His Banker Called It The Dumbest Business Plan He’d Ever Heard
2 hr 46 min
Tommy Wheeler told his farm credit banker he wanted to grow rice and lose about $250 an acre doing it. The banker called it the dumbest business plan he'd ever heard. Tommy's answer: he was already losing $500 an acre on corn. Tommy spent 27 years in NASCAR without ever being a race fan. He started at Hendrick Motorsports for $12 an hour as a Davidson physics student, was the third employee when Ray Evernham built a Dodge team from scratch in 10 months, and finished as general manager at Roush Fenway. On the side, he and fifth-generation farmer Al Spruill were trying to make a duck club in Oriental, North Carolina pay for itself. A dinner in Stuttgart, Arkansas turned into Tidewater Grain, the first company in more than 100 years to grow Carolina Gold rice at scale in North Carolina. We get into how 3 acres of heirloom seed became a mill, a brand, and a zero-waste business. They sold a whole year of rice in two hours at a food show in January 2020. Then COVID closed every restaurant, so the family hand-packed the crop into Ziploc bags and sold out a second time. Tommy also explains why a hurricane scares him more than a competitor, what Outback Steakhouse has to do with rice breaders, and why contract growers are his insurance policy. Also in this one: a 170-foot water ski wreck in front of his college football coach, telling 300 people they were out of a job, the Blacklands and the start of institutional ag, giving away rice straw bales in a drought, King Ranch's "keys to the ranch," and the challenge coins that get veterans and kids into the duck blind. "The only defense that I believe in business and in agriculture today is offense." Would you have backed Tommy's rice plan? Tell us in the comments. We read them. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www....