Ryland Engelhart’s Philosophy Is Gratitude: Thoughts On Soil, Sacred Commerce & Sustainability

Last week we explored the world of regenerative farming, soil health and biodiversity as critical levers to improve human health. Consolidate food security. Drawdown carbon. And backpedal climate change. Today we expound on that theme with entrepreneur, restauranteur and social activist Ryland Engelhart. Ryland is the ‘Mission Fulfillment Officer' and co-owner of Café Gratitude and Gracias Madre, a family owned group of legendary plant-based restaurants. The epicenter of California vegan cuisine & culture, it's a platform he uses to not only feed people amazing food but to cultivate community — and most importantly, inspire more gratitude into our lives and culture. In addition, Ryland is a speaker and passionate advocate for sacred commerce, community building and regenerative farming principles, which he supports as co-founder of Kiss The Ground, a non-profit that provides education regarding the connection between soil, human, and planetary health. Among its board of advisors are former podcast guests Paul Hawken, Dr. Zach Bush and David Bronner. If you enjoyed those conversations, or last week's exchange with John & Molly Chester, then you're in for a treat with Ryland. This is a conversation about the importance of soil regeneration and its impact on everything from food security and climate change reversal to improving human health. We open with Ryland’s hippie upbringing. How he learned early the philosophy of using business as a force for good — something he calls sacred commerce. We discuss how doing good — adding value to people’s lives — is not only always the right thing to do, but also the best long-term path to profits. We explore the origins, trajectory and intentionality behind his family's incredible group of restaurants — Cafe Gratitude, Gracias Madre and his sister’s Sage Plant-Based Bistros — which together form the cornerstone of plant-based dining in Los Angeles and beyond. Then we dive into the principles of conscious capitalism, the importance of regenerative farming, and the reasons why soil health is such a crucial component in the holistic equation of sustainable human, animal and planetary health. Finally we discuss his various film projects, including his documentaries May I Be Frank* and Kiss The Ground — a must see you might have heard Woody Harrelson recently raving about on Marc Maron’s podcast. But more than anything, this is a conversation about love, awareness, and the power of gratitude as a living, breathing philosophy of life. You can watch it all go down on YouTube.... Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  The principles of sacred commerce, or the basic messages, how can you run a business and also awaken the presence of love? And we do see the positive impact of creating a space that uses language intentionally to uplift people and to remind people of their greatness. You know, that was kind of the biggest spiritual epiphany of my life, was that love is not something found in a person, place, or thing. It's something that is ever-present in our heart, and it's always available as a gift. And it costs nothing to share it.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  And yes, we have lots of things that get in the way of that, but if I was to die tomorrow, what I would want people to know, and what I would hope that I demonstrated to a fair many of the interactions that I've had, would be like, wow, there was love present that was being given freely from that human being.

• 2:07Rich Roll?

  That's Ryland Engelhart, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  Greetings, podcastinarians. What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome. Okay, today's guest is an awesome dude. He's a good friend. His name is Ryland Engelhart, and he is an entrepreneur, an activist, and the Mission Fulfillment Officer and co-owner of Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre, which is a family-owned and operated chain of legendary vegan restaurants in California and beyond that he uses as a platform to inspire more gratitude into our culture. In addition, Ryland is a speaker and a passionate advocate for sacred commerce, community building, and regenerative farming, which he supports

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  as co-founder of Kiss the Ground, which is this incredible nonprofit that provides education regarding the connection between soil, human, and planetary health, and which counts former podcast guests like Paul Hawken, Dr. Zach Bush, and David Bronner amongst its Board of Advisors. So if you enjoyed those conversations, or if you're interested in learning about the implications of soil regeneration on food systems, climate change reversal, and improving human health, then you, my friends, are in for a real treat with Ryland. And it's all coming up in a couple few.

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  Okay, Ryland. This is a really good one. We cover Ryland's hippie upbringing and how he learned early and often the philosophy of using business as a force for good, something he calls sacred commerce, and how doing good, adding value to people's lives, is not only always the right thing to do. But also the path to profits. We discuss the origins, trajectory and intentionality behind his incredible restaurants, Cafe Gratitude, Gracias Madre, and his sister's restaurants, which are called Sage, which together basically form the cornerstone of plant-based dining in Los Angeles. Then we dive into conscious capitalism, the importance of regenerative

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  farming practices, and the reasons why soil health is such a crucial and critical component in everything from human health to sequestering carbon, to redressing climate change, and ensuring biodiversity and food security. Finally, we discuss his various film projects, including his documentaries, May I Be Frank and Kiss the Ground, which is a must-see. You might have heard Woody Harrelson recently raving about on Marc Maron's podcast. But more than anything, this is a conversation about love, it's about awareness and the power of gratitude. So here we go. This is Ryland and me.

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  I think of you as almost like the love child of David Bronner and Zach Bush. With a light dusting of the happy pair twins. Like you've got the conscious capitalism, sacred commerce thing going on, you've got the regenerative agriculture thing going on, and then you leverage these cafes, these restaurants, to amplify this positive vibe that you're putting out into the world. And they serve as kind of these ground zeros, like the locus for all the things that you care about, to cultivate community and provide,

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  expansive wisdom for the world. Like, how do you think about what you do?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Wow. Thank you for that question and for that creation story for me.

• 6:22Rich Roll?

  You could disagree.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  You know, the way that I, the way that, um, one, I just, I've had an incredibly privileged life, um, just in the extraordinary, um, parents, uh, and that I've gotten to work with my parents. Mm-hmm. Um, and I would say that, yeah, really, my, the way I see it is I've had an extraordinarily, um, uh, lucky life and upbringing and opportunity and access to people and things, uh, and information.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  And really, part of my struggle has been, how do I best use, uh, that privilege to be, um, to, to, to serve and to contribute? Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, I would say that the big kind of essence of my life and the crux of my life has really been, uh, how do I be the presence of love such that everyone I come in contact with, they're left with, uh, that love was not, uh, not something that was found, but actually is something that we embody and that we, we offer and we give, that, you know, that was kind of the biggest spiritual epiphany of my life

• 7:52Speaker 01

  was that love is not something found in a person, place, or thing. It's something that is, and we've heard many versions of this before, but it's something that is ever-present in our heart and it's always available as a gift. And it costs nothing to share it. And, yes, we have lots of things that get in the way of that, but as, you know, I think if, if I was to die tomorrow, what I would want people to know and what I would hope that I demonstrated, um...

• 8:28Speaker 01

  To a fair amount of the interactions that I've had would be like, wow, there was, there was love present that was being given freely from that human being.

• 8:38Rich Roll?

  Hmm, so difficult to hold on to.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  So, sliding sands in the fingertips. Oh my God.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  Well, your Twitter, your Twitter bio kind of says it all, right? Your Twitter bio is unconditional love, remembering the unconditional part. That's the hard part, right? The unconditional part?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for that lesson that I, I said and thought and, you know, many, many years ago when I wrote that.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, really, I would say that what Cafe Gratitude, what Kiss the Ground, everything that I'm doing really is how to connect to that brilliance and that spirit of love and then take action guided from that. And I

• 9:35Rich Roll?

  Where does, where does this come from? I mean, this, does this come downstream from amazing parents? Like, where does that sensibility emanate from?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Where many people, I think, had a relationship to specific religions or spiritualities, really what I remember of my upbringing was basically, the, the, the communication was that we were all, we're all cells in one body and that there's this, yeah, that we're, that we're all one. So how do you take action and how do you treat each other and the earth, knowing that where they are, you are there too? So how would you treat?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  How would you be towards them? And so that was, that was like a foundational piece.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  And then, you know, I kind of rebelled and went away from my parents. I tried to become a pro snowboarder for a couple of years in Lake Tahoe and kind of had a, you know, I gotta go figure out my life on my own. And then, you know, my sister got in a situation where she was

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Facing life imprisonment based around a marijuana deal gone bad.

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And I basically had to, I left my life in Lake Tahoe, came to kind of be with her in LA to kind of get her through this moment. And that ended up going, turning into a, we ended up opening a recording studio in North Hollywood. So I had this whole career of like a hip hop, R and B.

• 11:26Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Recording studio.

• 11:27Rich Roll?

  How long ago was this?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  I used to have like a, like a, like a, kind of a Puerto Rican chin strap and like wore FUBU velour jumpsuits.

• 11:36Rich Roll?

  I have a very hard time visualizing that.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  And a, and a major swagger.

• 11:41Rich Roll?

