Category: Business Model Innovation

I’m in the midst of a move and travel so this newsletter is a bit off the cuff. Bear with me 🙂

Taco Bell has been testing a subscription service: $10/month for 1 taco every day.

Set aside concerns for subscribers health and the egregious assault on tacos that is Taco Bell, the idea of Tacos-as-a-Service is kinda interesting.

Tacos-as-a-Service is further proof that recurring revenue models are no longer confined to the tech industry.

Salesforce pioneered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) by jumping on the cloud based software trend in its early days. Recurring revenue is now the preferred pricing model for software companies and their investors, but it’s a model that has spread to other types of business from hardware to….tacos.

Recurring revenue pricing models are awesome. They create more predictable revenue, which helps companies plan and scale more predictably than a business model built around one-off transactions. Subscription models mean decreased customer acquisition costs (CAC) which increases the value of that revenue from a company valuation standpoint. And subscription models are great for customers, as would be capital expenses get moved to the income statement. Anything-as-a-Service models also allow for more flexibility from a customer standpoint.

We’ve talked before about how recurring revenue is no longer just for software companies, as all sorts of companies look to build a subscription offering.

But the greatest cautionary tale for the risks of subscription models is now clawing its way out of the (business) graveyard so it’s worth talking about.

Exhibit A: MoviePass

Ever heard of MoviePass? The company started in 2011, in theory to help movie theaters fill otherwise unused seats. This was about the same time Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb were also starting with similar concepts in different categories, all designed to match up unused capacity with additional demand.

MoviePass was a subscription model for moviegoers. Instead of paying $15 each time you want to see a movie, you paid <$20 per month and could see unlimited movies per month. In the years right before the company filed bankruptcy (shocker), the price was ~$7 per month.

As a broke business school student, this was awesome. But of course, it was less awesome for shareholders in MoviePass as it turned out that the model wasn’t sustainable.

The company was subsidizing its customers as MoviePass still had to pay the theater full price for any seat taken by a MoviePass customer. And it turned out that while some customers only went to 1 or 2 movies per month, some customers went to a lot of movies which destroyed the profitability of MoviePass.

After filing bankruptcy, it seemed MoviePass had died until I recently got a message from beyond the grave, an email to previous MoviePass subscribers about the relaunch of the company.

Lets state the obvious: the underlying economics of a subscription offering has to be sustainable.

Duh.

The founder of MoviePass re-acquired the company in bankruptcy court and she is relaunching with a modified business model designed to more specifically match un-utilized capacity in movie theaters to movie goers’ demand, e.g. fill more seats during the less popular show times, and with other parameters around the subscription to maintain profitability.

The MoviePass wikipedia page reads like a horror story of venture-subsidized market growth that never found its own footing.

But with movie theaters struggling in a post-COVID world, maybe a precision version of the MoviePass model will work?

Weird story, valid lesson: building out profitable subscription models isn’t as easy as it looks.

Now let’s talk about a subscription business that should exist but doesn’t…yet. (I have a list of businesses I’m gonna start when I’m tired of agtech and this is one of them.)

The background

I usually go to Jiffy Lube to get the oil changed in my car because it’s less bad than other options.

Jiffy Lube was basically the McDonald’s of oil change:

“In 1979, we created the first drive-through service bay to make oil changes quicker for our customers. We also introduced the first window sticker to help remind you when to get your next oil change. Jiffy Lube also developed a nationwide database, giving you the freedom to visit any Jiffy Lube location with the peace of mind that your service records will travel with you.”

But while Jiffy Lube may have brought some innovation to oil changes, the experience is still terrible.

The problem

Oil changes are inevitably terrible for 3 main reasons:

1. The customer experience is trash.
2. The waiting area is inevitably tiny and gross and smells like dirty old man sweat.
3. Servicemen are either condescending to female customers, or they are shysters to female customers. Or both.

….which is why getting an oil change is one of those chores I put off doing, then hold my nose (almost literally) while doing it.

Oh and if this doesn’t resonate with you, ask your wife/daughter/female friends – chances are very high they get this.

The solution

IMO this market needs an alternative that is built around customer experience as the competitive advantage, where getting an oil change isn’t the worst part of oil change weekends.

