Intro/Outro (00:04): It takes a bit of a blend of art and science to get baking just right and having extra eyes, ears, and hands can make a big difference along the way. That's where Ab Maori, north America comes into play. We are the team behind industrial and artisan bakers that help optimize success. We'll discuss more on this episode of the Oven Light, so let's get going. Flip the switch.

Rick (00:31): Alright everybody, welcome back to the oven light. We've got a great guest today. Some would say he's even like a member of our own family. Our guest today started his business 25 years ago, back in 1989, growing citrus on three acres of land down in Florida without the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides working. Besides his father, Benny, who still to this day walks the grounds of experimental orange groves to stay grounded in the growing process. He's got other family members invested as well. This gentleman's father of two daughters proud uncle. There's your little hint to 10 nieces and nephews. We're talking today with Matt McLean, known in the business world. Is Uncle Matt from Uncle Matt's organic juices. Welcome back to the Oven Light. Uncle Matt, great to have you on the program.

Matt (01:21): Hey, awesome Rick. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Look forward to chatting with you today.

Rick (01:26): I tell you what, we've got a great program, excited. We've got many links and we're going to talk about these things during the program. But let's jump in. We've got this portion of the program called Hot Pan. I usually don't unveil it right away, but sometimes you got to throw the long bomb on first down just to get the game going.

Matt (01:41): Let's do it.

Rick (01:41): Here we go, right as my audio specialist Connor and I we're drinking Uncle Matt's ultimate immune as we're talking. So what's a great way to start your day? Which organic juice would you pair with which bakery item?

Matt (01:58): Okay,

Rick (01:58): Now if you tell me that you're gluten intolerant and you don't eat baked goods, then I mean we might cut this thing short, but I'm sure there's a juice out there that pairs with a donut or something, right?

Matt (02:07): My wife loves bagels. She had a nice gluten-free bagel in there. I think it's made with flax and some other grains. She will pair her favorite is the ultimate defense to pair with that. So that is orange juice with ginger and pineapple with turmeric. So it's got a nice little kick to it. So you've got the sweet orange followed by the ginger and the turmeric kick and it's got some probiotics, so it's a great way to start, goes well with a bagel and green cheese. That's really nice if you're looking for something to do with kind of oatmeal and egg and bacon, just our classic free orange juice with or without pulp, however you like it. I like it with pulp because it's more that's natural. Like you brought it right from the orange. You can't go wrong with an American breakfast and a good glass of just our pulp free or with pulp orange juice.

Rick (03:01): I love it. It sounds fantastic. And I do have to tell you, you brought up bagels. We just won an award. It was a signal award and it's the silver for a recent episode we had on the podcast with a gentleman named Brandon Steiner and maybe you've heard him, maybe you haven't, but he's big in the sports memorabilia world up in New York City and he is the self-avowed creator of the Everything bagel. He said in the seventies he was delivering milk and bagels in the streets of New York and said throw everything on it. And it's on his LinkedIn page. So it's got to be true, right? But really good gentlemen. Yeah,

Matt (03:36): So the Onion, the sesames, all those different, the popping seeds, all those things, everything's in there. Yep,

Rick (03:41): I know they are good bagels. Alright, second question, here we go. You recently renovated or really innovated with some new products. You got into the tea world. I don't know if I can say this but I'm going to say it anyways. Arnold Palmer type drink with the little tea and lemonade. I don't want to get into any kind of legal restrictions.

Matt (03:57): That's right.

Rick (03:58): No trademarks. I know. No trademarks. Great

Matt (04:00): Golfer. We're more like the Happy Gilmore.

Rick (04:01): Right? Okay, I like it. Maybe there's some branding there. So on a hot Florida steamy afternoon, what are you sipping out of those new products that you have?