  How long ago was that?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  This was in 2000, 2000, 2000. I was 20, 20, 20, 21, 22 and 23.

• 11:50Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. But at some point you found your way back to the family fold.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Then, then that whole business fell apart and I actually had one, a, a big moment of kind of humility and, and loss because we had built this recording studio. We had three recording studios in North Hollywood and we were totally hip to the scene of, you know, urban hip hop music and had a lot of artists that, you know, you know, the Rough Riders, you know, like Jada KISS was in the studio, Ashanti was in the studio, B2K back in the day, you know, they were, so it was like this big moment. And then literally we lost everything. We had to sell our house that we had bought and I ended up being like the host at Follow Your Heart in Canoga Park. And I remember the first time, one of the

• 12:35Speaker 01

  celebrities, this woman named Janay, who's like a budding R and B celebrity, like came in to Follow Your Heart. And I was like, the, thank you for choosing Follow Your Heart, Israel. And, and she knew me as this young studio entrepreneur from a year before and just like the dying to my pride of.

• 12:55Rich Roll?

  What happened? You just got upside down on it?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we basically took a huge, we took a huge loan, owner financing for the building. We took a huge loan on the equipment. It was like $500,000 worth of equipment. Our monthly nut was like $40,000. And, you know, when Nabster took, you know, the internet kind of media sharing, music sharing became a thing, budgets went really went. And so there was no, you could pretty much record something in a studio at home versus needing a big live room and this kind of thing. So that whole thing fell apart. And my sister went into a state of depression. I had to get a job. And Follow Your Heart, I was always into health food, organic food.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  For people that are listening, Follow Your Heart is like, super old school, like the OG, like vegan, macrobiotic restaurant slash grocery store, like, deep in the valley. It's still there. I ate there recently. I love it. It's great.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Been there since the 70s. Still has like, the wood panel flooring.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  It looks exactly like it did back in the day. It has that aesthetic.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, they were selling avocado and sprout sandwiches when it was 60 cents for a sandwich.

• 14:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I'm sure it was like, the only vegetarian vegan restaurant in the whole area. And it's crazy, Follow Your Heart is now, you know, huge because of Veganaise and all their assorted products.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Cheese, yeah.

• 14:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  But yeah, where we were getting to was, and other, other things, you know, the other cool, you know, this is, I guess, full transparency. My folks took me to a, a plant medicine ceremony at 19 years old, at a moment in my life when I was totally in identity crisis of what I was supposed to do. I didn't go to college because I had learning disabilities as a child. I had ADHD and attention deficit disorder and dyslexia. I had read at like, a 5th grade level, graduating high school. And so, I was, and I didn't go to college because I didn't think I was equipped for further education. And then the whole

• 15:02Speaker 01

  dot com boom was happening in San Francisco. I was living on the west coast. And I was thinking I should get into that. And, and, you know, I was kind of in, in conflict of where I should go and what I should do. And I ended up drinking ayahuasca.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  With your parents?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  With my parents.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had this amazing, clear pathway, which was I saw my desire for fascination with technology or need to do that because that was the thing where people were making money. And I just saw visually the corrosive, disconnected, more disconnected nature that going down that road would take me and take humanity. And I visually saw myself as this, my hands as roots and my shoulders as the sides of the mountains and this protector

• 16:04Speaker 01

  of the earth. And in this very beautiful moment, experiencing myself as a being, as the earth, feeling that pulse of life from the earth, and then experiencing even another dimension of the view from the bird's eye view of me and the earth all experiencing itself as this one experience. And what I came away with it, my life was about protecting and caring for Mother Earth.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  Wow. And that's what you've become?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  That's what, yeah. That was a precessing moment. And again, there was many, many, many, many years until Kiss the Ground. But again, the background of that was I was always, I always knew that plant medicine, whether it was echinacea, or golden seal, or these different herbs. Or I was the type of kid who someone would get a sting, a bee sting, and I would go and find a plantain weed, chew it up in my mouth, make a green little lump of, and stick that on the bee sting, and knew that it would pull the poison out of the sting.

• 17:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  So I always, there was a background of it, but it became very clear that that was what I was to, that was the master and the mother that I was supposed to serve.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  So, growing up then, did you grow up on your parents' farm? I mean, your dad was originally like an IBM executive, right? And then like switched gears?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Totally, no, no, totally wrong. My dad actually didn't go to college.

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, he didn't?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  My dad was, my dad was a back to the lander. He spent three years in the Adirondack, Adirondack Mountains in a teepee, cooking every meal on wood fire. Uh, and then I was conceived right at the end of that phase when they were on their way to California in a, in a little hippie van to find their TM meditation teacher, their guru, a guy named Charlie Lutz. Uh, I got conceived on that road trip to the west coast.

• 18:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, like, you know, truth is stranger than fiction, right? Like, if you scripted that, or that was in a movie, you'd be like, there's no way. It's too California. It's like too hippie.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Totally. Wow. Um, so they ended up, they ended up getting out there and then not being able to sustain themselves and, cause they were pregnant and they realized, oh, I have a kid on the way. We had to go back and get ourselves, you know, sort it out. And so they went up, ended up going back to, um, upstate New York. We ended up, uh, my dad and his brother married my mom and her twin sister.

• 18:47Rich Roll?

  No way.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So two brothers married sisters, lived in this, we had this little farmhouse in upstate New York on 21 acres, uh, with a little pond, a little orchard. It was an old dairy barn, one, one pocket, but one bank account between the four. And, um, you know, that's where, that's where we grew up.

• 19:07Rich Roll?

  Utopia.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it was.

• 19:09Rich Roll?

  Grew up until how old?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Uh, till 18.

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  So I went, that all through high school was, was in.

• 19:16Rich Roll?

  Did you go to like a local high school or were you homeschooled?

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Um, we went to, I went to Waldorf School, uh, for the first, uh, till eighth grade and then went to a alternative public school called ACS, uh, which had courses, classes like radical American politics and you read Howard Zinn, people's history.

• 19:35Rich Roll?

  Wow. So how did they, how did, how did this group of four make their way?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Uh, my dad was, he, he called himself, he was a piss poor carpenter, uh, like a B grade par, par carpenter. Um, and, uh, my uncle Scott, um, he raised dairy cows.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  And my, my, my mom's, my aunt worked at the co-op, you know, Green Star Co-op. And my mom's first company was The Benevolent Bean, Jean the Bean, and she made tempeh and tofu as the first business. And it had a big soybean on, on the back of a van was their little, their car.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And, and then that kind of, you know, that was short-lived and then my dad, uh, my dad and mom started a clothing business called Flax.

• 20:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Um, that was kind of their first success. And they built that kind of from, you know, in the sewing room in our house to, they were selling to thousands of retailers all across the country.

• 20:41Rich Roll?

  Wow. And is that where the affirmations began?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Uh, the affirmations began with, uh, my parents, different spiritual teachers. Uh, there was a woman named, uh, Jan Kenny or Jan Williams. And she was a big part of this whole idea that your life's a picture of your mind. And that we are creators of our reality through our thoughts, speech, beliefs, actions and attitudes. Create our reality. And if we're just present to managing our thoughts, speech, beliefs, actions and attitudes, you know, we can, you know, really have dominion, um, in the experience of our life.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And, and that spirit amplifies, if so, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm complaining, spirit is going to amplify that complaint into my reality. Cause spirit is neutral. It's just amplifying what we, what we are putting our awareness on in the present moment. And so, you know, that, and that was an interesting thing, cause they got way deep into that work. To the point where, you know, there was affirmations all over our house. My first name was Regal Relating Ryland was my was my affirmational name.

• 22:01Rich Roll?

  And So you're being you're being indoctrinated into this from as far back as you can remember.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 22:07Rich Roll?

  It's kind of amazing that you actually didn't become like an investment banker. I suppose I I would I would imagine that the ayahuasca ceremony probably was the wrench in that plan. Because usually a kid that grows up in an environment that's so loose and progressive in that way ends up going in the opposite direction to rebel.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Needing to find structure because there was no structure.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Right. Because there's chaos with that, too.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  There, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

• 22:36Rich Roll?

  So when you but when you look back on that, do you like, what are what's your emotional reaction to it? I mean, you sound, I mean, you you come across like you're very fond of that, the way you were brought up.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I I am, I, you know, I still, my relationship to both my dad and mom, even though my mom and dad have divorced, they divorced when I was 20. And, you know, I adore them, they're some of my favorite people in the world. I work with my dad, we run Cafe Gratitude, you know, he's a regenerative farmer. And, yeah, he were were were each other's biggest fans.

