Marshall Rabil - Building a Pre-Internet DTC Brand

On this episode, we’re joined by Marshall Rabil, CEO of Hubbard Peanut Company (“Hubs”), the Virginia heritage brand that commercialized blister-fried, Super Extra Large peanuts, and became one of the earliest premium mail-order/DTC success stories. 

From Dot & H.J. Hubbard’s 1950s home kitchen to a modern mix of DTC, retail, and private label, Marshall shares how Hubs has maintained a craft feel as they’ve growth over the past ~75 years

With experience as a Whole Foods specialty buyer and a decade leading Hubs’ marketing and partnerships, Marshall unpacks sourcing the top 1–2% of Virginia peanuts, why terroir matters for flavor and texture, and how the team balances premium pricing, seasonality, and channel conflicts without diluting the brand.

By the way, is it me or does Marshall sound a lot like Matthew McConaughey

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Episode Highlights:

🥜 Hubs’ origin story and what “blister-fried” really means
🌱 Terroir: how region, curing, and grade shape flavor and crunch
📈 From catalog era to modern DTC
💸 Holding a premium price
🗓️ Running a heavily seasonal business
🛒 Retail lessons from Marshall’s time as a Whole Foods buyer
🏷️ Private label & co-branded: where it works (and where it conflicts)
⚖️ Margin realities across private label vs. branded vs. DTC
🎨 Visual identity & packaging that drive trial, gifting, and loyalty
👥 Building the team, lessons learned, and the future of the peanut

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Table of Contents:

00:44:03 – Hubs origin story
03:41:01 – Taking over a legacy family business
06:01:14 – The effect of terroir on peanuts
07:30:17 – Extra Large Virginia Peanuts, focusing on the top 1–2%
09:13:24 – Pioneering the blister-fried peanut at scale
11:27:07 – The early days of DTC to today
12:55:01 – Selling peanuts at a premium price point
14:44:11 – Building a heavily seasonal business
17:19:28 – The retail channel, Marshall’s experience as a Whole Foods buyer
20:37:27 – The private label and co-branded business
22:45:27 – Private label vs. branded retail vs. DTC conflicts
24:42:19 – Margin differences between private label, co-branded, branded
27:22:23 – Visual identity and packaging design
29:58:11 – The team
31:37:22 – Learning lessons
33:49:20 – The future of the peanut

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Links:

Hubs Peanuts - https://www.hubspeanuts.com
Follow Marshall on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshall-rabil-83a24a15/
Follow me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/ 

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Transcript

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president and CEO of Hubbard Peanut Company otherwise known as hubs hubs is which is considered by many I think to be the creators of the the blistered fried peanut at commercial scale at least which we're definitely gonna dive into family run business started in 1954 by Dot Hubbard who I believe is Marshall's grandma so yeah definitely excited to get into it just first off for the the listeners and Marshall that aren't as familiar with hubs origin story a bit about the why behind the brand some of the core products you guys offer few places people can get their hands on them and then we'll go from there sure well Adam I really appreciate you having me today I've been looking forward to chatting with you yeah you you mentioned it my my grandmother started our business from her home in Sadley Virginia in 1954 you know she was a teacher and when she was pregnant with my mom you back in back in those days you could not go back to work when you were pregnant and so she um was at home and her father had a little peanut farm and so she was it's just kind of as a hobby was picking peanuts out of the farm and cooking them up and in a unique way and was giving them away to friends she was giving them to her sorority sisters at Christmas and and it just kind of took off from there like a lot of these small businesses do somebody's got a product that somebody's like hey you should sell these so my grandfather H J was a purchasing manager and accountant at our local paper mill and he was kind of worked with her to kind of start the sales process and would take hubs peanuts to the pharmacies and the hardware stores at the time the only game in town was planters which is a great peanut brand that most people know but they what differentiated hubs from planters was that was picking the largest peanuts that she could find and at the time the USDA did not have a grade for these peanuts are called super extra large Virginia type peanuts and like you said she was blister frying them which ultimately means soaking them in hot water and then frying them in oil planters was a dry roast they were using smaller kernels so we believe that that cook process really brings out the crunch and the flavor of the peanuts and so he started selling dime bags of of hubs next to the nickel bags of planters and so because they were twice as big twice as good they commanded twice the price and so that's that's kind of how it all started obviously the brand name came from his his last name was Hubbard so his nickname was hubs and so that was pretty that was an easy way to get into the branding of it but yeah so since then we've we've grown tremendously but it's always been cooked in our home instead of using the same recipe that dad did and we've always paid attention to packaging because we've been a gift quality product so we're primarily a direct consumer brand used as a gift a thank you present a Christmas present a a touch point for customers and clients so the packaging element is also something