Matt (04:13): So that half and half is great. We real brew the tea, which is pretty awesome. I've been a juice guy in my life, but I'm a natural tea drinker. I grew up in the south, so I drink a lot of black tea like every day at lunch I'll have unsweet black tea. So it was pretty easy for me to find a good quality. We found it from India. Black ASAM is similar to the variety of like a Valencia orange, it's kind of one of the Cadillac premium varieties. And so we deep steeped that thing for 10 minutes. It's got a nice brown look to it, it's got bold flavor and then we add that to our lemonade. One thing we do really well is an organic lemonade, not from concentrate lemon juice, a nice eureka lemon, a little bit of that squeezed in there and then we add some agave for some sweetness and a little dash of organic stevia.

Matt (05:03): And so it's guilt free, not a lot of calories but plenty of flavor. So I love that half and half my kids now they get really mad if I don't bring it home. So I got to bring the half and half home, but that's a good one. And the other one I really like from our new product lineup is we have a ginger honey lemonade and that one Peruvian ginger. So if you're ever into ginger peruses, got some of the best ginger out there, we do. Then rainforest wildflower honey from Brazil, so organic wildflower honey from Brazil. And then again our not from concentrate lemon, the Eureka lemon, put all that together, throw dash, a little bit of Stevia in there so you don't have to over sweeten it with the honey and it just tastes right. It's kind of got that nice kick to it. If you like bourbon, it's really good with a shot of bourbon.

Rick (05:52): Okay, well we also make yeast that goes into beer, wine and spirits. So we are very active in the bourbon and actually I've got a majority share of the scotch market too. So yeah,

Matt (06:04): There you go.

Rick (06:04): Our ab biotech business. But hey, I want to go in line. If you go back to Peru and visit Machu Picchu and need to find some of those products, I'm willing to go if there's a field trip. So

Matt (06:14): That sounds like it. Something we should have fun and do.

Rick (06:16): Absolutely. I like that. I like that. Alright, so hey holidays approaching right here. We are taping this in mid-November. What do you got planned? Do you have a favorite baking story or maybe are there some holiday traditions that you follow or have you put the Christmas tree lights up? What's the scoop?

Matt (06:35): Oh gosh, I have two teenage daughters and my wife and so every year they want to put it up as soon as Halloween's over the Christmas tree and I'm like, not until I pee some Thanksgiving Turkey in my mouth, dad's just not doing it. I got to, I'm staying true to the season, the holidays and so that's my rule. But this year I think I'm probably giving in, probably going to have to put the tree up a week early just to appease them. They'll be super pumped. But yeah, traditions for us it's cold and flu season, so we're primarily a juice company and orange juice is our number one selling just po free orange juice. And so we get really busy November, December, January, February. Those are our busiest months of the year. So we've been gearing up in Q3 to roll into Q4, make sure we have plenty of capacity at the plant, make sure we have all of our supply in order, thinking about what if scenarios things go wrong, do we have enough bottles, caps, labels, what happens if we don't have the perfect weather and the roads ice over all those things we're taking so we make sure we get product.

Matt (07:46): We we're kind of like Santa by God, you got to have your orange juice through those winter months.

Rick (07:50): You sure do, right?

Matt (07:52): You got to have that around the kitchen table. So we're making sure that that is done and done really well. So that's kind of our main thing. But something new for us this year is going to be we'll do on our pulp free orange juice, we're going to do a holiday label, so you'll see a little Christmas theme with what do we got on there, Reese and candy canes and different holiday colors. It was kind of fun, something we didn't do before. And on the back of that bottle is a, we're going to give like 5,000 bucks away to five different people with some different challenges to do and post on social media. So that'll be something kind of fun and different of course. And hopefully we bring some holiday cheer in the form of cash to some people that win.

Rick (08:34): Fantastic. Well you know what, you talk about all these special things going on. Could you have imagined, all right, we're going to go back to your roots a little bit and we've got a little bit of shared roots too. We both went to the University of Florida during some of the same times. Go Gators. I graduated I think two years before you did, not saying you took two years more, but by the way, go Gators. But did you ever imagine that your world would evolve and here it is, 2024 going into 2025 and this is your world and your uncle Matt of uncle.