The basic concept has two elements:

(1) An oil change franchise that tailors the customer experience to women.

Practically speaking that means:

• Clean waiting area.
• Clean play area for kids.
• Drinkable coffee.
• Clean restrooms (don’t think a billion-dollar business can be built around clean restrooms? I refer you to Buc-ee’s as exhibit A, but more on that another time.)
• Actual customer service. Look I’m not even saying you need Chick-Fil-A level customer service (though what customer doesn’t want that) but the bar is low: no condescending service dudes doing either of the things women know to expect when rolling into any kind of car place, either (1) mansplaining things like the fact that the oil needs changing (yeah I know bro), or (2) unnecessarily upselling additional services.

I’m not saying that getting an oil change has to be as luxurious as a spa day, but I believe there is a not small market of American humans willing to pay for a significantly less bad customer experience than current options in the market.

(2) In a world that values recurring revenue above all other revenue, routine oil changes seem like a business that is ripe for a subscription model. Structurally, we’re talking about a service that is needed on a recurring basis at relatively predictable intervals, making it a textbook example of a product wanting to be subscription-based.

Oil change franchises and movie tickets may not be directly relevant for innovators in livestock, meat and dairy but there are 2 relevant concepts here:

(1) There are still shockingly large underserved ‘niches’ in most markets.

Whether it’s female car owners or Hispanic shoppers in the US, as the pork industry has realized is a significantly underserved market and has taken great strides towards product innovation tailored to that specific segment, there are huge ‘niche’ markets that remain underserved…aka remain an opportunity.

(2) Recurring revenue models can build customer loyalty and increase lifetime customer value….but only if they’re sustainable.

Technology offerings are where subscriptions largely are found today selling into producers and processors, or on the other end of the value chain, D2C meat subscriptions. I don’t know how production or processing could operate a B2B recurring revenue model for a physical product in a way that doesn’t end up like version 1 of MoviePass with unsustainable underlying economics. Can subscription pricing models work at an enterprise level for non-software products? I have to think someone will figure that out eventually.

What’s a non-obvious but highly effective subscription service you’ve seen?

There are only 4 sustainable business models in tech: • ads • selling hardware • selling software/services to consumers • selling software/services to businesses If your favorite tech startup isn’t making money in one of these ways then it isn’t making money, period.

Set aside whether or not this is oversimplified, how would it read if it were about business models in production agriculture?

Today we are building on the idea that lunatic farmers have a high velocity of business model innovation, by looking at some specific examples from a wickedly impressive lunatic farmer, and 1 helpful framework.

Greg Bethard, CEO of High Plains Ponderosa Dairy, recently joined me in a wide-ranging conversation from how he thinks about growth and risk management, to his atypical path to managing a progressive dairy business, to some of the special projects he and his team are excited about. I highly recommend the entire interview, but here are a few particularly interesting pieces of their high velocity dairy business model.

(1) High Plains Ponderosa has partnered with Shell in a methane digester project to turn cow manure into renewable natural gas. This is turning *literal* waste into a new revenue stream while massively improving the GHG emissions profile of the business; instead of that manure emitting methane from lagoons as a liability, it is now an asset generating useful energy. For the magic of mentality, consider Greg’s words:

“We very much believe if we can produce milk and beef at a lower carbon footprint then we’ll have markets available to us that others will not. And that means opportunity. Whether or not you agree politically isn’t the issue, if our consumers want food produced in a certain way and we can do it profitably, then we'd be silly not to do it. We’re trying to find the spot where we can lower our carbon footprint in a way that is profitable for the business and lowers our cost or increases our revenue.”

Whether or not you agree politically isn’t the issue, if our consumers want food produced in a certain way and we can do it profitably, then we’d be silly not to do it. – Greg Bethard 🔥

(2) High Plains Ponderosa has aggressively built out their beef on dairy program, using dairy genetics on their highest quality females to produce replacement heifers and then using beef genetics on the remainder of the herd to produce calves that will perform better in the beef value chain. As Greg said:

“This is about creating a quality stream of high-quality beef that grades really well. What’s different from traditional beef is that we know everything that’s happened to the animal every day of its life, from the time it was conceived until it was harvested. We can tell the story and we can control production practices. Calving in traditional beef production is seasonal but we have the same number of calves born every day, year-round.”