really important to us and um you know we've got a website it's called Hubs peanuts.com but we also work with a lot of different mom and pop specialty markets around the country we do have a presence in some grocery chains some private label business as well that I guess we'll get into but that's that's kind of how they started and it's it's been really fun to to kind of continue to build their brand and vision into the 2020s families come together that end up building a a successful business it's it's awesome and I guess on that front building family businesses there definitely seems to be I don't know you might see a lot of polarizing views on on both sides about building a business with family what's that experience been like for you and your family what would you say are the pros and cons about building a business with with all your family members ultimately it's it's amazing right to be able to work with your aunts and uncles and mother and sister and cousins to to work on building something but there the yeah the truth is that it is it is hard I remember as a kid in the ace he did discussions around the the the table um listening to them discuss business there's definitely challenges my mom was actually the last CEO and she was in that role for the past 30 years and at at times she also worked with her sister and her brother and um you know they they worked together for a while in the day to day and really the last uh 20 years it's just been me and my mom and the family on the day to day side but all of us there's seven of us in the second generation and the third generation and we're all board members and we're all owners and we have an intentional meeting cadence every quarter where we get together to go over objectives and kind of fill everybody in and get feedback and work together you know obviously when you when you get you have certain goals and you reach those you need new strategic plans and so we all kind of come together um on what that looks like and so it's really been a lot of fun I mean I've worked really closely with my mom more than anyone especially over the last decade and and we've we've had a lot of fun I obviously we we disagree on some things you know but that's that's the same with many but ultimately it's just been an honor and I've really enjoyed working with her and learning from her talking about product development innovation commercialization product positioning all that type of stuff when I when I think about the word terroir I first thing that comes to mind for me is is wine you know partially just cause the area I grew up in right near south of Sonoma Napa Valley I'm curious I've read a bit about talk about really the the uniqueness of Virginia and how it's a great place to grow peanuts and I'm kind of curious how have you found that terawab you know actually really impacts peanut quality and and why why do you feel like Virginia is the ideal place to grow the best peanuts in the world yeah and and I think that's that's great and and I always say Southampton County Surrey Sussex County right here west of of the James River as we are to to peanuts as Napa Valley and Sonoma County is to wine and we really do grow the best peanuts in the world because of the soil and the climate I mean that's that's key to any agricultural product right now peanuts grow and many different states around the US and several different and in 6 7 continents so everywhere in the world can grow peanuts similar to wine they're different varieties and the Virginia type is what we grow here in Georgia they grow more peanuts currently but that's a Georgia runner so the Virginia type peanut flourishes in this sandy soil we're close to the coast they're drought resistant that's one of the things that's amazing about peanuts compared to almonds or some other nuts is they don't require that much water right and they actually put nutrients back into the soil so it's a great cover crop rotational crop for our soybeans corn cotton so peanuts really replenish nutrients in the soil in the sandy soil that we have but they flourish and now we're seeing over 5,000 pounds per acre is pretty standard here and that's that's a really nice bumper crop and that's a they they just really work here in this terroir for sure that makes a lot of sense you guys really only focus on sourcing those super extra large Virginia peanuts which I think I read as about like 1 to 2% of the average crop it isn't a whole lot I'm just from an actual kind of on the ground process standpoint what is that what is your sourcing and filtering process look like yeah so when my grandmother first started she would go to the shellers and Birdsong Peanut who's actually at the Hubs Vine today having having a big lunch which is interesting timing but they were the shellers for planters and she would go to them and say hey I want once we were starting to grow a little bit I want all the peanuts that don't go through the screens so there's different grades of peanuts and so that's what I was saying that they didn't have the the grade from the USDA at the time and she created the super extra large category so we do just source that top 1% from farmers exclusively in the VC region so for us the VC means Virginia North Carolina South Carolina the states don't know that that there are boundaries and state lines it's just really that same coastal plain that soil is really great and so we're working with farmers that contract directly with some shelling partners and so we're essentially buying from anybody that's farming the Virginia type peanut in the VC region so Virginia Carolina's that's that's that's home base for us and that's that's where we're still sourcing and we're proud we're proud of that other