Matt (09:04): Yeah, I mean it's kind of wild. So I went to college to get out of agriculture. I grew up in it. I worked long hot days over the summer. My friends were water skiing and surfing and I was out there on a tractor in a hundred degree weather and I'm like, I'm definitely getting out of this. But I look back on it, it was a great experience. I had a lot of valuable lessons of just hard work, perseverance. I ran a small team of four or five young men that I worked with, so it taught me some leadership skills as well. And then just a love for nature and a love for citrus. And so when I went to school, I got a degree in business administration and a minor in economics and I was going to get out and get on the other side of the tractor.

Matt (09:49): I had some opportunities selling business forms and computer software and it just didn't quite feel right. And then I had an opportunity with one of my father's consulting clients and my father was a citrus consultant among other things also being a grower. And one of his clients was German. And this gentleman had contacts with bottlers in Germany and he said, look, I really need someone to help me go around Florida and buy orange juice for me and grapefruit juice and help me ship it to Holland so I can then truck it down and sell it to my friends that own the bottling plants in Germany. And so I'm like, holy cow, what a business. I get to travel to Europe 22 years old, I'm completely all in without it idea

Rick (10:33): And I'm going to Amsterdam. Sure,

Matt (10:36): Right? Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Berlin. I saw the wall before it came down. I mean it was a lot of fun. So we did that for five years and then as fate would have it, one of those German customers of his asked me for organic, he asked me for biologic a grapefruit juice and I said, I don't know what organic is. I came back and that was my entrepreneur moment because there was no organic Tropicana or simply in the marketplace. My family gave me the confidence that we could grow organic because my granddad, when I asked him about it, he said, well that's what we did before pesticides were invented in the forties. I was thin and by God we grew organic and we loved it, but we should go back to a lot of those practices. And so that then just was completed. It was full circle for me, alright, now I got a passion, my granddad did it, we should go back to doing it this way. There's a business opportunity. This was defiant intervention for me. It knew now I had my purpose in life and it wasn't business forms, it wasn't computer software and it wasn't necessarily exporting juice, it was creating a brand. And Uncle Matt's was launched in June of 1999.

Rick (11:48): Well that's what I want to talk a little bit about branding and it's always a tough exercise. What do you call your company or what do you call your products and what's going to resonate with your target consumers? How did you land on Uncle Matt's? Are there some other names that you had out there that Boy, I'm glad we cut that one because this one certainly it makes it feel like I put this bottle on our breakfast table and it's part of the family.

Matt (12:15): So that's a funny story. I came up with some really generic terrible names. In hindsight, my winner was Healthy Farms and it couldn't be more generic, more plain, more blah, more boring. But that's all I could come up with that early ripe age of 27, my sister-in-Law who was in the business when I started Uncle Matt's, we brought her in and she helped do some part-time work. She was a very creative thinker, she was a great writer and did a lot of that for us throughout the years. It came to her and a dream, literally the name Uncle Matts came to her in a dream. She's very spiritual and she said, I believe God told me it should be called Uncle Matts. I'm like, whoa, okay, well that's a lot more than, I mean who am I to argue with message from God?

Rick (13:05): There's your direction right there, right. Pretty easy. I didn't know if she was like, Matt is a very boastful person and it's, Hey, I'm going to name it after myself and I know that's not you.

