155 | Cultivating Unique Beans for a Unique Community | with Steve Sando

In a few short years, Steve Sando has taken the lowly bean from a neglected legume to superstar-status ingredient. 

Sando’s company, Rancho Gordo, grows, imports, and promotes heirloom and heritage varieties while working directly with consumers and chefs like Thomas Keller, Deborah Madison, Paula Wolfert, and David Kinch. 

Sando’s seed saving, bean production, and marketing efforts provide professional and home chefs with heirloom beans that would otherwise have been lost to history. 

The beans, along with corn, chiles, and tomatoes, have become key ingredients in the new American food revolution centered in Sando’s native San Francisco Bay Area. 

In fact, Sando and Rancho Gordo were named number two on Saveur Magazine’s “The Saveur 100 list for 2008.” 

Bon Appetit magazine declared Sando one of the Hot 10 in the food world of 2009. 

Food + Wine magazine placed Steve “at the forefront of the current seed-saving movement.” 

Steve’s three books are Heirloom Beans (Chronicle, 2008) (with Vanessa Barrington), The Rancho Gordo Bean Growers Guide (Timber 2011) and Supper at Rancho Gordo (Rancho Gordo Books 2014). Heirloom Beans is in its fourth printing. 

Steve Sando came to agriculture not from the 4H club but from the grocery store. As a frustrated home cook, he decided to grow the ingredients he wanted in his kitchen. 

At the forefront of neglected ingredients were beans. Although they are an indigenous product of the Americas, the only beans available commercially to most home cooks were pintos, navys, and kidneys. 

Discovering heirloom beans to be as rich and varied as heirloom tomatoes, Sando almost singlehandedly created the market for these unique and worthwhile legumes. 

He now grows more than 25 varieties in California and works with small indigenous farmers in Mexico to import their heirloom beans for the U.S. market. He lives in Napa and travels frequently throughout the Americas. 

In This Conversation We Discuss: 

[00:00] Intro[00:38] Why beans?[02:15] Rancho Gordo’s first Ecom platform[03:24] Why Steve had to hire[04:07] How Rancho Gordo got its first customers[05:13] The moment Steve took it seriously[06:51] Shopify’s evolution throughout the years[07:19] Email marketing and product-market fit[09:04] You don’t have to be an expert[09:31] Competition based on talent, not budget[10:17] Sponsor: Electric Eye electriceye.io[10:37] Sponsor: Mesa apps.shopify.com/mesa[11:22] Sponsor: Gorgias gorgias.grsm.io/honest[12:49] Sponsor: BeProfit beprofit.co[14:20] Sponsor: Klaviyo klaviyo.com/honest[15:07] Scaling Rancho Gordo’s email list[16:11] What helped RG have consistent growth?[18:27] Having a niche produces passionate people[19:26] Steve’s political leanings actually help[20:59] Business and politics[21:31] Better sales vs better experience[22:59] The reality of lifestyle businesses[23:15] The heirloom difference[23:53] Supply chain difficulties[24:41] Black Friday without discounts?[25:30] Passionate marketplace + good product[25:53] Know and please your customers

Resources:

Continue the New World traditional culture and try out heirloom beans ranchogordo.comConnect with Steve linkedin.com/in/stevesandoScale your business with electriceye.ioDownload Mesa at the Shopify App Store apps.shopify.com/mesaLevel up your customer support gorgias.grsm.io/honestVisit beprofit.co and use code HONEST15 to get an exclusive 15% off any plan for the lifetime of your planGet started with a free account at klaviyo.com/honest

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