S4 Ep21: Save Money When Shopping for Better-for-you Foods: Introducing the Merryfield App featuring Joe Dickson
“If we do our jobs right, at the end of the day, we can play a big role in transforming the grocery store or accelerating the transformation that’s underway to make grocery retail in general, a healthier, cleaner, better for you space. Let’s ignite that transformation and keep it going.” — Joe Dickson
While we want to be as healthy as we can be, the cost of better-for-you products is higher than the mainstream. But what if we can get a big cashback from choosing better-for-you products? Now, that’s something! But is it possible? Can we really get rewarded for rewarding ourselves with healthier, cleaner alternatives?
Merryfield is a rewards app that makes that dream come true! The app offers 5% cashback when you buy from better-for-you brands anywhere, whether online or from your favorite grocery store. From food products, household essentials, and personal care, Merryfield has got you covered! Their latest addition is also something to be delighted with- pet needs! You can redeem your reward points right in the app for free gift cards you can use at Whole Foods, Target, Amazon, Walmart, Sephora, Starbucks, Panera, and more!
Learn more about this life-changing app as Justine sits with Merryfield co-founder, Joe Dickson. Justine and Joe answer controversial questions about the standards of better-for-you products, the problem with misleading labels, creating deeper connections between brands and consumers, and offer business advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. But, transforming the food industry requires more than rewarding consumers to make better choices. Tune in and discover what we can do to ignite the transformation on a larger scale.
Connect with Joe:
Joe Dickson is Co-Founder and Head of Standards & Policy at Merryfield, a rewards app exclusively for better-for-you brands that meet high standards. A leading advocate for natural and organic products as well as organic agriculture and integrity in food labeling for the past two decades, Joe is an expert on clean labels. Before joining Merryfield, Joe spent more than fifteen years at Whole Foods Market, most recently as Director of Quality Standards, where he led the team responsible for developing and maintaining standards for the products sold in its stores as well as developing and maintaining the company’s status as the first national certified organic retailer. His work was integral to the launch of many company standards programs, such as the Premium Body Care standard for personal care products, Eco-Scale standards for cleaning products, strict requirements for organic personal care products, the company’s industry-leading standards for egg production, and the company’s GMO Labeling Policy. Joe has also served as a board member of The Non-GMO Project, the USDA National Organic Standards Board, the Texas Department of Agriculture Organic Industry Advisory Board, and The Organic Center. A graduate of Vassar College, Joe spent many years raising goats and chickens on a small family ranch in Texas before recently relocating to the mountains of Southern Vermont.
Episode Highlights:
01:00 Get Rewarded for Buying Better-For-You Products
04:35 Misleading Brand Labels
11:09 Is Rewards an Effective Reinforcer?
18:11 Creating Deeper Connection Between Brands and Consumers
21:05 Go for It!
24:53 Ignite the Transformation and Keep it Going!
Resources
Merryfield Everyday Rewards
Inspirational Quotes:
05:45 “A lot of people see ‘natural’ and think, this is better than the mainstream, and they're not. Brands are essentially taking advantage of consumers with label claims that are misleading.” -Joe Dickson
07:26 “They allow the use of the word ‘natural’ pretty much on anything that is minimally processed after slaughter… But it doesn't mean anything about the life of the animal before it was processed. ‘Natural’ means something more than just what happened at the slaughterhouse and beyond.” -Joe Dickson
09:35 “One of the challenges that people have is around understanding what they're buying, how to look and what to look for.” -Justine Reichman
10:01 “To pay a little bit more for something, you need to be convinced that it's legitimately a bit better.” -Joe Dickson
20:36 “You have to go down a few dead ends in the fmaze to realize that you're actually on the right path.” -Joe Dickson
20:44 “You’ve got to make some wrong turns and go through a whole series of things to make the right choice.” -Justine Reichman
21:36 “If you think you have a really good idea, go for it!.” -Joe Dickson
25:06 “If we do our jobs right, at the end of the day, we can play a big role in transforming the grocery store or accelerating the transformation that's underway to make grocery retail in general, a healthier, cleaner, better for you space. Let's ignite that transformation and keep it going.” -Joe Dickson
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good afternoon, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm Justine Reichman, your host. Today, I have with me, Joe Dickson, Co-Founder of Merryfield. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Dickson: I just am so excited to be here. Thank you.