• 23:14Rich Roll?

  Well, I met them, I don't know if you remember this, we went to Thanksgiving at Gracias Madre, probably

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Two years ago.

• 23:21Rich Roll?

  Two years ago, yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:22Rich Roll?

  And you you guys put on this amazing experience where you had Native American singers and dancers. There was like all kinds of really cool stuff that was going on that day. And your parents were there and I had a nice conversation with your dad.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yes, and we were

• 23:38Rich Roll?

  Incredible people.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  We were raising, every Thanksgiving, we do a free meal for the community and we choose a cause to have, you know, it's like our way, you know, Thanksgiving, Cafe Gratitude, Gracias Madre, it's all about, you know, thank thankfulness, being thankful, being grateful. And so our way to kind of be who we say we are and, you know, really emanate like gratitude and generosity is we do a free day where we serve, you know, somewhere between 800 and 1,000 meals. And we choose a cause to have, you know, we don't charge people, but we ask for donations. And all those donations go to some cause. And that year was the year of the earthquake. In Oaxaca.

• 24:16Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  And we ended up raising somewhere between 10, 15,000 bucks to send down there.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Um, so, yeah, it's fun.

• 24:25Rich Roll?

  So you're in upstate New York.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 24:27Rich Roll?

  The affirmations are happening.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, so, yeah, so my, my parents are, you know, at this point, they're totally like dirt poor hippies that, and my dad is practicing, literally, he has got like a, an 82, like, renault, like a, a super, you know, like with, with, with, like rot, like, uh, you know, in, on the east coast in the winter times, you know, the, the rust.

• 24:52Rich Roll?

  The floor rusts out.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  The floor rusts out. You see the, that's right. And, and literally, he's got little sticky notes all over the house that say magnificent millionaire Matthew.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  And this is literally what he's, he's, he's programming himself. Magni- and, and being, how do, how would a millionaire be? And he's being, you know, millionaire Matthew, magnificent millionaire Matthew.

• 25:15Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Um, which, you know, also had a lot to do with, you know, like, when being generous, you know, we demonstrate, you know, when we're giving, we become, you know, open receptacles to receive, you know, in, in this, in this idea of, you know, just always looking at how we can be generous. And, you know, when we, you know, we can't outgive the universe. So if we're just, if we're, if we're putting our bet on generosity, then, you know, we have this and, and, and willing to stay open, you know, the, the philosophy or the idea is that, that generosity, because if there's oneness, then where we're giving will ultimately come back to us as well.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  Well, the beautiful thing is that all of that became manifest. It all became true. Like, I would, I would think, like, if you're in that moment and you're in the Renault and you're like seeing the reality of the current situation, you're like, this guy is insane, right?

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  But like, look what has blossomed out of this. Like, all of that became true. And more significantly, you know, the cultural impact that you and your, your family, your siblings have had on the world is really remarkable. So those principles are truisms, but they're on their own timeline.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  So, so how do you end up making your way out to California then? Does the family relocate?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I moved before. At 18, I got in my little Toyota, stick shift Toyota Corolla with one of my best friends. We moved to the West Coast. Again, I was seeking snowboarding and trying to be a pro snowboarder. Lived a couple of years in Lake Tahoe, then did three years in LA in the commercial recording studio business. That all fell apart. Then, kind of a little, a year of transition with follow your heart, you know, getting back into food and healthy food. Actually, I forgot to say, when I was working in Lake Tahoe, trying to be a pro snowboarder, I became the assistant kitchen manager of the Sugar Bowl Lodge ski resort. So, I was always savvy with food. I was always, and that was actually because my parents, because they were building a business, they were leaving us home alone a lot as kids.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, we had things like umaboshi plums and hajiki seaweed and tofu con. And, you know, so I just, you know, I got, you know, basically got creative with ingredients and became very self-sufficient as far as producing food. And I've always had a knack for, you know, putting ingredients together.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  And, yeah, so, so recording studio, follow your heart. And then, and then I was kind of, had another moment of losing my way.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  And basically humbled myself.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  I was, I started taking acting classes in LA. I had like that LA crisis where I like started to try out.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  Might as well.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, let me find my, let me see if I can find my self-importance by being an actor. So, I, I did that and started taking.

• 28:14Rich Roll?

  How did that go? Did you get any gigs?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I just mostly got about a year into classes in a small, you know, box theater next to the Guitar Center on Hollywood Boulevard.

• 28:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, man.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  So, so, so then I kind of humbled myself and just, you know, literally called my dad in kind of tears, like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm kind of lost. I'd love to come back. I knew that they were starting to develop Cafe Gratitude. And. I called him up and asked him, you know, I'd love to come back and learn the business. That was the other thing. I had a very serious relationship here with a woman. And so I was like, can I come back and learn the business in a year or two? And come back and open Cafe Gratitude in LA? And they said, you know, you know, of course, the father wanting the son to come.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  He's been waiting for that phone call, right? But he knew you had to go on this like epic hero's journey in order to come back to the fold.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  So at what point did the first Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco open? That was the first one, right?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  First one was 20th and Harrison in the Mission District. I'm sure you went. And it was, you know, like 1,400 square feet. Hand painted signs over the door. It said, "A world of plenty. Home of the Abounding River Board Game." Because, you know, that's what most people don't know is that Cafe Gratitude and all the the kind of eccentricities of the affirmations on the menu and the question of the day and the kind of jubilant, joyful energy and attitude all comes from a board game that Matthew and Terracy created. They spent a year creating this very in-depth, kind of transformational, spiritual board game, similar to Monopoly or Life.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  But instead of buying and selling, you know, hotels and charging people to stay in them, you ask people about where are you feeling unworthy? And having each player share where they're feeling unworthy. And then say three things that you love about yourself to the person to your left. And the original Cafe Gratitude, it was a transformational gaming parlor where we served raw vegan food.

• 30:32Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  So literally, it was, you know, it said on the, above the front door, "Home of the Abounding River Board Game." And every table in the restaurant, there was no individual two top tables. Everything was a community table.

• 30:44Rich Roll?

  That I knew.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  And, and every table had embedded and lacquered in was this game. And there was cards and basically the server didn't just take your order. They also encouraged you to play the game and teach you how to play the game. I actually had a position for a while in the company called The Game Meister, where I was just there facilitating.

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  The whole restaurant was really this play to just get people in and, under the rubric of serving them food, but just to get them to engage with this game and go on this kind of like philosophical existential inquiry.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, that was literally it. That literally was, you know, what came first, the chicken or the egg? The gratitude piece. The food was literally the carrot to get people in the door.

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  So that we could ask them the question, what are you grateful for? So we could play an invitational role in shifting awareness to gratitude.

• 31:40Rich Roll?

  What year did it open?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  This was 2003. 2004, 2004. March of 2004.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  I had, I was living in San Francisco up until 90. When did I move down here? 96? Yeah, like, like almost 1997. And then after living here for a couple of years, I started to hear rumors about this place, Cafe Gratitude. And it almost sounded apocryphal, like, there's this place, and you go. And then you had the bowl, was it the Community Bowl?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  The Grateful Bowl.

• 32:17Rich Roll?