Matt (13:16): I was definitely not me. I was like, I am not the Ronald McDonald of this company. But it made sense because she said, I felt that because the next generation in organic is about the next generation farming a better way for them. And I was like, man, that really sticks. And that's exactly I had at the time, one niece and one nephew and I said, yeah, that's really the passion that I found when I started talking about organic farming with my grandfather and saw him light up about, hey, this is some things that I've seen over my lifetime. We became more addicted to pesticides, more addicted to single factor analysis and instead of thinking holistically about building a healthy soil planting cover crops using compost and compost teas, seaweed, fish emulsion, things like that that are more natural. We don't need skull and crossbones putting out on our soil and on our leaves and then picking that fruit to be harvested. So it was really my moment of like, wow, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to call it Uncle Mats organic. And then in the beginning it was really hokey and still today sometimes it's a little hokey, but it really, when you hear the story behind it, you go, okay, I have 10 nieces and nephews today and it really is about the next generation in farming for the next generation and leaving it better than what we left before.

Rick (14:39): Well let's keep that same kind of theme of leaving it better and making it better for the next generation. So let's talk about what you guys do really well as well as giving back and you let your employees from I understand, pick a charity of choice quarterly and I think you've got something special going on with the Special Olympics. So can you talk a little bit about that? How did that bubble up and then tell me about the Special Olympics. You've done some pretty cool things with them. I know I've been seeing it on LinkedIn. Yeah, it

Matt (15:07): Was neat. Thank you for that. So I really stole the idea from the Rodale Institute. The Rodale Institute. We were one of the first people that worked with them on their 2 cent campaign and it was 2 cents of every case. They had companies sign up to donate to their not-for-profit and their not-for-profits goes into organic farming and research and Rodale does great work. And so we did that for a couple years and then they discontinued the program about a decade ago and I always liked that concept and I liked the thought about it and I was training for a triathlon here in my local community and I had a gentleman, a young man get out of his car, his van at the bottom of this hill that I was about to climb and he and his dad and another group got out and he had these shirt on, said 1% better. And I noticed the guy was special needs, he was a down syndrome, a young guy, and he got on the bike and he started biking. I was like, wow, I'm going to look that up 1%. I bet that's some kind of foundation. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. This guy, I looked him up and I did the hill once and then went on my way. He did it like seven times

Matt (16:20): Training. He was training for Iron Man, so he wound up being the first kid with Down syndrome to complete an Ironman triathlon. And if you don't know what that is, it's a two point something mile swim, it's 112 mile bike and then you run a dang marathon. I was just doing the little sprint short distances and here this guy would down syndrome. And so I'm like, wow, one of those times where you just felt tugged on your heart and another divine intervention of just I need to do something. And so that was the first charity that I said I got to support him. I put him on the back of our label and so 2 cents of every case for that quarter, I went to Chris Nick and his 1% better foundation. And then from there on we chose other local charities and let the employees start picking who would be a good local charity.

Matt (17:13): And the reason we chose the local, because our donations, while there'll be 10 or 10 or 11,000 bucks, that's not a lot for the American Heart Association or Breast Cancer Foundation national, but for a local guy, that's a lot. And so for Chris's organization it was a lot and it helped him. He is now building a small facility locally where he can have more inclusion for people with special needs to be in athletics and sports, which is pretty cool. That big check we gave him, it's like a six foot check. He took that thing home and he sent me a picture later. His dad sent me a picture later. He has it on his wall in his living room where he watches tv. So he is just sitting on the couch and there's this big check for 10 grand.

Rick (18:00): It's like Happy Gilmore again. There's your second reference today, right?

Matt (18:03): It was so funny and I was just so proud at the same time. That's cool. I mean that's an impact. And so we started that and I think we've been doing it for two and a half years now. It's pretty cool. We've given to all kinds of different local charities from support, homelessness, support, foster care, then the Special Olympics that wound up full circle coming back to the Special Olympics in which that was really impactful for me to see all the things that Special Olympics does in Florida. There's Special Olympics nationwide, and then they have divisions of Special Olympics and we have one in Florida. Huge amount of volunteers, huge amount of athletes. They help with the health and wellness of the athlete, not just with getting them included and helping them in sports. So yeah, that's been great and our employees feel really bought in, invested in that. Our customers tell us too like, Hey, thanks for supporting these charities. We put a little QR code on the back of the bottle. So we always hope that the billionaire that may be buying Uncle Matt's and paying that price for our orange juice, we'll fall in love with that charity and really dive in and give 'em the funds to do even more impact than what we do.