Justine Reichman: Thank you for joining me. I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better, and to introduce our community to MerrYfield. I think they're really going to be excited once they learn a little bit more about what Merryfield is. And to that end, can we just jump in? Can you tell everybody what is Merryfield?
Joe Dickson: Yeah, so Merryfield is a Loyalty and Rewards App and platform to help people who want to choose better for you clean label products, get rewarded for buying brands that are truly better and meet higher standards. So in one sense, Merryfield is a collective of about 60 better for you clean label brands, like Applegate, Stonyfield, HealthAide, Kombucha, some organic pioneers, some newer emerging brands. And anytime you buy any product from any of those Merryfield brands, anywhere you shop, you take a picture of your receipt, and you get at least 5% back in rewards on our platform for buying those products from those brands. And the intent is to make it more rewarding to buy better products to help people, better for you products can be a little bit more expensive. And by giving at least 5% cashback, we're helping close that gap a little bit and make the products more affordable, more accessible. We have a strict set of standards. So you know that all of our brands meet strict guidelines on what ingredients can be used, animal welfare standard, seafood sustainability, kind of everything you'd expect out of a better for your brand. And you rack up points by buying from our brands, and you redeem them for gift cards directly within our app, Starbucks, and Whole Foods, REI and Amazon. Brands like that.
Justine Reichman: Looks like we've got a couple other guests joining us.
Joe Dickson: Hey, guys, welcome.
Justine Reichman: They heard that you liked animals, so they thought they joined us. So there's so much that I want to dig into there. First of all, you choose better for you products, you make them more accessible, and you talk about how you choose these products and what makes them important to you. I'd love for you just to talk a little bit about how you choose them, and what makes them in your mind that are for you?
Joe Dickson: Yeah, absolutely. So it starts with standards. Before I started Merryfield, I spent 20 years at Whole Foods, and most of that time as part of the global standards team at Whole Foods that sets policies on what ingredients are banned? What kinds of animal products can get into the store and why? And really, what kinds of products would a consumer expect from a company that promises better products? I drew on that experience, and other experiences I've had working on the organic standards, the non GMO Project standards and programmes like that to create a set of really rigorous guidelines around no artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners or preservatives, no high fructose corn syrup, full GMO transparency, no surprise sources of GMO corn or soy, beauty products that aren't tested on animals that are free of phthalates, parabens and ingredients you wouldn't want to find in your body care products. The same with dietary supplements and household cleaning products, we started with just a firm set of ingredients we absolutely don't allow because they're unsafe, bad for the environment or just unnecessary. Then we look for brands that are pretty widely available. Right now, because we're an app that supports brick and mortar retail purchases, we're looking for brands that are available in a good handful of national retail outlets and ones that have a clear sense of purpose, brands that really have some part of the food system or the beauty products market that they're trying to make a better place in a clearer way, and that they're trying to improve people's lives by providing healthier, cleaner and better products.
Justine Reichman: That's great. And I think it's so important because often, we talk about better free products, and I don't think that people really understand what the standards that people are using to measure what the better free product is.
“A lot of people see ‘natural’ and think, this is better than the mainstream, and they're not. Brands are essentially taking advantage of consumers with label claims that are misleading.” -Joe Dickson
Joe Dickson: It's tough. The better for you is not, I mean, it's used widely in our industry, but it's not really defined natural, doesn't have a clear definition, clean label, doesn't have a clear definition. And so you have consumers who want to buy better for you brands that sometimes don't have their best interests in mind and you are kind of doing whatever they want and using the halo of naturalness or clean label to get away with some stuff. That's another thing that's really drives me looking at brands. There's so many brands right now on the shelves at Walmart, Kroger and Safeway that want to get on the clean label bandwagon, and they do what I call clean washing. They remove one artificial ingredient touted on the label and a really big starburst, but they haven't removed any of the other bad ingredients. They're just sort of making one token small step, and then leaning on that to get way more credit than they deserve. When you go down the deli meat pile, for example, and you see all sorts of natural products for sale, the natural term in that aisle as allowed by the USDA means almost nothing about the life of the animal. I think a lot of people see natural on bacon or turkey breasts, and think, oh, this is better than the mainstream. I'm doing good for animals in the world by buying this product, and they're not. And so when brands are essentially taking advantage of consumers with label claims that are misleading, that riles me up. It's one of the things that drives me to create strong standards to really protect people from that.