  The Grateful Bowl, where you could just pay whatever you felt like paying. And quite often, you were just giving it away. And I was like, what is going on here? You know? And there was almost this myth about this utopian food place that was reaching far and wide.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Grateful Bowl came in 2007 or '08, when the economy took a collapse. And it was Christmas morning, and me and my dad were sitting on Be Love Farm, and kind of inquiring into how can we demonstrate our doubling down on generosity at a moment when everyone's feeling contracted? And how can we step into?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Having organic food not just be for the affluent and, you know, thinking about like, you know, the, the blue plate special, what could we do? And we realized out of all the affirmations on the menu, there was no, I am grateful. And we were like, oh, perfect. We're going to create the grateful bowl and it'll be a sliding scale and we'll serve. Um, you know, we'll, we'll communicate, look, some who pay, some can pay more, some can pay less and we'll experiment with can the community take care of each other through, you know, those that have more will pay more and those that have less will pay less and it will balance out to where at least it covers the food cost. Is that how it played out? Um, well, we did it, we've done it, we continue to do it to this day. The grateful bowl is still available.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  It's now a subsidized price of seven bucks, uh, to go. Um, so you can go in and get one to go at seven bucks. You know, the, the challenge then became you had a lot of people coming in, you know, parties of four, getting a 50 cent grateful bowl. And then servers were, you know, depending on their income. So, you know, the ripple effect became challenged to do it, um, as, you know, part of a full service, full service experience. Um, but we've to date served over 800,000 bowls, uh, at under five bucks. Wow. Um, and I had the most moving, uh, meaningful moment where I was at the seminar

• 34:32Speaker 01

  in Culver City and this gentleman came up to me and he had heard that I was from Cafe Gratitude and he said, I just want to thank you because I lived in Oakland, uh, grew, raising three kids, uh, at a time in my life when I had, you know, no money. And, you know, I know how important nutrition is in the form of years of, you're raising children. And essentially we had fast food liquor stores and Cafe Gratitude's grateful bowl. And I was able to raise my children on, you know, grateful bowls and we'd go there a couple of times a week and, um, That's what it's about. He was moved and I was moved. Um, and so.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  You know, at the end of the day, did it work out exactly the way that we wanted? No, not, you know, did we ended up closing, you know, we had a restaurant in the Oakland Caf- or Oakland Whole Foods, a small little kiosk cafe gratitude. And we called it Cafe Grateful Bowl because that was pretty much what everyone got. And we, you know, and we, we, we did it for probably five years. And ultimately, that unit per se, or that restaurant didn't, you know, lead, you know, wasn't successful, but ultimately, you know, all the alchemy of, of that generosity and the forward movement and development of the company leads us to where we are today. So I feel.

• 35:55Rich Roll?

  And today, you've got what, six or seven? How many, how many places do you have?

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Seven restaurants in Southern California. And then we have one kind of hippie handshake anomaly restaurant in Kansas City. There's a Cafe Gratitude in Kansas City. That's kind of more like the original Cafe Gratitude as far as in design, aesthetic and menu.

• 36:15Rich Roll?

  So is the Santa Cruz one, right?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then my brother, and that's actually called Grateful for Santa Cruz. So it's no longer a Cafe Gratitude, but it's still.

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  That's gotta be recent. I was there maybe two years ago or something like that. It was called Cafe Gratitude.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  It was just in the last eight months. Or maybe a year it's been called Grateful for Santa Cruz, but they still have this, a lot of the same things. Still, you still kind of feel like you're in a Cafe Gratitude there.

• 36:44Rich Roll?

  And for those people that are listening that have never had the experience of going to a Cafe Gratitude, you may not play a board game when you, when you eat there, but you will be greeted by your, your waitstaff person who will say, would you like to hear the question of the day? That question will be presented. And then every item on the menu is.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  And that question is usually some version of what are you grateful for? What are you passionate about? What moves you from your head to your heart? Something that drops us into a, likely a more meaningful conversation. If we, if we're willing to be, if we're willing to go there, it oftentimes can stimulate some, you know, potent and powerful conversation.

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  And then every item on the menu is an affirmation. I am fill in the blank.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you want a mint chocolate chip shake, which has been around since day one, it's our number one seller. You say, I am cool. And then when the server brings it out to you, they say, you are cool.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Or you are passionate, or you are loved, or you are kind.

• 37:50Rich Roll?

  Or you are grateful.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Or you are grateful.

• 37:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  And again, you know, we, the way we see that is, we see it as playful. We don't take ourselves too seriously. But we do see the positive impact of creating a space that uses language intentionally to uplift people and to remind people of their greatness, you know?

• 38:18Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, it's sort of a small thing, but it's also quite profound. Like what I see in that is, listen, when you sit down to have a meal with another human being, or even with yourself, like this is a sacred act that dates back to the beginning of humankind, obviously, or all animal kind. And we should treat it as such. So let's establish a paradigm that can be conducive to a meaningful exchange between people. And when you set it up like, I am this, or here's the question of the day, you're basically saying, here's what I, here's perhaps a subject matter that you can explore over the next hour or two, rather than like the, you know, the surface level nonsense that we tend to talk about.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Totally. I think there was a, what are those? The kids in the hall? What was that British? There was a good.

• 39:08Rich Roll?

  I think I was Canadian, wasn't it?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  And there was this like, kind of a classic comedy thing, where it was like this spoof on formal fine dining. And they basically, you know, describe what you're eating tonight and what you'll be talking about. So that was like, you know, one way to see it is like, we're playfully inviting people to enjoy and be nourished by healthy, organic, plant-based food and potentially have a conversation about gratitude.

• 39:36Rich Roll?

  Right. So talk to me about the sacred commerce aspect of all this.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Beautiful, yeah. So again, we've, we've somewhat communicated that, you know, as the way that customers come in and have this experience with the restaurant. But my parents definitely were.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  You know, they're revolutionaries. They're forward-thinking, you know, beyond the mundane. And I just, you know, so admire and honor their efforts and their intention and their commitment and conviction. But yeah, they didn't only just, they've written a book and they've led many, many workshops on the principles of sacred commerce, which is the principles or the basic messages, how can you run a business and also awaken the presence of love? And that's a very, very difficult razor's edge to walk on.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  It's sort of like an advanced degree in conscious capitalism. It's like taking conscious capitalism an additional step.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  That's right. And it's exactly that because conscious capitalism is the triple bottom line, people, planet, profit. We said sacred commerce is, you have to get a P-A-S-S. Profitability, awakening, sustainability, and social justice, or service. So, you know, profitability, we see that, again, we're not a nonprofit, we're a for-profit, profitable businesses. If we want, you know, capitalism to get excited about this, it's got to be profitable. And profitability is like the health or the immune system of a organization because, you know, life is going to have ups and downs, peaks and valleys. And if we haven't had, you know, a profitable business, we're going to have a rainy day

• 41:33Speaker 01

  and it's going to collapse the whole.

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you can't achieve any of your other goals.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't grow. That's right. So, essential, awakening is, you know, the aspect of, you know, we are committed to the employee or what we call advocate experience, working in our restaurants, that you are learning new language, that there's, you know, communication style, there's the way that we are managing and the way that we're coaching and the way that we're guiding our advocates or employees is a way that has them be empowered. For instance, we have 10 tools for creating a grateful community, which are part of the sacred commerce toolkit. And those tools are tools like acknowledgement.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  And that acknowledgement is not just about...

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Seeing someone doing a good job and then saying, "You cleaned your room. Good job." It's about seeing the unexpressed qualities of curiosity, of courage, of wisdom, of kindness, and actually saying, "All right, we want to cultivate and grow those virtuous qualities in human beings, and so we're going to acknowledge, have, be a culture of acknowledgement where we're just always looking for, how can we see someone, see their greatness, see their potential, and call that forth in our acknowledgement?" So, the way that that shows up is we have a process that we've been doing since day one called clearing, which is essentially

• 43:09Speaker 01

  two questions. It sounds like Scientology is not.

• 43:12Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Everyone's like, "Red alert, red alert."

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna start getting freaked out.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  But essentially, it's just two questions, one question, and over the years, the clearing process has had many iterations, but in its most pure form, it was two questions. First question could be, you know, "What are you struggling with?" Or, "Where are you experiencing self-doubt?" Or, and again, this goes back to the game, and essentially, it's allowing a person to just share, you know, what is distracting them from their, the present moment, because we know that the best service and the best, you know, if we're talking about, you know, customer experience and customer service, we want our people to be

• 44:02Speaker 01

  present, and if they're, if we're distracted by some story of self-doubts, you know, some frustration, some irritation, and we can actually have a five-minute process before their shift, such that they can shift their attention to some aspect of something that they do have an abundance of, something that they do, they are grateful for, and then end that process with an acknowledgement, then, you know, that ultimately is lifting them up, breathing some, you know, life into their wings, and then hopefully, that kindness, that presence, that listening, you know...

• 44:42Speaker 01

  We oftentimes are so starved for someone to really give us like their full listening. And so just a couple of minutes of having someone be heard, not trying to fix or change them, but just reflecting back what we heard them say.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  And then saying the second question, which would be, what are you grateful for? And, you know, we'll just ask you, Rich, what are you grateful for today?

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  I'm grateful to be having this experience with you right now.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Amazing. Well, I just would love to acknowledge you for the quality of your listening and the quality of your presence. It's really, it's an easy space to share into. So, thank you.

• 45:19Rich Roll?

  I appreciate that, Ryland. You're making my job very easy right now. You're doing my job for me. But is this, is this something, so this is something you do for all of the staff?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  We have an aspiration to have every staff member have a clearing process before they start. You know, it's...

• 45:40Rich Roll?