other states do grow a Virginia type so you get them in Texas as well but we uh we do like to to focus on our home region yeah yeah the importance of really high quality differentiated soil I think is uh the key to a lot of growing really differentiated products which sounds like you know all about you talked about and we talked about the blistered fried peanut versus that dry roasting and figuring out really how to produce it at scale I'm just curious did it take a while to formulation is the right word but phone in that formulation process and kind of curious what that was like and maybe you can also touch on I think I read that you guys have been one of the keys to really scaling up was this continuous cooker that you guys custom built so yeah tell tell me about all this related commercialization product so it started out I mean we still have some competitors that are doing this just a regular old deep fat fryer like you fry French fries or or chicken tenders or whatever in and then it grew um and my grandfather worked with a local engineer in Southampton County to develop this continuous cooker and so we could have larger batches I mean we still have the same same kitchen it's the same equipment that he developed this is this is the fifth generation of that same equipment so it's nothing out of the box but it it's perfect we've got a series of baskets and the first step is a water blanching bath which kind of seals the membrane of the peanut and that's one of the reasons that they really become so crunchy and that's the blister part and then they're transferred to the oil and it's the same kind of it it mirrors the blancher and then they go through the oil for several minutes and then we salt them and can them and yeah but that really was a community effort in scaling our business we had the continuous cooker but we also were having women around Sedley and helping my my grandmother's friends before we were sending them out to get blanched which meant for there's two types of blanching blanching is removing the skins it's the first process and then the water blanching is part of our cook process but she would work with ladies all over town that would literally hand skin the peanuts and so it's really been a community effort to grow this and scale this which has been pretty cool are they still are they still being hand peeled or what's like as they're definitely not still being hand peeled there are blanchers now that that help with that process got it but it that's how I mean you know it it it certainly uh was a a community effort at first I'm sure yeah I'm sure shifting gears a little bit um I believe at least historically the brand has been primarily a a DDC business um assuming I'm I'm correct on that front what's what have you just I think looking back historically what do you feel like has been key to really building a growing profitable DDC business in in this channel I mean we were DTC since our inception you know before credit cards before FedEx and UPS existed so it it has been kind of remarkable to see and now that's kind of the trend in a lot of these a lot of our industry now because they're they're nicer margins and you're not having to deal with distributors on a lot of that product but I the the key to that has been honestly has been a good product that you build fans that then tell their friends about it and then so word of mouth marketing we never really were investing in marketing for most of our history that was one of the things that I came back to and said hey you know we've got a really great product people love it our brand is is known but if we spend a little more energy and and focus on marketing it I think we can we can grow some of our revenue and and grow our sales and um you become a more profitable and a larger company hire more people to do other things and so yeah it it was have having you gotta have a good product that people like and wanna tell their friends about and that's really been the key for us I mean no real secret sauce there just do do it do it well and yeah have something people love do it well and people will share it on their own I totally get it yeah I believe you guys definitely sell it at a compared to the market at least on the online d to C side of things how do you guys I think about telling your story in the context of really justifying that higher price point so people get the story quickly and and convert and say I'm definitely willing to pay this higher price yeah well I mean it is it is a higher quality product I think right every industry has or especially in food and beverage you've got you've got kind of your conventional and you have your top shelf like we're a top shelf peanut and and that the peanut we source is more expensive the oil that we use is more we're using coconut oil that's more expensive you know we are and we use lithographed metal cans instead of cardboard cans so the cans more expensive we had a lid we have a lid lifter on our can that's the key to the party that's an expense we have to have somebody put that on there but it's part of the experience we put the can in a box we have a gift card that goes in that box and then what you're seeing on the website also includes shipping it to anywhere yes it is a premium product but it is a premium experience for for engaging with our product and enjoying peanuts so um I think quality across the entire brand is key and so you know you it is a kind of you get what you pay for and some things yes they're peanuts but they it's a different experience in the peanuts that you're used to have I mean you see it in wine or beef or any product or crop things that you consume you know there's levels and we're just next level peanut totally no that