Justine Reichman: I'm curious, when you were talking about natural, and you're talking about the FDA regulations, what are they actually allowed to use? When they use the word natural, what does that fall under? So how wide is this claim?
Joe Dickson: So it's a really interesting question without a clear answer. So for food in general, there's no definition. The FDA regulates food labeling, they don't really have much guidance, or thinking, or regulation on how the term gets used. There have been some lawsuits challenging the use of the word natural, and even federal courts have asked the FDA to create a clear definition to make it easier for judges and juries to determine what natural is, and they haven't today.
Justine Reichman: So let me clarify. There is no FDA regulation around the word natural.
“They allow the use of the word ‘natural’ pretty much on anything that is minimally processed after slaughter… But it doesn't mean anything about the life of the animal before it was processed. ‘Natural’ means something more than just what happened at the slaughterhouse and beyond.” -Joe Dickson
Joe Dickson: There is no FDA regulation around the word natural in food, but there is a USDA definition of natural that only applies to animal products. So USDA has short narrow jurisdiction over animal products and food products that have substantial animal ingredients, and it gets really hairsplitting when you look at where the border is. But when you look at the labeling of turkey breast, chicken breast stuff in the meat department, the USDA largely regulates the labeling of those products. And so they allow the use of the word natural pretty much on anything that is minimally processed after slaughter. They usually aren't added synthetic preservatives or plumping agents, or a lot of heavily processed products or synthetic additives. But it doesn't mean anything about the life of the animal before it was processed. So it could have been given antibiotics, or growth hormones, or fed very conventional GMO feed, or lived in any sort of living conditions. I think consumers see the word natural and they think it means something more than just what happened at the slaughterhouse and beyond.
Justine Reichman: Sounds misleading to me.
Joe Dickson: It is. It's very misleading.
Justine Reichman: It sounds a little misleading. So is there anything that you do within your practices when you're putting together your regulations or your standards, so to speak, around the word natural?
Joe Dickson: Yeah. I mean, we shy away from using the word ourselves. And most of the brands we work with have also shied away from it for similar reasons. One, it's poorly defined. Two, it can introduce some legal risk if you're making the claim. So it's not a term that may show up on some products. But outside of natural flavors which have a clear definition, you don't see it too much in our space. With animal products, we know that our consumers expect that the producers had some animal welfare programs in place to refrain from using antibiotics, or growth hormones and species like cattle where that's done. We try to partner with brands, like for example, Nellies are two of the--
Justine Reichman: Sorry.
Joe Dickson: It's just asking what are pet foods. For example, Pete and Gerry's and Nellies is our Certified Humane. Pete and Gerry's is organic. Those are our two egg brands. We look for brands that specifically go above and beyond when it comes to how they treat their animals and feed them.
“One of the challenges that people have is around understanding what they're buying, how to look and what to look for.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I think it's so important, and I think it's really, education is such an important conversation to have. Because I think one of the challenges that people have around understanding what they're buying, and I just don't think they understand what the labeling says, how to look and what to look for.
Joe Dickson: And they don't, you see a new brand in your grocery store and you think, okay, I think it's organic, so it's probably better. But it costs a little bit more, and is it really better value is this sort of intersection of quality and cost. And to pay a little bit more for something, you need to be convinced that it's legitimately a bit better. And so with Murrayfield, we're doing that two ways by making it a little more approachable by giving you rewards for buying it and helping shoppers understand what makes organic preferable and better. Or what does the non GMO Project seal mean when you see it on the label.
“To pay a little bit more for something, you need to be convinced that it's legitimately a bit better.” -Joe Dickson
Justine Reichman: The other question I wanted to just circle back on was the fact that you give people, you make this more accessible for people, I love because it is expensive, and people spend so much money on their paycheck to eat because it's expensive. And eating is the one thing that we need to focus on right now, whether it's because of COVID or just our health and we just need to keep our body strong, and our immunity strong. And so giving people accessibility to healthy food is so important. So one thing I'm really curious about, I don't know if you guys have done the numbers on this, but do you know because of the discounts and the rewards that you give people, how many more people have had access to healthier foods because they've now been able to afford it.