Rick (19:10): That's fantastic. So hey, if you're just tuning in right now, we've got a great guest. We've got Matt McLean who is Uncle Matt from Uncle Matt's organic juices. He's on the program with us and if you've got a question for Matt or you want to keep the conversation going or shoot me an email, you can send it to the oven light@abmaori.com. Alright, we're going to start the second half here and it's appropriate, we're going to talk a little bit about football maybe if that's one of those answers that Matt wants to have. Tell me a great memory. Here's a hot pan question. A great memory from being a gator at the University of Florida back in the early nineties.

Matt (19:46): Oh gosh. I mean Steve Spurrier, right? So I was there from 89 to 93. I mean holy cow. We started winning again, which was pretty awesome. And that felt great because I'd grown up a gator. My granddad was a gator, my dad, my brother, my mom. And there was a lot of pain and suffering as a Gator football fan through the years. Not a lot of success. And then Steve Burg comes along when I'm in college and then after I graduated Urban Meyer. And so with Tim Tebow we won some national titles, which was awesome. So it was great to see success and not just for me, but for my parents and for a lot of other people that went to college there.

Rick (20:26): Absolutely. So, alright, let's talk about other happy places. Do you have any other kind of places that are special when you're out of the groves and you're not like storming through the juice aisle and the milk aisle in the grocery store? Where's a happy place for you?

Matt (20:41): So of course being in Florida, you're surrounded by beaches. We live in central Florida, so either I'm on the lake with my girls doing wake surfing and wake boarding and tubing. We love that. We've got a nice little ski boat and that's something for a good r and r or where my wife and daughters love equestrian, so we're either at the barn and I'm cheering them on and helping tack up the horse or untack the horse. I'm not a rider, but I like to support my little riders or I go to the beach. We love going to the beach too in Florida.

Rick (21:12): Well, let's talk a little bit about horses because your wife just won a great honor. I believe Susan did, and you have to tell me a little bit more, but she was a champion in an equestrian event in Kentucky recently, right?

Matt (21:26): Correct. So first off, my wife is our creative guru and Uncle Matt, she is a VP of marketing.

Rick (21:33): I love VPs of marketing because that's what I am. You know what? I already feel connected to Susan.

Matt (21:39): Oh yeah. I mean I completely married way up and out of my range because my wife is super smart. She's pretty, she's talented, she's the creative genius and then she's got this wonderful passion for horses. She did it growing up and then she stopped and took a 25 year break, had a career, had kids, and now recently, the last two, three years, she's gotten back into horseback riding. She grew up doing dressage, which if you're not familiar with dressage, it's kind of like ballet for horses.

Rick (22:11): I knew you'd pronounce it better than I would, Matt. I knew it. You can't say dressage. I was like, I knew I was in trouble.

Matt (22:19): If you're English, if you're English, you say dressage, right? But I say dressage, right? The Americans say dressage, but it's kind of horse ballet. And she has a wonderful little horse and she has trained this thing up and they have different levels and she's gone from first level to now fourth level with this horse. So more advanced movements. The horse is super sharp and just as talented as she is. And so they've had a wonderful bond. She qualified for regionals and then she went to nationals in Kentucky. If you looked at the whole map, it's probably a thousand plus riders that you have to wither down to get to. She won the darn fourth level dressage nationals. So we have a national champion, congratulations in the family, which is awesome. So really proud of her. It's her outlet of, besides working her tail off her uncle, I always preach to entrepreneurs and people in business, you need to have a work life balance. And that's her balance. That's what she's doing for fun. And it's great. She takes the girls with her and the girls now have goals around trying to ride the horse and win and go. Same way that mom went.