makes that makes sense I think from what I know at least just doing the research that I did it the business is at least somewhat if not fairly seasonal I imagine that's like you know focused around the holidays and and gifting and what not assuming that I'm on the right track there how do you plan around business that that's fair that's fairly seasonal from an inventory perspective whatever marketing cost you are investing like yeah I'm just curious how you think about building a business that's pretty seasonal yeah and that and that's always really challenging and as we've grown the season has just gotten more challenging and and and more complex and we've had to figure out ways to manage that growth right and so we start our season we start building inventory you know now during the summer for the holidays because fortunately peanuts have a very long shelf life they're high oleic and so they they have a long shelf life so we can start our season a little bit early the thing that's always every single year is really tricky is right now I'm sitting on a warehouse full of inventory that we have not sold it's all based on historical projections and that is super stressful like that that product is not sold it's sitting there we're assuming it will based on history and some efforts but we don't know that it will so it's it's really it's challenging it's not we do we do kind of combat some of the seasonality with the wholesale markets and some of the grocery business that we have which are working on different marketing initiatives to make it more of an everyday gift as opposed to something during the holidays or something that at holiday parties so those are those are things that we're consciously working on to try to figure out how to limit the seasonality but but in every single business and any product fourth quarter is always the busiest because that's when people are spending money and that's when people are giving products or even in clothes and whatever it is experiences like fourth quarter drives our economy you know for the most part but it is challenging um and a little stressful when you walk in the warehouse and you know that that hadn't sold yet and we gotta figure out how to move it and hope that it does but um we we do are conscious of that and um whatever we grow in the off season those seems to exponentially impact the season right so yeah we we we uh we outgrew our space and sadly we needed more warehousing so in 2020 we we bought an old grocery store and converted all the middle aisles and the freezer space into into warehouse and we took other parts of the grocery store and turned it into another packaging line we took the beef department and the meat meat department and the beer cooler and turn that into a production line for our chocolate covered peanuts so as we grew we needed more space and and um we we've invested in that so yeah I mean it's it's tough but it's it seems to be a good problem to have at the moment yeah for sure that the retail channel has seen some solid growth numbers recently and has shown some more promise and I think if I'm wrong earlier in your career pre hubs you were a buyer at Whole Foods assuming I got that right like how is that your experience being on that buyer side how has that shaped your guys'retail strategy now being on the other side yeah and that was one of the reasons I went to work at Whole Foods because I wanted to learn the grocery market and I loved pre this is pre Amazon acquisition and I really loved John Macky's philosophy on conscious capitalism and and how business can be a catalyst for change in the community and and I was totally inspired by what he was building with Whole Foods and I thought this was a great culture for me to learn from and then I could also kind of get an understanding of what it would be like to get into Whole Foods and what some of those channels were like and so I I worked there for a couple of years when I was in Nashville essentially getting a graduate degree in grocery I wasn't I was yes I met had a paycheck but really it was an education and fortunately you know during that time I was able to get our products into Whole Foods South and then I would go to all of the stores and visit them and I would demo I would talk to customers I would say hey have you had hubs peanuts have you tried some hubs come up you know and really actively like boots on the ground like marketing to customers in the stores and I and I found that that type of environment was really helpful cause when you can interact and engage with a customer at a grocery store through demos they build a I think you know we we build connections with people that we know and brands that we know and when you get to meet people and and yes having brand reps do it but when you're at when you're a part of the the brand yourself and you're meeting people or or when I meet people that it's their product I have a different connection with it and so Whole Foods gave me a great opportunity to to learn from them but also then sell our product and then demo in all of the different stores around the south region things changed a little bit with Amazon but ultimately we still have a grocery presence we work with The Fresh Market which is a great store we work with Wegmans Natural Grocers is based out in uh Denver Zoo pans out in Oregon so we'd like to find regional chains that have similar philosophies that we do smaller locally owned mom and pop stores you know that that's kind of our target market right now Wegmans is is a great example of a private label brand and a brand branded product so we we do a private label for them but we also have hubs brand in their stores with some different flavors so that's a really fun one