Joe Dickson: That's a really good question. I think because we're so early in our journey, that's a hard question to unpack. We were still building our user base, we just launched our Android version of our app in November, and we're just starting to really put a lot of energy behind building our user base and really studying their shopping patterns over time. That's one of the things I'm really excited about is our ability over time to see, if we're giving you incentives on a given brand, does it increase your purchases of that brand? Can we help you by educating you about organic dairy, and what that means make you a bigger part and a bigger buyer of that category, and is offering you at least 5% back when you buy those products make an impact? We think it does, and we're going to be testing that hypothesis and looking at it over the next several years.
Justine Reichman: I'm excited to see that because our goal is to use Essential Ingredients as a platform so that people can make more informed choices. So it's a natural question, I think for me to ask you, but I do know you guys are early on, you guys are just getting going. And with that said, how long have you guys been around now?
Joe Dickson: We've been around, officially about a year and a half. We launched our first app, we were going to launch in March of 2020. But of course, COVID impacted retail grocery in so many ways. We pulled back a bit, we launched the app in July of 2020 with about 20 inaugural brands. As of right now, I think we've launched our 56th brand on the platform. More exciting ones in the pipeline and a bunch of launches coming in the next week in early January. We've started to welcome bigger and bigger brands into our collective to which is so gratifying to me, brands with the potential for more impact and more access. And for example, Dave's Killer Bread, we welcome to the platform a couple of weeks ago there. Of course, organic, incredibly high standards, incredibly good products, and they're there in Whole Foods, but they're also at Walmart and so many conventional outlets. And I love that sweet spot of quality and access. You can find it no matter where you shop. And using Merryfield, you get at least 5% back when you buy it.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, that's great. And to be able to have access to these brands and learn a little bit more about them, about what you're buying and why they're so good, I think you've got a really good combination.
Joe Dickson: Thank you very much.
Justine Reichman: So you started a year and a half ago. I'm curious, you've made some really great strides in the last year, maybe you can talk to us about some of the three biggest things that happened in this last year.
Joe Dickson: Three biggest things. One, we launched our Android app in November, which is big. It's close to half of smartphone users use Android devices and iPhones, and we wanted to make sure before we put a lot of effort into shouting our story and building our user base that we weren't excluding half of the potential users that are out there. So that was huge for us. I think the biggest thing we've done this year, or one of the most exciting, if not the most exciting, of course, announce the appointment of our Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Zoe Deschanel.
Justine Reichman: Congratulations.
Joe Dickson: She became an amazing part of our team and has helped us in so many ways attract attention, and user base, and helped us think about how we tell the Merrifield story to users. Yeah, she's just been amazing. And then I think the thing I'm most proud about is really the brand collective we've built. The beginning of 2021, we probably had about 30 brands on the platform. We've more than doubled that number and introduced a lot of, I mean, all of our brands are high quality, but the scale and caliber, the brands we've been bringing onto the platform. And the last week, we've launched Barilla Pasta, which is a big one--
Justine Reichman: Big brand.
Joe Dickson: --but with really high standards, really amazing commitments, clean products and low sub brands that are organic, and lentil and legume base, an amazing company that I think everyone has in their grocery store. Wasa Crispbread is part of the same organization. We launched a huge kitchen.
Justine Reichman: I used to go there because I'm from New York.
Joe Dickson: Restaurant in New York.
Justine Reichman: I used to go there because I live nearby. I was a big fan when they first opened.
Joe Dickson: Yeah. I remember going there with some of my team now, in early Merryfield days, like three or four years ago. I've loved their chocolate bars since they hit the market. They've gotten into cookies and crackers, they're absolutely amazing. And then in the next few weeks, we have some brands, I can't announce them yet. Watch our Instagram feed and our app over the next three, four--
Justine Reichman: You can share your Instagram for everyone that's listening and for those watching, if you want to--
Joe Dickson: Our Merryfield Instagram, I'll send it to you so you can share it in the text, but it's @merryfieldxo on Instagram. And then the app is Merryfield, M-E-R-R-Y-F-I-E-L-D, is now in Google Play and the Apple App Store for you to download. It's free for users.