Rick (23:27): Fantastic. It's fun to watch. So I've got a fun question and a little more serious one as we kind of head towards wrapping up our program today. So here's the question. We talked a little bit before we actually started recording the program. It's holiday season. You have a name that sometimes could be pronounced McLean, and there's a guy named John McLean, the movie Diehard. So we're going to put you on the spot. This is Matt McLean talking about John McLean. Is diehard a holiday movie? Is it a Christmas movie or no? What do you think?

Matt (23:59): In my house, I seem to watch more Elf over and over again buddy. The Elf seems to be, we're more into humor than fighting against terrorists. Although I personally loved Die Hard, diehard won through like 26. I think that's how many they made. But yeah, it's probably, we're still more home alone than diehard, but kind of the same concept.

Rick (24:25): All right. I think it holds up, but I call it a holiday movie for sure. Alright, so let's get a little serious here. So you like to give back, you like to look ahead. So what kind of advice do you have maybe for upcoming students? Think back to the early days at the University of Florida on how those students can make an impact later in their careers. What kind of advice do you try to pass along?

Matt (24:49): Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up because we do regularly host University of Florida, MBA students, MBA and entrepreneurship. So they come here and we talk about my time up there and different things that I did and then kind of just some basic advice for 'em, life advice and business advice. I start with, if you're lucky like me, you find something that really is your passion and you have a niche and a competitive advantage with that passion that you can then make a business out. And so go through things that make you smile, things that make it feel like not just a JOB, if you can do that and then look at the market and survey the market and find out that there's a, not a me too in there, but something that you unique and novel that you could have a competitive advantage in. Start there because you will thank yourself every day that you'll get out of bed and you'll be really happy about going to try and climb that mountain and the journey because it's going to be really tough and if it's something you don't really believe in, then it's going to make it even more hard. And so really can you find a passion and turn that into a successful, profitable business? That's fantastic. I would start with that first.

Rick (26:00): I like that there's the old saying something that goes along the lines of, if you like what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And I think there was some truth to that and I'm seeing that just by having this discussion with you today.

Matt (26:13): Yeah, I love it. And then we talk basic business stuff. You need to know how to sell something. You need to learn how to be a good leader because you're going to be the leader of the ship, right? Make sure you got integrity. If you're a crook, there's other places to be. You'd probably be up in DC or something and politician

Rick (26:32): Too soon, too soon, right?

Matt (26:35): Oh, sorry. Wait, wait, wait soon.

Rick (26:37): So let me ask you this, maybe on the way out here. So is there anybody that you kind of pulled inspiration in from business leaders, or it could have been somebody from decades ago or somebody a little more modern age that either read books or maybe listen to podcasts, or you just kind of watch how they manage their careers and businesses that you kind of like,

Matt (26:58): I can never get enough of John Maxwell from a leadership standpoint, right? I always like just reading his latest whatever book it is because it just gives you a refreshing viewpoint on trying to be a more effective leader. That's impactful because you really want to be there to impact your team. You want to be there to impact others. How do you impact customers? And then beyond that, leading your family, leading your community, all of those things, as I've been in for 25 years, you kind of start thinking about what's the next 25 years and it comes down to really how good of a leader you are and what do you do with your time.

Rick (27:37): Hey, as we drink this ultimate immune, I'm telling you what, that's going to give you some more time too. And you certainly feel better about the days ahead.

Matt (27:45): Thank you.

Rick (27:46): But I tell you what, Matt McLean, you've been a great guest today. Thanks so much. Really enjoyed it. Always good talking to a fellow Gator and a very successful business person. So congrats on your success.

Matt (27:56): Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Come see us in Florida and go gators.

Intro/Outro (28:00): Absolutely. So, hey, for now everybody, the switch is off the oven, light is off. Thanks for listening so much. We look forward to seeing you again real soon and have a great rest of your day. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Oven Light. Until next time, when we discuss more about the wonderful world of baking, technology trends and more, the switch is officially off. Goodbye for now. See you next time.