This is a move towards increasing value by expanding the business’s market access:

“I’m not after premiums for these programs, I’m after market access. In today’s ag market, it’s about getting consistent high-quality product so customers want our product. You can’t just build a dairy and hope someone buys your milk, or raise calves and hope someone wants to buy them.”

(3) Greg believes in the superpower of low-cost production and has put people, technology, and systems in place to achieve that goal. Greg expanded on this:

“Dairy is a manufacturing industry. You have to keep your plant full and your factory full and run at capacity. The big diluter is fixed cost for fixed costs like labor and equipment, so you have to get more product out the door to get costs lower. Not getting low-cost by being the cheapest, but rather by getting reasonable productivity in the cows and keeping parlors full.”

‘Low cost is better than high cost’ may seem as generic of a statement as ‘buy low sell high’ at first glance. But, to Greg’s point, there are two flavors of low cost:

1. Low input cost. The objective of the low input cost approach is to minimize expenses. Find the cheapest feedstuffs formulated into the cheapest per ton cost, keep labor expenses low, and avoid new technology that requires a cash outlay. There’s no equation to solve, this is simply about keeping expenses as low as possible, even at the detriment of performance.
2. Low cost of production. The objective of the low-cost production approach is to minimize cost of goods sold. In the case of a dairy, that’s the cost to produce each pound of milk. The equation here is cost of goods = (fixed costs + variable costs) / total production. The producer in single-minded pursuit of low-cost production doesn’t mind increasing expenses when it results in increased yield and/or quality in a way that ultimately either reduces costs or increases revenue.

The words ‘low input cost’ and ‘low cost of production’ may be similar but the philosophies are clearly miles apart, and the business models are miles apart.

So what do we really mean when we say, business model? I like this definition: “A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.”

It’s the whole enchilada. It’s not just the sum of the pieces, it’s how the pieces work together; how the system functions to take dollars invested and spit out more dollars.

The Business Model Canvas is a good framework with 9 building blocks that add up to a business model:

1. Value Propositions
2. Customer Segments
3. Channels
4. Customer Relationships
5. Revenue Streams
6. Key Resources
7. Key Activities
8. Key Partnerships
9. Cost Structure

One reason I love business model innovation is that there’s a ‘sky’s the limit‘ feel to it.

Those 9 blocks can be individually changed, or be combined in new ways….there are so many dimensions along which to innovate, a seemingly limitless set of potential combos. Like giving 10 people the exact same Legos and each person being able to build something unique, and uniquely valuable.

So why do so many business models in production ag not only look the same as one another but the same as their ancestors? Ahh, that’s for another day.

But do you see Greg’s ideas in those building blocks?

• The methane digester project with Shell is both an example of #5 adding a new revenue stream, and #8 key partnerships.
• The beef-on-dairy program is an example of drastically dialing up the value proposition of calves not needed for replacement heifers, so #1.
• And the disciplined approach to low-cost production is obviously #9 in action.

All that to say, my conversation with Greg further reinforced this:

“My hypothesis is that scale is a lagging indicator; velocity of business model innovation is the leading indicator of success.

It seems that the really successful producers are the ones that have a vision of where they are going and how they will get there. There’s no doing it this way because that’s how we’ve done it, there’s no growth for the sake of the growth. There is only relentless learning and improvement. They constantly ask what’s the process that most effectively generates the output. They think in systems that can optimized.

The great producers realize that they aren't selling just a commodity output, they are selling their business model."

Oh, and this discussion so far has just been in thinking about production business models, not about the business models for those who sell products & services TO producers which might also be on the brink of innovation. One recent example is a Swedish company that sells a feed additive to reduce methane that partnered not just with producers, but with all value chain participants (through to the retailer) around a product that can be marketed to meat shoppers who care about low methane emissions.

Is that a scalable model? Depends. If the retailer wants an exclusive product, then the scalability of the model depends on the growth of the retailer. But tbd.

However this is the first example I can think of meat case marketing what’s IN meat, rather than what’s NOT in meat….so that’s definitely intriguing.