  I'm just imagining the person who's like, "Look, man, I just needed like a dishwasher job. Like, I'm not, I'm not signing up for all this woo woo crazy shit."

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Totally. People, lots of resistance and ultimately, you know, what the clearing has kind of evolved into is, you know, because we ask the question of the day, which is always the second question of the clearing, is the question that then we extend to our guests. So, that question becomes asked around the house. And then, you know, on a good day, people, you know, "Rich, you know, what are you grateful for? Awesome. I want to acknowledge you for, you know, being an amazing team member today. Thank you for coming in. Let's have a great shift." So, it used to be like five minutes per person, like, sit down. And, you know, over the years, that's evolved to what we call clearing on the court, is asking each other the question

• 46:30Speaker 01

  of the day and then acknowledging each other for something that we appreciate about one another. And ultimately, that creating a space for...

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Or that that creating a quality of human experience that creates what people have called the vibe at Cafe Gratitude. You know, there's a vibe and that is, you know.

• 46:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it definitely is. You go in there, you feel good. Everybody who's working there looks you in the eye like they seem present. They are listening. Like, it is different from your typical restaurant experience.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Totally. And, you know, we've, we've put a lot of energy and a lot of money and time and effort. And, you know, the other things like, you know, we have all advocate meetings, which are just meetings where we put everybody in a room together. We have translators for the back of the house, Spanish speaking folks. And essentially, it's just some nugget of inspiration, wisdom, life knowledge, you know, some of the stuff that you teach here or you share with your guests on the show. We'll have that be, you know, presented or communicated. Like, I've had Marion Williamson come in and talk to our staff before. And so, yeah, so, you know, again, and then another thing, one of the benefits that we've

• 47:46Speaker 01

  offered people, again, in the aspect of, you know, awakening or transformation, we've paid for people to do the Landmark Forum, which is a transformational weekend course that many people have heard of, many people probably haven't heard of, but it's essentially a three-day personal growth, self-empowerment course that happens all over the world. And not that we have any official tie with them, it's just a course that we've seen in three short days provides, you know, tremendous transformational value.

• 48:15Rich Roll?

  My parents did it many years ago, but it was very impactful in a positive way for them. I've never been myself, I know tons of people that have done it and have benefited tremendously from that experience. But it, but there's an aspect of that that got you guys in like a little bit of a sticky wicket back in the day with the San Francisco restaurant, right? Are you okay talking about that?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. I mean, no, Cafe Gratitude.

• 48:40Rich Roll?

  I've read about this and I'm like, I don't, I'm confused. Like, I don't, I don't understand why it's such a big, like, Landmark Forum is pretty... Mainstream.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, talk about not super fringe. I mean, we as a company have done a lot more fringe things than, you know, encouraging Lamboric education. But yeah, Cafe Gratitude has definitely been a, you know, we've been a kind of a hotbed for, you know, suspicion of cultum.

• 49:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  And...

• 49:12Rich Roll?

  What is this sacred commerce thing?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 49:14Rich Roll?

  And this game? And like, what's the, what is the agenda here?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 49:18Rich Roll?

  Trying to brainwash people.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  There was, there was some rumor that you had to get to work at Cafe Gratitude, you had to get a be love tattoo.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  So for those that are just listening, you've rolled up your sleeves and you have be on your left forearm and love on your right forearm.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And, yeah, me and my dad went and got those together.

• 49:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God. Of course you did, right?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, right after we went and did a men's new warrior training weekend, where, where I was like, all right, you know, it was kind of like, how are you gonna be, how are you gonna demonstrate masculinity in the world? And the thing that came to me was like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be love and I'm gonna have loving be a masculine thing, that I actually, love is sourced from within me and I, it can't never be taken away from me. And that, that actually is a beautiful masculine quality.

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  How dare you?

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so yeah, so I mean, yes, Cafe Gratitude, over the years, because we, you know, we were, we were super, I mean, there was a moment when, you know, I kind of feel like this is almost like talking back in the day, like in the 60s and 70s, there was like, a moment when Cafe Gratitude was, you know, when business was down and we would have all employee meetings and we'd do awe meditations for abundance for, for the restaurant and for all of our lives. Like, we'd get all of our employees together and, you know, do a meditation for the abundance of the restaurant. And, you know, looking in the window, that could be...

• 50:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're like, what is going on there?

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Kooky.

• 50:51Rich Roll?

  But, I mean, you're in the Mission in San Francisco. It's like, you know...

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Totally. And, you know, other things, we used to, we used to take a... A fork to a wine glass in the middle of the dining room and have people read the mission statement out loud, or we'd have the, or we'd do a minute of laughter. Cause one of the, one of the turns in the game.

• 51:11Rich Roll?

  Creating a hostile work environment, Ryland.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Totally. Are you gonna make me laugh? I do not want to laugh for a minute. This is absurd. You know, that is, that is how we are as human beings, as adults. No, I'm not. That is so, no. So we, you know, and even in Venice, I actually tried, I actually one night took the whole dining room and got everybody to do a laughing yoga exercise where everyone laughed out loud for a minute. And some people were laughing at us laughing, but that was fine, too.

• 51:40Rich Roll?

  So, all right, so walk me through the Landmark thing and the San Francisco restaurant and like, kind of what happened from your perspective?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, from what happened, we, you know, we got, we were super eager Beaver and like Landmark, you know, my dad met his wife at, at Terrace's, who was also the co-founder of Cafe Gratitude. They met at Landmark. My dad was potentially going to become a Landmark Forum leader. Terrace was leading programs at Landmark. You know, part of the inspiration of Cafe Gratitude and the Abundant Board Game was inspired from that experience. You know, we had had such profound experiences of transformation from this work. And again, I did it when I was 18 or I did it in 19, 19, right around that same time, that transformational point in my life in this, in the second world trade tower, 14th floor.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  And my dad actually resisted doing it for another 10 years. And then he finally did it when my mom left him for another woman and his life fell apart. And he, that's actually where he went to kind of put himself back together. That's where he met Terrace's. And then kind of they gave birth to Cafe Gratitude out of that experience. And again, we had just seen so many people in our lives, anyone that had become friends, you know, good friends with us, we were always encouraging it. And we were seeing people. You know, having total estranged, 10, 15 year estranged relationship with family members, totally getting things complete, you know, apologizing and getting resolution

• 53:15Speaker 01

  around abuse and addiction and.

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, part of the fundamental paradigm is getting people to confront their truth, to, you know, kind of pull down the shades of denial and then forcing them to have those uncomfortable conversations with themselves and with the other people in which, with whom they're in conflict or have some kind of unresolved trauma in order to create that healing, so that you can become a more whole human being and fully integrated.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  And I think the thing that's so profound about it, and the thing that's why I still recommend it is, there's, we all know that we want to be more authentic, but we also know that we're completely full of it. I mean, we're so full of it.

• 53:57Rich Roll?

  And it's just safe and easy to stay in that place.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Totally. And there's, you just can't quite, you know it, you want to be authentic, you know that everything is good, but yet it's still safer, comfortable, and there's more mental justification for staying. And going through that program, I, you know, time and time again, I see people basically putting themselves up on the cross and acknowledging how full of it, how phony, how much, how arrogant, you know, and really owning things that three days before you couldn't have imagined, they would be able to claim, acknowledge, and like, point the things that were so obvious to the room, you know, watching them up there, and then them just really acknowledging that, and then having that conversation with people

• 54:43Speaker 01

  in their lives who have become completely estranged from them because they were so in their righteousness about their perspective. So.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  I still remember my dad calling me from a payphone, like, in the hallway outside of the, you know, wherever this was taking place.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:01Rich Roll?

  And having this incredibly profound conversation with him. I mean, this was a really long time ago, but I still remember it because it really was transformational in our relationship.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  So anyway.

• 55:12Rich Roll?

  But I think there's a thing like, as I understand it, the, the, the issue came about because it wasn't like, hey, we suggest you go do this. It was like, you have to do this.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 55:23Rich Roll?

  And there's a difference.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Totally. We, we, um, we got, as I said, we were kind of eager beater and kind of staunch about it. And we had people who were managers. We weren't making employees or advocates do it. We were encouraging, but we were, we were, we were making it mandatory for managers to go do it, seeing that it was like a, you know, communication training. And people were in resistance to that. And so that.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  It is like a bridge too far. Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, yeah. I, I mean, I, I get it. I, I, I hoa poa pono if I, you know, if, if I, if I went too far with it. Again, it was, it was well intended and I get that, um, sometimes over excitement can be not as perceptive to nuance and, um, to where people are.

• 56:11Rich Roll?

  How come you guys haven't reopened a cafe gratitude in San Francisco?

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Well, we've been busy, you know, seven, eight years. We've been down here, opened eight, seven restaurants. And we still have Gracias Madre there. Um, still doing well. And really doing business in California is challenging. Just the, the amount of legalities and, um, you know, again, it's like, it sounds terrible. Like, you know, you want workers' rights, you want benefits for employees, you, but it's also very, you know, instance, like if you're text messaging with a staff member, you then have to pay for that cell phone. Or, um, if you're cutting someone's shifts, you know, you have to give them two weeks notice before changing shifts.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Where, you know, restaurants is like.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's happening moment to moment.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean.

• 57:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. California makes it hard for small business owners.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, and San Francisco is even, you know, even again, better for the worker, which again, uh, you know, we, we did. Eight years there and you know, we had provided 100% health care for all of our employees, even in Marin County or in different places because we knew it was the right thing to do. But ultimately, you know, there was aspects of overextending ourselves. And you know, we oftentimes said in the first round of Cafe Gratitude, we were really focused on the A S S and we forgot about the P part and we made an ass out of ourselves because you know, ultimately we were-

• 57:45Rich Roll?

  Pass without P is just an ass.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we have considered going back, but we just haven't gotten to it yet.

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  East Coast too, Matt.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  East Coast, New York City, Miami.

• 57:59Rich Roll?

  Boston. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta-

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Gotta step out.

• 58:02Rich Roll?

  I know. It's happening.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's happening.

• 58:04Rich Roll?

  Sometime. Cool. Well, I love, I want to shift gears in a minute, but I do want to acknowledge, in addition to Cafe Gratitude, you have Gracias Madre, originally in San Francisco. You have one in West Hollywood here and that place is just insane. It's so freaking good. And one of the many amazing things about it is nowhere will you see any mention of the fact that it is even a plant-based restaurant, a vegan restaurant. It's just a beautifully appointed place, like the architecture, the vibe, like everything about it is incredibly inviting. When you go in, you're like, oh man, this place is cool.

• 58:43Rich Roll?

  The food is amazing and that's it. And the place is packed and I would imagine 95, 98% of the people in there are not on a plant-based lifestyle trip. They're just looking for a good food at a cool place.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I mean, that really has been, I mean, I'd say that that's been Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre's role coming to LA was really how do we take something that's very fringe, very, you know, either you're into it or you're not and making it- Really opening the door on plant-based cuisine to everyone as a, you know, as a, not a dogma, but kind of a genre. And really like, yeah, I, I, I go and have Italian on Monday nights and I go, or no, let's say Mondays, we'll go meatless on Mondays, we'll go, you know, let's go gratitude or gracias on Mondays and we'll go Thai or go, you know, Indian or whatever on the other nights of the week.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  But it's not like I'm only a plant-based person, so I only go to Cafe Gratitude. I'd say even at Cafe Gratitude, it's maybe eighty percent of our guests are just people who know they should be eating more plants, more organic food, more healthy, made from scratch, um, high-quality food. And so they just build it in as a part of their life versus, you know, something that's a superlative, you're either in or you're out.

• 1:00:05Rich Roll?

  But at gracias madre, I mean, when you're at gratitude, you're getting the bowls, like you, you do have the sense like, oh, this is super healthy plant food.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:00:11Rich Roll?

  But gracias madre, I think there's probably a lot of people that eat there and leave and don't even realize that there was no meat or dairy in anything that they were eating. Like it's, because it's just not, it's delicious regardless.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, I think that's, that's reflected in, in feedback like, oh, I went, oh, your restaurant's gracias madre. I had the, I think these chicken.

• 1:00:32Rich Roll?

  I had the carnitas?

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had the chicken, I had the chicken, uh, totopo or I had the chicken, uh, flautos, you know, it's like, you know, it's butternut squash.

• 1:00:40Rich Roll?

  I don't think you did.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. But yes, absolutely. I'd, I'd say that that restaurant even more so, um, really just is a bridge for everyone to have a really great experience. You know, you have a margarita and you have chips and guac and then by the time the food comes, you know, you're just in the experience and there's no like, I didn't get anything. There's no, there's no missing.

• 1:01:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one of the, one of the, not issues, but one of the things that you see when you go to plant-based restaurants is.

• 1:01:13Rich Roll?

  Like, I eat a ton of food, man. Like, I need a lot of food. So, I need big portions. I want to feel like full when I'm leaving. And, you know, I get that at Gracias Madre. Like, at some places, I kind of have to eat before I go, and then I have to eat on my way home. You know? And I'll eat beautiful food at the restaurant, but, you know, it's just not sating me in the way that I think a restaurant needs to if it's trying to appeal to a broader cross-section of the population.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I mean, and it's our most, by far, most successful restaurant.

• 1:01:50Rich Roll?

  Right. You gotta do more of those, man.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Speaking, yeah. Newsflash, we're actually closing the Newport Beach Gratitude.

• 1:01:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, you are?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  And reopening in October. So, we're closing September 3rd and reopening in October or November, the second Southern California Gracias Madre.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool. In the same location?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  In the same exact location. We're just doing a refresh, redesign, and reopening. We think it's going to be a more appropriate fit for the Newport Beach, Orange County crowd. I mean, our most popular things there are margaritas and nachos. And so, clearly, they're telling us what they want. And so, yeah, that's actually some big news, company-wide, that we're very excited about.

• 1:02:38Rich Roll?

  And you're working on the Agora Hills Cafe Gratitude, too. Is that not public?

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  No, that's actually Sage. That's my sister.

• 1:02:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, Sage, okay.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  That was the one I, yeah. My sister is, yeah, Sage Vegan Bistro, which she has three organic, plant-based restaurants in LA. And, you know, people have referred to us as the Vegan Mafia.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  But the, yeah, so she's opening her fourth in...

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  In Granada, or no, in Agora Hills.

• 1:03:06Rich Roll?

  Agora, yeah, right down the street from here.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm investing. I invited you to invest.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, I know. I'm thinking about it.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  Thinking about it. Exciting, man. Well, I wanna, I wanna switch gears.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Actually, just, oh, just to, because I wanted to complete the thought, which was basically Sacred Commerce is the past.

• 1:03:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, we didn't, yeah.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  So profitability, awakening, we got way down the awakening tunnel and went into cults and stuff.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  But then sustainability, so really, we're an organic, 100% organic, plant-based restaurant that serves, you know, most of everything we do is from scratch. We've put a ton of time and energy into sourcing the best ingredients, where many restaurants have two or three vendors. We have 40, 50, I think the most, we had 70 vendors, you know, getting, you know, one or two ingredients from a different vendor, because we had an emotional attachment or an ethical attachment to where something was coming from. So, you know, and that's been, you know, what we've been, you know, doing since day one.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  You know, we were some of the first people to do cold-pressed juice on the West Coast, when cold-pressed juice wasn't even in the lexicon of understanding. You know, cold-processed coffee, we, we actually sold a Blue Bottle Coffee their first espresso machine that was from our, we took it out of our place, because we were gonna only do cold-processed coffee, and sold it to Blue Bottle for their first espresso machine in San Francisco back in the day.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  And so, you know, we've just, we've always had a commitment to food is medicine. No amount of pesticide, herbicide, fungicide should be in our food, and just have gone to great lengths to, you know, protect, you know, the ingredients that we're putting in the food. And, and, you know, it's down to the salt, it's down to the cumin, it's down to every legume, every nut seed, and really putting energy into finding where those, where those foods can come from.

• 1:05:07Rich Roll?

  I would imagine along the way, people would have said to you, listen, man, like, you know, you're gonna have to compromise here and there, because, you know, you're never gonna be able to scale what you're doing, or reach your profitability goals. When you have so many vendors, and you're so choosy and picky about where this stuff is coming from, like, no one's gonna know the difference, like, come on.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and...

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  To be honest, I think, you know, we have had, you know, we have had to make compromises, not to say we haven't made any compromises, but those compromises don't include us going outside of, you know, bringing in, you know, organic produce, organic ingredients. You know, I think there's a few items, like there's a beer at one of the, on tap, that's not a certified organic product. And, you know, we do work with some small organic farmers who are not certified, but we've, you know, understand their practice, understand what they're doing. And, you know, we are happy to serve and sell their produce.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  So when you're trying to vet these farmers or these sources, do you go to the farms? Are you trying to make them as local as possible? Like, what is the, the process or their criteria?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, over the years, it's been, you know, different things, but definitely visiting, having our chef visit farms. I've gone and visited farms, you know, working with distributors who are only distributing organic produce, such that we know that there's not going to be a bait and switch and, you know, some kind of hustle there of re-stickering things and saying this is conventional. And, cause there's-

• 1:06:41Rich Roll?

  Is there a lot of that going on?

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Um, so, yeah, we, over the years, you know, obviously, we're always trying to focus on, you know, California-based, you know, obviously, there's some stuff that's coming from, from Mexico avocados, depending on the season. But, you know, it's mostly Southern California, some Northern California, and then, you know, there's, you know, nuts and seeds, and, you know, specialty products like coffee or cacao, that's obviously coming from South America and other places. But again, we're working with companies who are sourcing and they're doing, you know, we trust that they're doing their due diligence on their end to know where those ingredients are coming from.

• 1:07:29Rich Roll?

  I think that's a natural segue into the next thing that I want to talk to you about, which is regenerative agriculture and how you got interested in this and kind of where your head's at right now with it. So, you know, walk me through this.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah, the most, the most exciting thing happening on planet Earth, regenerative agriculture.

• 1:07:51Rich Roll?

  So we're segueing from the David Bronner part of you into the Zach Bush part of you.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Totally. So, yeah. Again, I've been serving, selling, a proponent of organic agriculture, organic food, local food, plant-based food for my whole life. I'm 39 years old, but professionally been selling organic food for 15 years in the restaurants. And then even before that with Follow Your Heart. And, and I kind of thought I knew every, not everything, but I thought I had a basic understanding of organic agriculture, environmentalism, sustainability,

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  you know, and I, I went to New Zealand back in 2013 on a trip to where I was going to show a film that I had made called May I Be Frank, which was a transformational documentary about a guy, you know, having.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  It's like Italian-American dude Frank, who's like overweight, you bring him into the restaurant. And what's cool about that, I don't want to.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Dyrrell us.

• 1:09:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Dyrrell too much. But what was cool about that is you would expect, okay, you're going to feed him this great food and he's going to lose some weight and all of that. But really, it's about his spiritual transformation, like how he has to reckon with his past.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:20Rich Roll?

  Emotionally and his family.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:23Rich Roll?

  That I think is the real heart and beauty of that.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'll just say that the the aspect and the intention of Sacred Commerce really is that at a at a high level and a deep level of commitment. That that spiritual transformation is the intention that we are committed to and have had a desire to fulfill in, you know, small micro doses to our guests, to our employees, advocates, and ultimately to the business world and to the world watching.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  So, but yeah, so may I be frank, we went to New Zealand to show the film and do a screening, and Frank went with me and went with my wife, and I led a little workshop on Sacred Commerce. And then I ended up in, and just to say, I kind of went there a little bit like an arrogant Californian who thought his shit didn't stink, and he knew everything about plant-based and vegan, and I know all, you know, you know, I have compostable this and my packaging is this, and and I had a complete state change moment where I learned new information that changed everything.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  And that was, I was sitting in a panel discussion, sitting in the audience, just watching a panel discussion of six expert scientists, talking about the the title of the panel was called, Can Human Beings Sustain Themselves on Planet Earth? And basically, five out of six said no, and that the dire state of things is far further than we're mostly led to believe, and that, you know, it was like, people were crying in the in the room, people on stage were crying, it was like an emotional. And then the last guy spoke, this guy was by the name of, his name was by Graham Sate,

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  and he is a agricultural consultant and kind of soil scientist, not really a scientist, but in-depth knowledge, study of soil science and plant life, and trains agronomists, and basically said,

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  They're all telling the truth, but there's a blind spot in the conversation. And that blind spot is soil and its unique ability to sequester and hold all the excess carbon that's in the atmosphere, having us up over 410 parts per million. We can actually draw that carbon down through our food choices and create a benefit of that carbon being in our soil versus a villain in our atmosphere causing global warming.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  And I had, and again, I had knew that, I think we all knew that photosynthesis takes carbon out of the atmosphere, makes oxygen for us to breathe. But the part that I don't think I didn't get was that the way that carbon is transferred from the atmosphere and has been since the beginning of time to cycle on planet Earth is that photosynthesis is the driver of that transference of carbon. And that trees, plants, grasses, every day, when the sun's out, they're pulling carbon in and they're sharing somewhere between 40 and 60% of that carbon, carbon dioxide,

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  they're adding water, hydrogen, and turning it into a carbohydrate. And they build their selves with that carbon and then they pump 40 to 60% of that carbon into the soil and feed microorganisms. And as those microorganisms eat that carbon sugar, that becomes stable carbon in the soil. So I just basically got for the first time, every living plant is on our side, helping us. Balance this global challenge that I haven't heard any real solutions to. There's like this kicking the can down the road to, you know, technology saving us one day in the future.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  But really, and we have to reduce emissions, we have to, you know, decarbonize our, our energy sector, but we're also over 415 parts per million. I don't really see, and that carbon is not going anywhere. What is the real plan for the pullback plan? And at that moment, I saw, oh my God, I could see the living skin of the earth and humans tending to that living skin of the earth, sequestering that carbon and balancing, reversing global warming. And it was like, I just didn't get that functionality. I didn't see how that bigger cycle circle worked. And I got it for the first time and it was like, you know, it's like these spiritual

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  moments of like a thousand suns going off in my mind and my heart. And I literally was like, this is true, real and possible. And for some reason, I have a role in being a catalyst and a missionary and a messenger for this new understanding of soil's role, regenerative agriculture's role as a pathway forward for humanity.

• 1:14:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this idea that the solution literally resides, but you know, underneath our feet.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Rich Roll?

  It's right there. And yet humanity has just gotten in the way and interfered with this very natural process. And if there's a way for us to revert or get out of the way and start practicing these things that can enhance this cycle's ability to do what it already knows how to do, we are then in the solution and not in the problem.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  That's right. And I would even say there's an sort of a conservation and a sustainability mindset, which is, you know, let nature do its thing without us. Which I think even the next conscious shift is how do we Accelerate. How do we, yeah, how do we participate in this catalyzing what they call a trophic cascade in an ecosystem. There's this beautiful video that really demonstrates regeneration, which is when human beings re-released wolves into Yellowstone National Forest or Park. And essentially because there hadn't been any predators in that system, it basically,

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  the deer started to just hang out in the valleys and kind of eat away the grasses and things started to erode. But when they reintroduced the wolves, it kind of kicked the whole ecosystem into gear and where everybody was kind of on each other's toes and everybody was playing each other's, playing a role and people weren't getting kind of lazy, fat and happy and ultimately costing degradation on the overall system. And within six years after they released the wolves into Yellowstone National, it's called How Wolves Change Rivers. If you look it up on YouTube. Yeah, I've heard of this. Forty million people have watched it. But I mean, it's this unbelievable phenomenon

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  of how this trophic cascade happens all through the ecosystem of, you know, there becomes more rodents, there becomes more owls, there becomes more hawks, there becomes more growth in the trees, it becomes more grasslands, the roots strengthen and hold the river going in one direction versus kind of starting to erode and having the banks kind of eroding away because the deer had kind of had no predators, no one moving them around their kind of domain. And in turn, the system started to, what we call desertify. And so

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this shift of consciousness of kind of doing less harm to how our land management practices actually enhance ecosystem function and the carrying capacity of the land. And just really seeing for the first time like, wow, something to proactively do that actually doesn't just sustain or slow damage down, it actually restores, regenerates and renews, which in the definition of sustainability, which is kind of like our North Star around like, all right, we're destroying the planet, let's be sustainable.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  It's like to sustain something that's already broken is sustaining something that's broken. It's broken.

• 1:18:14Rich Roll?

  Or just holding on to something so that it doesn't break, right? As opposed to being reparative.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 1:18:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think, you know, in a macro sense, we need to telescope up from our kind of view of the landscape and take a much broader view of the macro system. Like, you can say, okay, I'm vegan, I'm plant-based, so, you know, I'm reducing harm by not eating animals. But if all the food that you're eating is non-organic, or it's being shipped from faraway locations, which obviously has a huge environmental impact, or it's the result of monocropping, you're not really in the solution in the way that you might be deluding yourself that you are, right? Like, that is not a proactive...