and and then we've got like Orvis Fly Fishing apparel company they've got 68 nine stores and some really cool places around the country and we have a co branded label with them so they we love their their store their their business but they're like us enough to write our our you know our story on the side of the can so that's a really fun partnership and so the different channels give us an opportunity to diversify some of our business but also partner with companies and learn from them and all of those larger companies that we work with ultimately have made us a better company and we've Learned a lot from our partners yeah that's great you mentioned the um the private label stuff that's that's part of what I was curious about and I guess just the first question what is a if you think about what the ideal private label customer looks like well how how would you define that well I would I would say the two that I mentioned are ideal customers Wegmans is an ideal private label customer because they have a brand that people absolutely love and I love their family's business and and I love how they've grown and the intentionality of their stores I think they're the best grocery store in the country and that's not I mean I've I've been to a lot of different stores but I love their philosophy um and how their community oriented um and so we're proud that we're their foods you feel good about brand the only way that you would know that it's a hub's can is there's the key on the can still with our little peanut man but it's the other the other one that I mentioned was Orvis and I love that because it's a co branded story it's like we love your brand you love our brand let's tell each other stories like you do peanuts well well we we we have a great retail market we want to be we want to have your peanuts at our market because they go well on fishing trips or hunting trips or or whatever right and so those are great examples for me of companies that we love to work with but we don't have a lot of pure private label brands Wegmans would be the only one that is really a pure private label some of our other ones I we really like the co branded approach for companies that we respect and want to work with as well yeah when you're doing the the co branded approach in retail do you also have your own just stand alone hub branded ones on the shelf too or are the ones where it's co branded you're just focused on the co branded yeah the co brand ones we just have it's with Orvis and Zupan's are co branded taste unlimited is a local one in Virginia that is is is literally it's a co branded product which is which is great so that made me maybe this question I had was not that applicable because it sounds like you're doing mostly co brand and it sounds like Wegman's maybe the only one where you've got pure pray private label also your own branded one on the shelf so this question may not be all that relevant but I was curious how do you avoid cannibalizing like the Hub's branded product line like do you only offer well I was gonna say do you only offer private label to retailers you don't plan on selling the brand into but clearly you're doing both and in Wegmans or do you not care that as long as the product you know your branded product on the shelf or yeah I'm just curious again it sounds like it's only Wedman's or this is really no I think I mean I think that's a really good question and it's challenging like do we even work with wholesale accounts right or even private label accounts because the the DTC side you know your customers you know who your who know you know you you have direct interaction with them you can you control the margins so it's just it was a strategy in general just to say we're gonna we're gonna open up wholesale channels because you're right how do you how do you keep your brand integrity as a gift and we still we think about that all the time I mean we're um we're in Food Lion's in Virginia which isn't traditionally a market that we would work with but as they've improved I think their offerings of saying hey we want to focus on these these Virginia products you know they're proud of those Virginia products traditionally we wouldn't be in a market like that and then we have we do we get we get some push back from some of the retail stores that are in smaller towns where there's also a food line saying well hey we've been selling these now you can get them there and so that that is that is tough and that's something that we are are very conscious of and think about because I mean a lot of the retail markets are kind of your marketing partners too like you get brand awareness there and we have a 12 ounce can that we sell at that market but but you come to our website and you you have the larger cans that you can use for gifts and we can handle that so if you're a daily a day to day consumer of our product it's great to have those outlets if you like giving our gifts we like to have a little bit of a higher quality package feel and the gift notes and how we how we handle it so it is it is a a a challenge and so we are working um to figure that out every day yeah on the other thing I was curious in the same realm was and now you're talking this comrade and stuff so I was wondering as much as you're comfortable sharing obviously like the margin profile between cause I imagine on the private label side maybe the margin is lower but in this but you don't have to maybe and you know invest in shelf space and marketing programs because it's a retailer selling essentially their own product versus on the Hub's brand and stuff there is some that's some of those added costs but I imagine the actual you know gross margin may be higher but and then I'm curious on that