talk about your Volkswagen so it does bring people to the to the showroom floor it unfortunately doesn't always lead to a dog conversation but that's why it's always nice to meet people on the way down a rock flew off and shattered the windshield. Fortunately safe light doesn't necessarily have that many 72 samba uh windshield parts so yeah they they could have uh you know our broker at the time could have just you know said hey listen we're not gonna charge you for the load or you know they're gonna do the bare minimum they could have gone straight to the book and said you know we're not liable for X1 and Z and like she did the complete opposite. You know she was calling like a madman all around trying to figure out where they can get this replaced custom places show us next week how are we gonna fix this there's glass all over the inside of the interior that had to get addressed and you know after a lot of phone calls like she took care of all of it and you know might not have ended up in the perfect position for the show but it was it all worked out great. It all ended up getting fixed and I never saw a bill for that. So you know I've seen brokers do some really incredible things and gives you a lot of confidence in their ability to service you.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Yeah I love that example that is like true above and beyond because like you said that's they didn't have to do it. They could have just not charged you for the load and apologized profusely but I mean to go to all that length that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

And we're not a million dollars a month Kelsey you know in business right so you know there is definitely an effort versus value yeah calculation that you know is sometimes done and you can't blame them for that. Yeah absolutely so you know it was it was great to see them.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah that's really cool. Um premium pet food category obviously it's getting increasingly popular we've talked a little bit about farmer's dog Ollie some of those other brands we've mentioned that gut health is a massive differentiator for you guys. Does supply chain or the timeliness of the product arriving from the direct to consumer side of things ever become a differentiator enough so to make you stand out from the other products or is that not really a part of the equation in terms of you know differentiators in the market?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah I would say um with scale that can happen.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Right. So you know I haven't you know ordered farmer's dog personally but my assumption is that the size that they are they could leverage way more than three locations across the country and probably almost guarantee one day time in transit to all of their customers if they wanted to now it comes at a cost, you know, fulfillment wise and operationally on the other end. But um I think scale is really what helps provide that differentiation because you're able to leverage that for more facilities for better rates that you could pass on the savings to the customers and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah, absolutely. What's something that you wish brokers that you know haven't worked with a brand like GetJoy before understood better about shipping perishable products um whether we're talking on the D2C D2C side or the retail side what's something that you feel like brokers could perhaps understand a little bit better about these perishable products?

SPEAKER_00 28:27

It's an interesting question.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

And not all brokers of course I'm sure some have worked with brands like they get it. But I'm sure sometimes get cold calls with some interesting questions.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Totally I'd say on the frozen side of the business, you know reefer trucks are not they're not nearly as prevalent okay on the road as ambient I wouldn't have thought of that you just assume a reefer is for refrigerated and frozen. Right. You know I'd say there are doing you know doing certain RFPs you you ask certain questions and you know there's definitely a lot more knowledge around normal LTL and FTL than there is you know reefer FT FTL. So I think more just educating themselves in that space, especially since there is a lot of brands that are coming out with you know frozen products, I think a lot of the cases is that it's the it's a a great way to give you know humans, dogs alike you know more whole food ingredients uh versus like a can, for example, right? I mean the explosion of you know frozen corn and frozen vegetables versus canned vegetables, right? Obviously it's nothing new, but you know you're seeing like that exploded and I'm sure it was no coincidence that you know the amount of reefer trucks that got put on the road around those times exploded. Yeah. Right. Yeah I would really say just more educating themselves on that aspect of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Um and trying to find more and more partners to give more and more flexibility. You know that that's really the key is you know you might have two carriers that are always in that region that are always bidding on the same thing and maybe their service isn't up to you know the standards that the broker would maybe want or the customer would want. So I think really diversifying the options on the reefer side of the business is some where I think some brokers could improve.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah that makes sense. Kind of wrapping it up a little what are you most excited about forgetjoy's future or anything kind of fun coming down the pipeline that you can share or tease even yeah I think you know it's always fun when you come out with a new product.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

So we are formulating for some different differentiation across our product line, you know, without going into too many details, a couple of those products are going to be hopefully very big for us and compete in some large markets that are out there for those products. I think you know where we are today versus where we'll be on June 2nd of 2027, especially in the retail space is going to be very prevalent. I think it's gonna be kind of a domino effect of you know you get into a few large grocery chains, some big box stores, some large dog chains and you're gonna see others want to pick up that product. And you know I think the the the growth curve there especially on the retail side of the business hopefully is more like this than a more you know kind of linear buildup.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah absolutely that's super exciting yeah the Sprouts rollout is so exciting and I'm hoping that in Michigan we get to see get joy in some targets or Whole Foods or Costco's or something in the near future. So probably keeping my eyes out. We're pitching we're pitching love that well thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate all of your insight this was super interesting and just appreciate your time as well. Yeah thank you so much Kelsey I uh my first podcast so this was exciting and I appreciate you having me on yeah absolutely thanks for listening to Inside Freight by Fifth Wheel Freight where we break down the logistics topics that matter to brokers, shippers and carriers. FWF is a third party logistics provider headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan specializing in truckload, LTL, drayage, rail, over dimensional and expedited freight across the U.S. and Canada to learn more, visit FWF.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube