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Kirk Halpern: Restaurants, Redemption Stories, and WINNING

• Carrie Richardson

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In this episode of "What's Important Now," host Carrie Richardson sits down with Kirk Halpern, the visionary behind Farmers and Fishermen Purveyors. Kirk shares his remarkable journey from practicing law to becoming a major player in the meat and seafood industry. With a passion for supporting small farmers and fishermen, Kirk's latest venture aims to deliver the freshest products while making a positive impact on the community. Tune in to hear about his innovative sourcing strategies, redemption stories, and valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Episode Highlights:

  • Kirk's transition from law to the meat and seafood industry
  • The growth and success of Buckhead Beef Company and Halpern's Purveyors
  • The birth of Farmers and Fishermen Purveyors and its mission
  • Innovative sourcing and supply chain strategies for fresh seafood
  • Supporting local businesses and redemption stories
  • Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and understanding J curves in business

Guest Quotes:

  • "I wanted to work and have an impact on small farmers and small fishermen individuals who with love and passion utilize their hands and their heart to grow catch you name it wonderful products and bring them into the marketplace."
  • "Adversity reveals character, and my team showed it."
  • "Your value is your coachability and your work ethic."

Guest Information:


Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com
Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Carrie Richardson:

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Carrie Richardson. I'm a partner at Fox and Crow. And today I am your host for when what's important now. And today I'm asking that question to Kirk Halpern from Farmers and Fishermen Purveyors. Kirk, thank you for joining us today. How did you come up with the name Farmers and Fishermen?

Kirk Halpern:

Carrie, thank you very much. Carrie, I've been in the meat and seafood purveying business as an adult for the last 35 years, but I actually grew up in it since I've been eight years old. I was originally a Duke Law grad. I practiced law for a year and a day, and then in 1989 I go into my father's business, Buckhead Beef Company. At the time, we were a million in 89, and by 99 we grew to$135 million. We had a liquidity event and then unlimited capital, and we grew it even bigger. In 2005, we're 523 million Our company supplied steaks and seafood along the eastern United States. I exited that company and started my next company, which was Halpern's purveyors of steak and seafood. And like Buckhead, we were a fast growth company, year one, 12 million, year two, 74 million. We ended up having a liquidity event in 2015. At that time, we were 405 million dollars. And after the liquidity event, I did my earn out, and then as I was complying with my 18 month non compete, I was trying to think of what I wanted to do next because I wasn't done and what I really landed on is I wanted to work and have an impact on small farmers and small fishermen, individuals who with love and passion. Utilize their hands and their heart to grow, catch, you name it, wonderful products and bring him into the marketplace. We're about farmers and fishermen purveyors, which means we're taking farmer driven, fishermen driven products. bringing it to the marketplace the purveying trade is to restaurants, hotels, country clubs. And then I do have to consumer aspect of my business.

Carrie Richardson:

That's pretty straightforward and congratulations.

Kirk Halpern:

We were really good at getting big. Now I'm chasing perfection. The company I'm chasing, and I'm not chasing anyone in my industry, I'm chasing Gulfstream aeronautics. It doesn't matter what private plane you start off with. Everybody knows Gulfstream is the best. About 2 months ago I had someone say yeah, but wouldn't you rather be a Boeing. And no disrespect to Boeing, but, their wheels are falling off. Doors are being sucked out. I'm chasing being perfect the way Gulfstream is.

Carrie Richardson:

I wish I had anything to compare that to, but I am pretty much a basic economy, whatever is most direct.

Kirk Halpern:

I'm actually up to 2. 135, 000 miles. Because I flew a lot, but again, now with Farmers and Fisherman, what I'm about is I'm staying local. I'm trying to stay direct. I'm keeping the business smaller because I'm chasing trying to be perfect.

Carrie Richardson:

So are you supporting primarily businesses in the Atlanta area?

Kirk Halpern:

Think of me as part of the supply chain. And what I'm having the most fun is my sourcing from a supply chain. I source local and global. And what I'm having fun with is bending that curve. Let me give you an exampLe. A lot of salmon comes out of Chile. what happens is salmon is farmed. in these fjords in Chile flies out of San Diego Airport, lands into Miami on jet. Salmon gets put in a warehouse, then it gets trucked up through the southeast. By time salmon's ready for distribution out of Atlanta, it's 11 or 12 days. I go and I find a salmon farm, which just think of it as floating cages with salmon in it, down in the fjords in the most southern parts of Patagonia. And understand every mile you go further south, it gets more wild and it gets colder. And this one fjord, it's the Kukenwald Fjord. There aren't any roads that lead into it. So you either fly in, fly out. Or boat in or boat out. And this one fjord, salmon farms in that fjord, because you may be doing everything right. but if there is 4 other salmon farms in there, you get too much poop and too little oxygen. So this fjord has only 1.

Carrie Richardson:

And I'm never ordering salmon again. Thank you.

Kirk Halpern:

No. Actually, salmon is great. Salmon is a fish that, The colder the water is, the better. And that's what I went ahead and did, source cold waters. In this fjord, there's two fast paced rivers that feed into the fjord. Fast paced freshwater river adds oxygen to the fjord, makes healthier fish. Also, alkaline level, Which reduces parasites. When this salmon is ready to go to market, there are Boats-think of a tugboat and they put these cages that have the salmon swimming in it and the boat travels up 28 hours salmon still alive. Gets to Chloe island. It gets harvested. It then travels in a imagine a tanker truck that you would have gasoline in it. But instead of it being gasoline, water. So the fish is going through rigging mortars. It goes to a facility that's actually women led and predominantly women workers. Gets fabricated, goes 11 hours by truck, the San Diego airport, but instead of it flying to Miami and going to a warehouse, it's flies direct on the bottom of a Delta airline commercial jet that I've worked out a deal with Delta lands directly in Atlanta. Clear it out of customs at morning, and I then have that product. What that means is I have salmon that I'm delivering it throughout North Georgia and beyond. It's only been out of the water for under 3 days. Similarly, I find I have some folks doing a branzini for me off of the coast of Spain, gets transported to Madrid. Within 8 hours, gets on the bottom of a Delta jet flies to Atlanta. And I got branzini that's out of the water for less than 2 days versus 10 days out. And I'm even doing that as far as a way as getting fish coming out of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea that flies direct out of Narita. But then I'm also finding small fishermen that are going out off of the coast of Georgia off the coast of South Carolina, Florida, I'll buy their entire boat of their catch wire transfer money to them right away. So they have money for the fuel and for the trip and for all that stuff. And so I'm sourcing that as much as possible locally, but when I can work with smaller fishermen, smaller companies. My mission statement for me is to do that because I can really impact. Upstream suppliers lives. And then on the other side of the chain, predominantly supply restaurants that are chef owner operators. In order for them to be successful, especially with all this headwind that's affecting the restaurant industry, it has to be nimble and us at Farmers and Fishermen Purveyors, we are an extremely nimble company. So I'll move real fast and we get a beautiful product at below market price.

Carrie Richardson:

Tell me where we should be going in Atlanta for dinner

Kirk Halpern:

Atlanta has a few Michelin star restaurants. There are great restaurants with great chefs, but there's also some great folks that maybe they don't have formal chef training here. But they got their mother's recipe, they have the love of cooking from their grandparents, and they may be operating out of a food truck. We also do a lot of business with restaurant tours in Nashville and then along the Carolina coast

Carrie Richardson:

I had the privilege of going to the Atlanta food and wine festival as a member of the entrepreneurs organization. One of the members of the organization hosts the event every year and it was very impressive. They had a food and wine dinner that was, I don't even remember how many courses there were and I don't drink. That dinner was really long, the chefs and the sommeliers would come out and explain, here's what we're going to eat. Here's what we're going to drink. Normally you go to a large event like that and the food is very mediocre. That was not the case here. So well done Atlanta.

Kirk Halpern:

Thank you again. We have a great, Restaurant and culinary community, but the truth of the matter is all throughout this country. You want to talk about an industry that folks can come in with no skill set. No, nothing. And then maybe they start out as a dishwasher. And just through battlefield promotions and the love of learning, they then become a line cook. They then become a sous chef. They become a chef. In their growth, they end up meeting somebody that can help them provide some financing and then they're able to open up their own restaurant and then they can become an acclaimed chef and an acclaimed business person. If you go work in the copy room at a law firm, or if you're answering phones at a medical office, there are barriers that make it so you can't necessarily be an attorney, except for in the TV show suits. This is an industry of redemption because you can could have made some mistakes in your late teens and early twenties. You can come out of incarceration and decide you're going to turn your life around and really grow and produce. And you can do that in the restaurant trade. You can do that in the purveying trade. And that's one of the things that's wonderful in our business, that we're able to engage and interact with such wonderful individuals.

Carrie Richardson:

And what was the inspiration then for, this sounds more like a passion project than your previous ventures. Was there somebody in particular that inspired you? how did you decide that this is where you were going to have your final rodeo?

Kirk Halpern:

And I'll share with you the final rodeo. Let me start with you on the 1st rodeo. The 1st rodeo was. When I was a little kid from when I was 8 years old, I used to spend Friday night at my grandfather's condominium. My grandfather was a major player. In the produce business, he was the guy invented putting strawberries and pints and flats and potatoes and cardboard boxes. And Friday night, I'd spend the night at my grandfather poppies, and we'd go in Saturday morning about 3 in the morning. And when I was a little kid, I'm sorting lemons and limes, then I'm sorting potatoes. And then I get to the point where I'm on a truck. Loading up and then I'm the guy holding the clipboard and there was always a sense of accomplishment when sunrises. And you can turn, say, I loaded that truck. I did that. Fast forward 10 years later, I'm at law school. My grandfather passes and by the time he, when he passed, he was no longer the guy. But I watched a stream of men, tough guys. Warehouse men, truck drivers all came in to pay respect to my grandfather and they had streams of tears going down their face because he impacted their lives. They all had a story of how they impacted their lives. But then I'm practicing law and I'm thinking to myself, I'm not really producing anything. Not building anything and there's a movie there's a moment in the movie. Pretty woman, where Richard gear has these glasses and he's. Starting to build a 4 and George comes in and George says, what are you doing? He says. And we don't build anything I want to build so I let that. I concluded my 1st year and I said, you know what, I think I want to go build and I called my dad and asked him if I can jump and join his company and took a pay cut went down to 500 a week and we built and we, it was tough conversation with the wife. Okay. And we ended up building. A big, large company, and then I, we did it again. when I was going through my 18 months contemplating what my next move was, I wanted to have an impact. And there is a farmer, he's in Florence, Alabama, wonderful man. And I saw this man, he was twisting in the wind because in this country, you can do everything right as a farmer. And then all of a sudden, something happens, whether it's a drought, whether it's a reduction in market prices. And every year, it's you're playing all in poker. Because you got a 1st mortgage, a 2nd mortgage, sometimes a 3rd mortgage. And by me doing farmers and fishermen, it really allows me to become the advocate for some of these farmers and fishermen. Tell you 1 other quick story. There's a fellow who I met who has served 10 tours of duty in the military. When you think of the movie Top Gun, you think of this guy. He actually flew fighter jets. He has taken off and landed on 9 of the 12 aircraft carriers. and 2 of those tours was in battle, in Afghanistan, et cetera. all this guy wants to do is to raise oysters off the coast of Georgia. which is 1 of the best things you can do for the environment because 1 oyster. Cleans 55 gallons of water a day. There's nothing better. If you're an environmentalist, man, oysters are the single best thing for the environment. But there's a myriad of regulations, and all the different governmental regulators one guy's telling you should do this. One guy's telling him you should do that. He's got a couple of mortgages on his home and on his business, and he doesn't have a pathway. I haven't bought my 1st bushel of oysters from him yet because I have had success. And I have through that success of build some connections. I'm going to take it as a mission to get the Georgia statutes and enforcements of the statutes proper. So that guys like this can grow their business. There is a lot of passion there and our stories and, it's our website farmers and that's F A R M E R S A N D fishermen, M E N dot com. And we're having a lot of fun doing what we're doing.

Carrie Richardson:

I want to come work for you right now.

Kirk Halpern:

You wouldn't come working for me. You'd come working with me. I am blessed that we have a whole bunch of different awards that we've won. and of all the ones I take the greatest pride of is best places to work. Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta Journal Constitution. When COVID happened and in a single day, I lost 97 percent of my customers because I'm doing business with restaurants. And, Governor Kemp is gonna shut down all the restaurants. He announced that on March 16th, all of my contemporaries, which is a nice way for saying competitors, turned around and they started closing up and they were they were knocking out their people. The vice presidents and the people with"C's" on their titles. They were okay, but the working men and women were getting knocked out. And I was a little bit disheveled because it's like, what am I going to do? Because I knew what was going to happen. And my wife who had sent out a text to some of her friends, because, there were runs in retail and said, hey, if you need food, I'll go to the to the plant and I'll take care of you. And so I pulled in the house and my wife was taking care of 5 or 6 of her friends. I said, okay we're taking care of my wife's friends, but what about the rest of the community? And I came went inside, I took a little, had my little yellow legal pad. And it took me 13 hours, and we drafted out a business model for us to go directly to the consumers. And the next morning, I had a call with all of my employees and I said, look, here's the thing 1, no firing 2, no furloughs 3, no reduction in pay. No reduction in medical and medical coverage, no reduction of hours. And as we grow through this. I'm going to hire the family members of my employees and did that, and in exchange for that, all I ask is, as we're doing home delivery throughout the community that we have to be perfect and my employee partners responded accordingly. Adversity reveals character and my team showed it.

Carrie Richardson:

You had me at redemption story. I've never really worked in the food industry. I have a terrible memory, which made me a terrible server. So I'm not experienced in that space, but I do love the idea of redemption. I, Went through a fairly traumatic childhood. I went to rehab in my thirties and my whole story is a redemption story. So I love that other people are giving opportunities to people like myself, who really did want to get their shit together. And just, it took them a little longer than they would have liked.

Kirk Halpern:

I believe this is a forgiving country. yes, there are some people that are just pure evil. Let's put those folks to the side, but there are other folks that find themselves in situations, whether a series of bad things happened to them, or they made some bad choices. They got addicted to some of the wrong things. It happens, but if somebody does their time. then the way that we have a stronger community and stronger country is that when they are able to work, we provide them an opportunity to work. we judge people. Based on their interactions with us and their performance not something that maybe they made a mistake previously, or we heard that they had done something wrong. And what has helped guide me is the past 11 years. I've been very engaged in the goodwill movement, goodwill stores. Our mission is to put people to work a job, a better job. And a career. and last 8 years, I've been in different positions of leadership. if you believe passionately. About philanthropy, then it's not just what you do in your checkbook. It's what you do in your everyday life and how you work. And that's the way we're trying to run and operate farmers and fishermen purveyors.

Carrie Richardson:

So is that what led to the EY entrepreneur of the year nomination this year? I don't know. It was either that or it was magic tricks that I do. I was very fortunate to be nominated to be a Southeast regional finalists for I will tell you it was an inspiring process for me. If you get 30 politicians in a room together, this is not pretty. And I don't like this. However, you get 30 entrepreneurs and EY did a great selection process. All of them had some passion story. There was a fellow who said, look, I grew up in the projects and this is now my business or, Hey, I fled. My family fled Afghanistan, and this is. My business and honestly, you go to these things and the program may go for a few hours. You're done. You're like saying, wait, we're done. This is so inspirational. I want to keep this thing going. So I was very fortunate to be part of the process and through the process. I met some absolutely amazing folks, whether they were contemporaries, or they were previous winners or judges. It really was a wonderful thing to be part of. It's a wonderful story. For people who are just starting out in the restaurant business or in the purveyor business, what should they keep in mind?

Kirk Halpern:

So for all people I would tell you that your value is your coach ability and your work ethic. Interview people for how coachable are they going to be? And are they going to work hard to the best of their ability. I have several folks that. may be single moms, so they're on a flex schedule. But when they show up to work, they're taking care of business, but we always know that their kids always come first. I would say that it doesn't matter what university you went to, or even if you went to a university, none of that matters. Are you hardworking and are you coachable? Then what I would suggest to entrepreneurs as they're thinking of getting their toe wet, and that is to understand J curves. What a J curve is that business doesn't just go like this. It's not a straight line, you take something up, a level and then you get hit in the face or hit somewhere and you're gonna go down. Now the whole trick is then you're gonna work to take it up and take it to the next level. It may be your cash flow, whatever it is. But the most important thing about a J curve is always know that it's going to be deeper then you think it's going to be and it's going to take longer for it to go up. So you have to when you're executing J curve. So you're whether you're expanding, you're opening, whatever you're doing, it's never going to go the way you want it to go. so just know that you have to have the legs to carry on as you do it. And the corollary to that is reverse is respect to streak. If you're having a good streak, don't stop. Just keep on going. Keep on going. Keep on going. And if you're in a bad streak, you got to do everything to turn around. And if it means that you got to change the color of socks you're wearing. You do whatever you need to do to turn it into a good streak.

Carrie Richardson:

Do you have a personal example of a time where you had to come out of a J curve?