third one where is the co branded one is that do you get more of the benefits of the private label 1 because it's also their brands you don't have to necessarily pay for shelf space as much and and what not if you get what I'm getting at like between those yeah and 3 what does the target marketing profile look like I honestly you know one of the reasons we're not in a lot of grocery stores is I want I don't want to pay those sliding fees and I really have it and we don't do that a lot you're exactly right Wegmans is taking that product in and they're moving it we're not paying that and at the Fresh Market and if you can avoid paying those fees that's what I would 100% right recommend and the direct to consumer piece you obviously are controlling that margin you're not having to go through a distributor now some distributors are more mom and pop type distributors that are only taking us into like we have a one distributor that's a smaller one that takes us into the Wegman stores but some of the larger distributors are really challenging to work with and you get hit with fees that you we take pictures of all of our products as they go on some of these trucks and then they'll claim that they didn't receive the the product and they'll give you chargebacks and some of the way that that large scale distribution works and the way that they budget in fees into their business plan almost feels I'm not gonna say illegal but the way that they're able to like just charge you and assume that you're not gonna go after because you don't wanna go into the portal and spend hours trying to get your money back is really challenging and it leaves it leaves most of us in in the brand in the brand space with a bitter taste on distribution I love the distribute the distribution partners that we have that that help us in some of the smaller accounts the larger ones are really really tough to work with and um I mean we do you do cause you have to and I mean I have these conversations with them it just doesn't seem fair sometimes the way that they're charging you for things that are you know anyway a visual identity packaging design standpoint I think understanding that the current packaging design has has been around for quite a while unless you guys have made some updates more in the more recent years either way the initial visual identity packaging design what you recall were some of the the kind of key variables that were top of mind for the team and maybe another way to look at it depending on if you work with an in house designer agency kind of the the core things that you remember were included in that brief yeah so originally we weren't ever ever worried about how it looked on a shelf because it was a direct consumer product and we only had salted and unsalted peanuts basically from 1954 to the late 90s and then we started to add some flavors and and we got into chocolate covered peanuts and our sweet heat and our honey kissed and and now we have a snack mix and Redskins single or we don't have tons of flavors but we kind of have something for every profile and so kind of our two tone color palette they look really nice if you've get three or four lined up side by side it's a beautiful pop of color and our logo in the middle of a can really becomes you want something recognizable from 6 7 feet away where it draws you in so color choices are really important how what what you have on the front of the can but we've never really designed our packaging with the shelf space in mind as much as just the the overall feel of it to the customer when they receive it and so it's we are conscious of that but we we haven't really designed with the shelf in mind as much yeah a period at some point where it was called the key I'm not sure if that's what you guys call it but it wasn't available and you guys actually like cause you didn't you really didn't want to sacrifice the product quality is that did I read that correctly during during Covid there was a there was a time when we could not get that metal key now that metal key is continuing to get more and more expensive but I do I think that is such a part of our brand identity we did ship but we let people know like we were had to apologize that they did not come with the key and that the next batch did I hated to send those out without it because it really is it's a nice tool like if you get our can like you've got the tool right there you don't have to go look for something to open it and yeah I call it the key to the party you know because it's a to me when you get the can of peanuts and you open the key and pop the lid and you hit the foil and you get that nice hiss it knows you're getting you're getting into a fresh can of peanuts it's like that that almost is as satisfying as the first handful so using that tool really is is critically important to us and that is a it is an expense but it's one we don't we want to continue to have sure totally just from like a team standpoint look like on a daily basis yeah and I've got such a good team and that is the only reason we're able to do what we're doing it's always been a a a very team oriented I told you from from the day that my grandmother had the ladies around town skin and peanuts to now it's been a total team effort and we really have a great team in place I've got um my core leadership team would be our CFO and our COO and then we're we're kind of the ones that are are driving the strategic vision we're actually have just hired a a coach to help us put our next plan in place we've always had our core values as far as we've I think we've always known them right like we've had employees that have our team members that have been with us for their entire careers and now part of the