Justine Reichman: That's great. So you've launched the app, you've brought on new talent, you have Zoey Deschanel, you're making great strides. What are you excited about for 2022? What are the big things happening besides the brands you can't share?
Joe Dickson: The brands I can't share, what you're going to be really exciting. And the future brands may have yet to land, but I'm sure I'm excited to continue to build the collective, we're getting into fresh produce a little bit. I'm excited not just because your dogs are watching, but the pet food category is one where there's incredible differentiation between high quality products in the mainstream. We're excited to do some work there. We're also, our initial focus was on brick and mortar retail and paper receipts. You open your Merryfield App, and get your points that way. We're also doing a lot of work to build digital receipts right now on the app. We integrate really well in Target, Walmart and other online retailers, and we're continuing as COVID and just the evolution of retail changes the way that we shop and access products, whether it's curbside pickup, or home delivery from Amazon. We want to make sure we stay ahead of that curve and continue to reward people for buying our products. So lots of exciting stuff is on the horizon there.
Justine Reichman: That is exciting. I'm curious, when you guys first came up with Merryfield to today, has the vision changed?
Joe Dickson: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, startup 101.
Justine Reichman: So I'm curious, can you share with us, was there anything that's changed completely that you never thought you would ever be that you're so enamored with, wow, I can't believe this is where we took it.
Joe Dickson: Yeah. Honestly, in so many different ways. One is when we set out, I met my Founder and CEO, David, back in 2017. We initially thought we wanted to create a sort of digital coupon platform, sort of allow brands to give you $1 or $2 off of a product from a brand that meets high standards and sort of support our brands that way. We did a lot of soul searching over that first year and realized that we needed to do more to make the experience sticky for our users to make it so that you have reasons to open the Merryfield app every time you go to the grocery store, learn about new product lines. And most importantly, get rewarded. Not just for a one off purchase, but for a number of purchases that allow you to work a brand into your routine and your habits and build healthier habits. If you're converting from using white rice to using a lentil or legume based rice like RightRice, it's a new product. And to get it more successfully worked into your weeknight cooking repertoire, you need to try it a bunch of times. And so we switched to a loyalty model where every time you buy anything from any of our brands, you get rewards because we wanted to promote those sort of long term, deeper relationships between our brands and our consumers. That's a big one.
The other thing we've realized and we're just starting to really wrap our minds around how we're going to actualize this is because our users are taking pictures of their receipts or giving us access to their digital receipts. We have a lot of information about what they like and don't like, and how can we leverage the data we have about you, in ways that respect your privacy to personalize your experience, to introduce you to products we think you'll like because of what we know you buy. How can we use your shopping cart patterns to make the experience richer and more personalized for you as our user?
Justine Reichman: I think that's very smart and respectful at the same time.
Joe Dickson: Yeah, thank you.
Justine Reichman: So if you look back on your journey, is there anything that you would have done differently?
“You have to go down a few dead ends in the fmaze to realize that you're actually on the right path.” -Joe Dickson
Joe Dickson: That's a great question. On my Merryfield journey, it's so interesting because it's almost like you have to have these rich conversations, change focus and pivot. If we'd sort of come out of the gate with a fully baked set of ideas, I don't know that we'd be as confident in them as we are. You kind of have to go down a few dead ends and through the maze of it to realize that, yeah, we're actually on the right path.
“You’ve got to make some wrong turns and go through a whole series of things to make the right choice.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I think we all have similar experiences. You gotta make some wrong turns to go through a whole series of things that make the right choice, learn what works and what doesn't work, do the research so you can make the informed choice. So do you have any advice for any young people that want to become an entrepreneur?
Joe Dickson: Wow, that's such a good question too. As someone who was not an entrepreneur, I spent 20 years working for a very big, stable company. I mean, to combine your last few questions, is there anything I wish I'd done differently? My advice to young people interested in entrepreneurship, go for it. There's this tendency to say, to wait until the ideas are more mature, you find the right group of people, or the funding lines up and all these sort of what ifs. If you think you have a really good idea, hustle and find the people to champion it with you and go for it. I don't want to say it's a regret because I love the path that I've taken. But had I known how exhilarating it is to sort of step out, take risks, find a group of like geniuses, like minded, like inspiring people to work with and build a new thing, I would have done it sooner.
