In Their Words: Happy Dirt's Sandi Kronick

Sandi Kronick is the CEO of Happy Dirt, a farmer-and-staff-owned produce distributor based in Durham, North Carolina. Formerly known as Eastern Carolina Organics, Happy Dirt ships an average of 150 pallets of produce per week, the vast majority of which is organic. Since its founding in 2004, the company has been an important player in North Carolina’s emergence as an organic leader, and the state is now ranked number 10 in the nation for organic sales. OPN recently caught up with Sandi to chat about her background in the produce industry, the founding and re-branding of her company, and her thoughts on organic produce trends.

How did you get started in the produce industry?                              

I was always interested in good quality vegetables because I became a vegetarian at age 11, and so learning to cook for me largely meant learning how to work with vegetables. I could have easily ended that experiment within a few weeks or months, but it stuck for about 12 years—it was definitely a part of my identity. I was also a very conscious consumer in terms of values. I intrinsically wanted to buy food from people I could know and trust, and who hopefully had similar environmental values, rather than from corporations who may be solely focused on the bottom line.

As I got older and went to college, I became more educated about organic, and I very coincidentally got a role within my college campus dining program to coordinate local food purchasing for some cafeterias. This was a very happy accident in terms of my career path because it gave me the platform to take professional concepts that I was very interested in in terms of urban planning and design and be able to apply them to personal values like making sure that we were purchasing as much as possible from local farmers in Northeastern Ohio. I essentially coordinated everything, including sales and purchasing, managing a staff who did pickups and deliveries, and farmer relationships in general. The intense work of relationship building was thrilling to me, and the resourcefulness and self-sufficiency that I observed and was able to tap into among Amish farmers made a huge impression on me. 

How did you end up starting Eastern Carolina Organics (now known as Happy Dirt)?

I moved to North Carolina in 2001 and started working with a local nonprofit organization, the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, and part of my role was to work with farmers to develop new markets. In our area, not only was the National Organic Program going into effect, but also the federal tobacco buyout was occurring, so it was an especially critical time to promote organic vegetables as a new, emerging crop for North Carolina farmers to consider. I originally thought we were forming a marketing consultancy—I would set up the sale and help the farmer think through the packaging and figure out the pricing and all that kind of pre-delivery work, and then I expected that I would hop in the farmers’ trucks and introduce them to the buyers, and eventually they would deliver on their own. 

But on the first delivery, I told this one farmer, “Make sure you bring some kind of a receipt book,” because these were the things that tobacco farmers who were exposed to a quota or an auction system their whole life may not have experience with. And from the passenger seat of his truck, I said, “Well, let’s fill out this invoice.” When he said, “Alright, we’re good to go,” I noticed the terms box had not been filled out. And I remember saying, “Well, we definitely need to put terms on here if we want them to pay.”

That was kind of the moment for me that I realized we needed to launch a full distribution company so that we could focus on all these customer-side elements and make more room for the farmers to just focus on their farms. So we launched Eastern Carolina Organics out from under the nonprofit, and suddenly I became an entrepreneur and was driving an 18-foot truck down the highway.

You recently re-branded from Eastern Carolina Organics to Happy Dirt. What was the impetus for the re-branding?

Over the last few years, while we have been proud of how far we have come, we also realized that we’re not done. There are more farmers, more acres, more customers, more dollars to reach. We’ve been engaged in this farmer-focused movement nationally for years, and we realized that we’re not done evolving as leaders in this movement. We’ve been shipping to customers up and down the East Coast, and they’ve always wanted more product from us during North Carolina’s off season. They’d ask, “Why can’t you source from somebody in Georgia?” I laugh when I think that the overly-humble reply of “we don’t work with anyone outside of the Carolinas” actually lasted for 15 years! Because we have every ability to be able to have phenomenal, authentic relationships with farmers beyond that political geographic boundary. 

And so that’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of years. We started testing the theory in 2018 in one-off relationships from one farm or another to one customer or another. And it’s been going really well. So when we launched into Happy Dirt in December of 2019, we really pulled the Band Aid off—our list now reflects a much broader, national availability and our ability to build year-round programs for large retailers.

That level of expansion must be very exciting!

Absolutely! It’s been great because it gives us the opportunity to affirm and then double down on our well-honed core values pertaining to farmers and relationships, and while we’re as committed as ever to Carolina farmers, we’re no longer constrained by state boundaries. Broadening our supply chain also gives us and our customers additional layers of reliability and resiliency. There’s a much greater level of control now where we can orchestrate best products from best farmers for our customers with just a completely different level of security and success.

Looking at your re-branding, there also appears to be a consumer education component to it in terms of bringing awareness to things like pollinators, soil health, etc.

Exactly. The superhero character drawings that we have on our website and packaging highlight this family of rock stars that are either a cover crop, beneficial insect, pollinator, or element, all things that work hand in hand with farmers—who are the ultimate superheroes, of course. We want to be planting seeds of connection to not just where the product is coming from or that it’s organic but also to just how complex it is to grow. It’s of increasing importance that the public appreciates just how critical processes like soil nutrition, microbial biodiversity, etc. are towards producing a great quality product. And Happy Dirt is all about it being positive and fun!

Who are Happy Dirt’s main customers?

We sell an overwhelming majority of our product into retail—mostly grocery stores but also the home delivery groups. And we’re in a couple of fast casual food service environments as well, which has been really rewarding because it opened up doors for grade 2 product sales. We’re able to move a fair amount of product that would’ve been graded out and part of a food waste cycle and is now getting some income for the farmers and is getting eaten.

From your perspective as someone who’s been involved in the organic produce world for a number of years now, are there any trends you’ve noticed that you find interesting or noteworthy?

I’m excited to see some other vegetables getting the kind of red-carpet attention that kale seemed to get for many, many years. So that’s exciting. I don’t know that there’s one hot item that I think will have the same staying power, but it is really great to see enthusiasm around items like radishes that are definitely deserving of some love and attention. 

And I’m just witnessing and celebrating the massive consumer surge in awareness that eating a larger percentage of fresh produce is linked to health and vitality. I hope that is really the new kale—a commitment to eating things that make you feel good and recognizing that wellness and health empowerment literally starts and ends in the produce aisle. 

And so it’s not about what is the new kale, what’s the next single SKU that’s going to generate such buzz, and instead it’s produce in general. I find a lot of hope in knowing how “hip” and mainstream produce has become—I just wish even more of it was organic!