transition from second to third generation is when they retire you gotta hire new folks right well now's a really good time as we've transitioned a lot of folks to define what those core values are so when we do have to hire new folks that we we can go through what those core values are I mean it's always been a about teamwork and attention to detail and quality reliability dependability and being positive really but we're really defining all that right now and so we're working closely with Brian and Nadia who are those two um key people that run our production and our finance side without them I I would not be able to sit here and have this conversation with you today for sure totally yeah awesome having a great support team is is uh make or break oh yeah well yeah Marshall it's definitely clear you've got a a fair amount of wins under your belt a lot of success with this business I think some of the best learning experiences often come from you know failures or times when things didn't go as expected anything that jumps out that maybe took you a while to learn or internalize on that front before say the light bulb went off that could be helpful for some other up and coming well on the the grocery space and the shelf space kind of specifically when I first got into into the sales kind of role the win was getting the new account right like there's a market that I'm thinking of specifically where I was really excited to get in it was a nice market in LA and I knew it was gonna be a perfect fit for us but we didn't really support the sales of the product there I told you I didn't like I didn't like paying for some of these things but you really if you're in a new market where you don't have a lot of fans yet you really have to invest in staying on the shelf the win is not getting into the account the the win is the repeat orders and and then building that brand loyalty that was that was definitely something early on that I Learned that if it's a new market in a new region you really do have to invest and support um or there's thousands of other options and people are gonna walk by and there's no reason that somebody's gonna spend $9 for a can of peanuts next to the one that cost $3 so um that that was a you know a failure on my part early on not knowing how much it was really gonna take to stay on those shelves sometimes but I've I've got lots of of failures and I try a lot of things all the time but just continuing to try and to continue to iterate and be creative and resilient and persistent you know that's persistence in sales too is is key I've got there's some accounts that I've been working on for 10 years and I just got them you know and so you really just have to not be overly ambitious but make sure you're pinging them every once in a while and and staying on top of it I think yeah totally yeah those are super helpful yeah Marshall last last question for you you've been in the CPG space a while both you know fireside now on the brand side obviously with the family business any any specific brands or just trends in general in the CPG space that you've been kind of excited about lately or things you've been tracking at all well yes but I'm what you're not gonna like this answer but I'm very excited about what we as a peanut organization the National Peanut Board is about to do for peanuts okay I think that peanuts have such a great story that is really untold I mean nothing is more American than peanuts really but we we we kind of overlook them and when you look at the environmental benefits the water usage and the health benefits good for your brain good for your heart a study just came out that they can reverse aging they're basically a food for the mind diet and we've got a marketing strategy in place that we are about to launch as an industry that will be a consumer facing product amongst all of all of the different brands in peanuts specifically that I think will be a really exciting time to to tell the story about peanuts so hopefully and this is this is is is planned to launch in 2026 we just had a industry opening and of of what this new brand kind of tagline and what it looks like and I'm just really excited that we as an industry because there's it's very fragmented you've got the growers you've got the shellers you've got the manufacturers and brands but now we're all gonna come together under this peanut concept and stay tuned to that because I really do think that that's gonna be a good story and we're just at the beginning of of a peanut revolution again here in in the country what's when what is there a time timing of when that's gonna come out next year so it yeah it's early 26 I can't tell you a tagline yet or fair enough branding or the colors or any of that but I am excited I think it really is gonna be attractive across the board so looking forward to it definitely keep an eye out for that yeah Marshall this has been awesome really appreciate the time what what's the best place for people to to follow along with you and all your expertise and then what's the best place for people to follow along with the hubs as well yeah I appreciate that Adam our Instagram is in Facebook or for for social perfect is at Hubs peanuts and then our website we just launched a new website last week that I'm excited about it's hubs peanuts.com so would would love for y'all to come and check us out and um shoot me a message awesome sounds good listen great Marshall appreciate the time yeah Adam thanks a lot man appreciate it that's the pod you know that hubs is known for really commercializing that was the margin differences thinking back to those early days of yeah where I think wherever they put a hold on selling product to those are available what is your core