“If you think you have a really good idea, go for it!.” -Joe Dickson
Justine Reichman: Yeah. I think that everybody's got a different path too. So the same way, you don't have regrets. Some people find their times, and everybody's got a different time. And there's never, you can't do the wrong thing for the right person or the right thing.
Joe Dickson: Exactly.
Justine Reichman: I put through what I was trying to say.
Joe Dickson: I kind of got it anyway, though. Sort of thing where like, if I change my path 10 years earlier, who knows how my life would have been different. There's all these divergent paths and sort of go ships that go off in different directions and you just can never know where it would--
Justine Reichman: That experience, and the experience at Whole Foods, and all of the infrastructure there to be able to give you what the skill set and the experience to do what you're doing now, maybe you didn't need 20 years of it, but it shaped who you are today.
Joe Dickson: Yeah. And that's absolutely right. What I've learned in that organization from the brands, and the regulators, and the advocacy organizations, and farmers and people I worked with is I cannot emphasize or distill, I mean, it's so vast and was so valuable. And what I love is that I'm using that experience that I gained to, we've created a product, and this is how David, my founder convinced me. The job I was in, it was like, think about the impact that you can have using these way of thinking about standards that you've been doing for so long to create a set of standards and a collective of brands to help not just will food shoppers, but everybody buying groceries who wants to be making better decisions. And that's when you think about whether you're shopping at Walmart, or Kroger, or a military commissary, or a 711, can we create a tool to help meet you wherever you are, and help you make incrementally better decisions, and make it rewarding for you?
Justine Reichman: That is a big goal, and I love it. I think it's brilliant. My goal is to provide this tool so that other people can find resources like yours. So today, I've accomplished what I wanted to do. I got to talk to you and give everyone a new resource to be able to get more, educate them with greater access to healthy food. So that's how I'm defining success today.
Joe Dickson: Well, I think our crossing paths were very successful for both of us. We have such a shared mission around helping people connect the dots and find those resources. And at the end of the day, helping more people have access to better food.
Justine Reichman: I think so. So between the education and the access, your expansion, your plans for expansion on your app, and our plans to help support all these new innovative brands. And then if we can use our platform to connect these new innovative brands and your platform, maybe there's a way to even continue this conversation and bring the two together.
“If we do our jobs right, at the end of the day, we can play a big role in transforming the grocery store or accelerating the transformation that's underway to make grocery retail in general, a healthier, cleaner, better for you space. Let's ignite that transformation and keep it going.” -Joe Dickson
Joe Dickson: Absolutely. And I think in both of our worlds, there's the end game. Of course, I want to keep adding brands and users to Merryfield and help the people to the products and help people understand why they're better. But I think if we do our jobs right, at the end of the day, we can play a really big role in transforming the grocery store or accelerating the transformation that's underway to make grocery retail in general, healthier, cleaner, better for you space. I love that I can go into my rural Texas Walmart right now and find more organic, natural, and clean label products than I ever would have imagined. But let's ignite that transformation and keep it going because that's also how we're gonna conquer the fact that better-for-you products are more expensive. They're going to get cheaper the more we can scale them, the more that those brands can leverage those economies of scale and distribution and slowly come down in price so that they're not much more expensive than the conventional alternative.
Justine Reichman: I think the more we can educate people, and the more there's a greater demand for them, and the more people ask for them, yep, the prices will come down.
Joe Dickson: Absolutely.
Justine Reichman: I think so. I think we're on the same page. We got to get everybody else on the same page. We just got to use our voices to continue this conversation, and it will. Hopefully like the game telephone. Oh, no, that's the change the message there. We don't want them to change the message. To get on our megaphone,
Joe Dickson: Want to get a megaphone?
Justine Reichman: Spread the word, and spread the words. So I'm so glad you joined me. I'm going to try Merryfield myself, and we will share more information about this in our newsletter. And if you have any other information for our guests, make sure to send it on my way. I want to thank you for joining us today, and I want to thank our guests for joining us as well.
Joe Dickson: Justine, thank you for having me on, thank you for setting up this series of conversations with so many different innovative interesting people. I'm honored to be among them. Thank you.
Justine Reichman: Thank you.