Kirk Halpern:

I'm doing it right now. I in the third and the second, third and fourth week of January. I had my number 1, number 2, number 5 sales representatives all of a sudden feel that there was a better opportunity elsewhere. And 1 left no notice, no, nothing the week before. Valentine's week, which, you know, and now, because everything's on cell phones. She had all the contacts on the chefs, et cetera. And had I failed during Valentine's week, you lose a customer forever. The 1st thing you got to do, and you got to be methodically say, 1st. Let me get in front of every 1 of those customers, which I did. As ownership is leadership, I didn't delegate it out. I got in front of them. I wanted to make sure every customer knew they were important. Then you turn around and you make sure you execute exceptionally well. And then you have to, I don't know if you ever saw the movie Moneyball, the great scene in Moneyball, that is, they lose their top first baseman And Brad Pitt goes and he's talking to all of his top guys, and he says, look, we can't, there isn't going to be a guy we can replace, but what we can do is we can take three imperfect players and then the aggregate now have better results. That's what I ended up doing. I ended up getting some more entry level sales representatives, gave them the proper training and tools. And then we went out and fought for the business. And you go and you do everything you can do, and you do it with a smile and just know that, you're now coaching a team that are comprised of freshmen. As opposed to a senior team. So you have to draw the plays that they can execute.

Carrie Richardson:

As somebody who has managed sales reps for the last 30 years, I understand that completely. Coachability in sales teams is essential. I ran a telemarketing agency, so it's not really a job anyone wants. It's a job that people end up in. Nobody dreams of the glamorous telemarketing job they're going to get on Monday. They just have to pay their rent and you have to understand that when they call you. They come into work with you and it's your job to show them, much like you mentioned your redemption story yes, today you're a telemarketer and yeah, you had a run of bad luck or you maybe had shitty parents or whatever, but you've ended up here and here's where you go from here. Now my example, like I was a telemarketer, now I own a telemarketing company. Once you're done here for two years, any software company in our industry will hire you. Any managed service provider in our industry will hire you. Just put in your two years, work really hard, hit your numbers, and then go wherever you want. We understood that people wouldn't stay forever, but we could make them into significantly better salespeople and extraordinary assets for wherever they were going to go next.

Kirk Halpern:

Carrie, I agree with you completely. If you talk to a business owner, the business owner is going to tell you how critical sales are and how critical sales representatives are. But, I haven't met anyone that's coming out of college that says, man, I majored in sales. They'll say, I majored in marketing or something. Marketing is an expense. A lot of things are expense. A good salesperson is worth their weight in gold. The challenge is a lot of times the people that are the teachers never were doers. So kids that are in school are not necessarily learning the right techniques and don't understand about producing. But here's the thing. Let's say you are a bartender. You're really a salesperson. If you're a server, there is a direct correlation on how great a server is on whether or not they're able to sell. Appetizer sell desserts, make sure that they understand that when they're getting the orders placed in that, you know what? Because this 1 wanted something medium rare. This 1 wants something medium. This 1 wants this. The meal as a communal meal is not going to execute. there are so many life lessons and so many things that can prepare us to be better. Business people in our day everyday activity. If we take that moment, sit back, reflect and say, how could I have done this better?

Carrie Richardson:

I think any entry level role where you have to interact with the public and not necessarily say what you're thinking in any given situation is going to teach you a little bit about what it's going to be like to be an entrepreneur.

Kirk Halpern:

That's right. I find that it's difficult for chefs to be great. Sales people. And where they make the mistake where they make the mess is that when you're the chef, everybody in the kitchen works for you. And then servers who don't work for you, they know that they have to placate you because you'll make their meal cold. You'll do all these different things. So when you say something, everybody says, yes, now you get into the world of sales. The sales process is not done when you just made the sale. Now you got to go back sell it to operations. You have to explain to the person, the credit department, why the account is credit worthy. Then you have to explain to the dispatcher. Why the route needs to be delivered when it is, you need to explain to the buyer why you need this certain cost in order to make this part happen. So the reality is there is a direct line to how good you're going to be based on your ability to sell how well you can sell. There's a direct line to how good of an entrepreneur you're going to be because at the end of the day, you may view yourself as a technician, but you got to now sell to the bank that you need a line of credit. You need to sell that you need the permit, you name it. As long as we're walking on this earth, we're going to be, we're selling in some form or another.

Carrie Richardson:

Oh, I think that's a perfect place to wind down today. Thank you so much for coming and sharing with us and I wish you so much success in this new adventure.

Kirk Halpern:

Carrie, thank you very much. Again, My little plug farmers and fishermen dot com is a way for people to pull us up. We do some home delivery. We'll fly some product out to some folks as well, but the more that you're down in the Southeast. And you're eating and drinking well, hopefully you'll be eating something that came from came from some of our valuable farmers and fishermen that we work with. Carrie, thank you for the opportunity for me to share my story and my worldview.

Carrie Richardson:

Oh, thank you very much for joining us today. That's such a great story.

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Carrie Richardson

Host
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Ian Richardson

Co-host