What a time to be alive😉

Question for you: who & what are the business model innovations in your space?

Taco Bell has been testing a subscription service: $10/month for 1 taco every day.

Set aside concerns for subscribers health and the egregious assault on tacos that is Taco Bell, the idea of Tacos-as-a-Service is kinda interesting.

Tacos-as-a-Service is proof that recurring revenue models are no longer confined to the tech industry.

Salesforce pioneered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) by jumping on the cloud based software trend in its early days. Recurring revenue is now the preferred pricing model for software companies and their investors, but it’s a model that has spread to other types of business from hardware to….tacos.

Recurring revenue pricing models are awesome. They create more predictable revenue, which helps companies plan and scale more predictably than a business model built around one-off transactions. Recurring revenue means decreased customer acquisition costs (CAC) which increases the value of that revenue from a company valuation standpoint. And recurring revenue is great for customers, as would be capital expenses get moved to the income statement. Anything-as-a-Service models also allow for more flexibility from a customer standpoint.

We don’t see many recurring revenue businesses in agriculture, except for software and (some) hardware. And it makes sense that agriculture is a transaction based industry since inputs like fertilizer, seed, and feed are all physical things that have fixed and variable costs associated with producing 1 more unit of stuff.

But so do tacos.

If Taco Bell (and a growing number of non-digital companies) can build an effective subscription service of a physical good, who’s to say we won’t see…

Feed-as-a-Service?

Genetics-as-a-Service?

Processing-as-a-Service?

What would need to be true for subscription pricing models to be economically sustainable for companies selling physical goods?

Taco Bell said that the subscription service “grew its rewards program by 20%.” I’ll bet you a crunchy taco that there’s a team of Taco Bell pricing analysts who know the precise expected impact on Customer Lifetime Value of each enrollment in a rewards program, all of which factors into the equation of why the subscription pricing model works.

Maybe Taco Bell’s foray into subscription pricing is another PR stunt. Or, maybe this is a sign that subscription pricing is rapidly expanding beyond digital products and we are on the cusp of more business model innovation, even in livestock, meat & dairy.

Now set tacos aside, let’s talk tractors.

John Deere announced the upcoming launch of “a fully autonomous tractor that’s ready for large-scale production.”

“To use the autonomous tractor, farmers only need to transport the machine to a field and configure it for autonomous operation. Using John Deere Operations Center Mobile, they can swipe from left to right to start the machine. While the machine is working the farmer can leave the field to focus on other tasks, while monitoring the machine’s status from their mobile device.

John Deere Operations Center Mobile provides access to live video, images, data and metrics, and allows a farmer to adjust speed, depth and more. In the event of any job quality anomalies or machine health issues, farmers will be notified remotely and can make adjustments to optimize the performance of the machine.”

Much analysis has been done around the implications of this announcement, so all I have to say after watching the range of takes from farmers on ag twitter is this:

The age old skepticism-to-belief curve, aka the adoption curve, closely links to our final thought today.

We’re <2 weeks into the year with potential new food pricing models and potential new farm operating models, yet I received this message:

I am keenly aware that writing publicly means you’ll see many of my hypotheses proven wrong, like ‘Peak Oil by 1950’ level wrong.

Actually the only thing I’m 100% confident in is that I am wildly underestimating the actual change we will see. The gap between Here and There will be significant, whether There is 1, 10, or 100 years from now.

Although it’s true that identifying what is not going to change is important, this is a newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat & dairy. The whole purpose of this newsletter is to spark & attract conversations about emerging trends and how those trends create opportunities.

The gap between Here and There, where emerging trends are still emerging, is where innovative companies, brands, and leaders live…

…as long held assumptions no longer hold, as supply chains reorganize, as tech changes production methods & unlocks new business models, as consumers segment by new values.

I think of it like this: Traders love volatile markets, whether it’s the stock market, livestock market, or any other market. If markets are stable, traders don’t make money. If markets are moving, traders can make money.

Volatility creates opportunity for traders; trends create opportunity for innovators.

And IMHO, the only way to discern the actual high impact emerging trends from the noise is through dogged curiosity.

Photo from Brene Brown’s new book:

Here’s to curiosity & 2022; what a time to be alive 😉