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's less harmful than doing other things, but it's not as far down along the road as I think a lot of people think it is.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, and I was a, I was kind of shouting from the rooftops.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  Was that your current, your understanding before going to New Zealand?

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I thought that the most sustainable and the best way to preserve the planet was an organic, plant-based diet, where I still think that's a really righteous path, because it's saying no to the 95% of what is a total desecration and a total destruction to so many things, including, you know, animal welfare, including, you know, the immense amount of methane that CAFO feedlot operations put off. But again, it was still, I still didn't, if I look in like my heart of like, how are we going

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  to get there? Like, it just, it was, it was still just like a reactive not participating versus what is the macro, you know, living system of Gaia, this, you know, living, breathing organism called Planet Earth? And, you know, what are the bigger cycles of that? And how do we support those cycles to be most abundant and most fertile? And I think, you know, it's beautifully articulated in the distinction between, you know, a lot of organic agriculture can be seen as, you know, it's a list, it's a list of practices that you can't use. Like,

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  you can't use these chemicals, you can't use these fungicides, you can't use these synthetic, the synthetic nitrogen. Whereas something like biodynamic, which would be kind of an early expression and articulation of a regenerative agriculture, really saw the whole farm as a living organism. And that, you know, the pollinators, the microorganisms in the soil, the earthworms, the owls, the, you know, the whole thing is a living system. And how do we, how do we support that living system to continue to stay vital?

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  And what are the things that actually enhance soil life or enhance biodiversity versus just I don't do these things? And really, that's regenerative agriculture is this kind of, and again, I just want to acknowledge that, you know, what we, what I discovered and what became Kiss the Ground with, you know, the co-founders, Finian and Lauren, was knowledge that has been kept and understood from many indigenous cultures around the world, many pioneering, you know, pioneering farmers and permaculturists.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  And, you know, this is wisdom that's been in little pockets for a long time, coming from many places. You know, we're standing on the shoulders of that wisdom. And we saw, being that we live in Los Angeles and, you know, the communications capital of the world, the trend-setting capital of the world, we said, all right, this is the most exciting, important idea, inspiration, pathway, we're going to tell the story. We want this to be a paradigm shift of, you know, that we can actually go beyond sustainability, we can actually regenerate and restore our soils, we can restore our biodiversity, we

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  can, you know, have healthy food for, you know, the idea that we can't feed the world on small-ish or even medium-sized farms is absurd. You know, 40% of the food gets wasted, 80% of the food feeding the total population comes from small farms.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  So walk me through that, because that's, that's the thing that I, that I have difficulty wrapping my head around. I mean, the conventional wisdom is, look, if CAFOs do one thing, it's that they know how to drive economies of scale. Like, they take a super-concentrated, you know, number of animals and they try to blow them up into food using the least amount of time and resources possible, and they've kind of perfected this, right? This is having a huge deleterious impact on the planet, untold suffering, all kinds of terrible issues with that. Nobody's a fan of this. But when I look at how many people are on the planet and the forecast for, you know,

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  the 10 billion that are soon to come, and then I look at...

• 1:24:04Rich Roll?

  Biodynamic farming, my first instinct is, we don't have enough land. Like you're, you're, you need more space for these cattle. Like certainly, we're going to have to reduce our, our addiction to animal foods on some level. Not everyone's going to get struck vegan. But how can we scale up this, um, this wonderful practice that is

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean,

• 1:24:27Rich Roll?

  you know, sequestering carbon and regenerating the earth and all of that and do it in a way that actually is going to function in the modern world.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Totally. I'd say, you know, my view is that the, the big billboard is we need to eat more plants, eat less meat as like the, the big, the biggest billboard that as far as where we are. Cause 95% of the meat that we're eating is, you know, just a total train wreck. But if we want to get interested in the more nuts and bolts of how to grow food in a way that actually restores, heals and not just, um, you know, you know, the, the aspect of animals and eating animals and animals role on, um, grasslands and keeping grasslands healthy. And ultimately, when we're talking about keeping grasslands healthy,

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  we're talking about keeping land that we're growing grains, um, for eating. You know, without, when we decoupled, um, animals from land, we just put animals in barns and then we put chemicals to boost the nitrogen, the NPK, um, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus as like the, you know, the quick fix to grow, um, to grow, you know, grains and crops.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Essentially, uh, the, the chemicals obviously started to degrade the farmland. In the last 40 years, we've lost, we've lost 30% of, uh, the farmland being grown to desertification.

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  So destroyed. So the United Nations said, we have 60 years left under the current system of harvest, 60 seasons left. So we, you know, we have to, we have to scale way back. I mean, right now, most meat that we're eating is, you know, coming from a total destruction system.

• 1:26:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  So we need to cut way back on that. We need to be eating, you know, more plant-rich diet. And then if we're, if we're really serious about how we can actually restore and heal land and restore the, you know, the broken soil, you know, animals grazing on grasslands has an amazing restorative effect. And that is a solution for those that are going to continue to eat meat. And that can be a, something that has a total, full environmental win for the planet. And, you know, it's showed that, you know, a CAFO situation has total methane, a lot

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  of greenhouse gases going up, and a grazing situation where you have managed grazing of animals on grassland, you have a net sequestration of carbon going, even, you know, the cows still produce methane, but within that overall system, there is a, a net sequestration of carbon and a significant net sequestration of carbon going into that land that's being managed that way. So, the, you know, and a lot of the land that, across the country, is not fit for agriculture. We don't want to be tilling it, we want to put in annual crop crops. So, there's actually, and we've killed all the natural bison or, you know, grazing animals oftentimes that were on that land.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  And so, you know, there is this real live opportunity of, you know, putting grazing animals back to a good life and having a net beneficial, you know, impact on that, on that soil, on that grassland, on that environment. And, you know, we're obviously, you know, encouraging.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  You know, a less meat consumption, but for the people that are going to eat meat, this is an opportunity for that to have a beneficial impact. And again, I get the morality aspect of, you know, people not wanting to kill animals, and I love and respect that perspective. But for those that are choosing to eat meat, here is a really a win-win situation that can have a benefit for many stakeholders.

• 1:28:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Including, you know, the thing, the biggest thing that we don't have a solution for, which is, how are we going to sequester enough carbon such that we don't go into climate chaos?

• 1:28:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We need some emergency actions right now. We really are running out of time. And things like the farm bill and these subsidies are really preventing us from embracing a solution that's right in front of us. Like, you know, it seems to me that if we could stop subsidizing the, you know, the growing of all these crops that go to feed, and we can start emphasizing biodynamic farming, the price of meat's going to go way up, and that's going to cull the herd, literally in terms of like, the number of humans that can afford these meat products. It's going to drive down meat consumption and make that possibility more realistic. But there doesn't seem to be any political will for this. That's the problem.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  There is not, but I'll tell you, since we started Kiss the Ground seven years ago, and we launched The Soil Story, which was the first piece of media that we, that, you know, that I had seen that was like a three-minute short synopsis of regenerative agriculture and the potential of it. The amount of attention and people using the terminology and the amount of investment going into that space has been, I mean, it's still, it's still a drop in the bucket, but, you know, the fact that General Mills, you know, making a public declaration, people could say, oh, it's total greenwash, you know, a million acres, you know, by 2030.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Another startup called Indigo, just committed to, I think, you know, 10 million acres under regenerative management, and they're wanting to pay farmers to sequester carbon.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  You know, the momentum, when we first started talking about this, it was very fringe. And again, I didn't know it. You know, people like, you know, my understanding is Al Gore, people were very experts on, you know, climate. People, you know, Bill McGibben, you know, had understanding of this, but they weren't standing like this was a solution. It was still too fringe. It wasn't. But now, there's an article every week that's coming out talking about how farmers can be a solution to climate change.

• 1:31:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the great thing about it is that it embraces the farming community. I think one of the problems with the, you know, this movement in some regards is that it embitters the farming community because they feel like they've been positioned as the enemy, right? Whereas this is saying, let's embrace our farmers and help them create a better, more profitable life for themselves with greater yields. Like, the big lie in all of this is that we've had to make this transition into factory farming because that's the only way to get the yields. And, and as all of your work shows in the documentaries and the advocacy and all of that, it's just not true. Like, when they make this switch to a, you know, a biodynamic approach.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  We're calling it regenerative, regenerative agriculture. But biore- you know, is another form of regenerative agriculture. So, yeah, so, you know, the, the things I'd love to share, you know, because the, kind of the work that we've been doing over, you know, seven years, there, as you said, it's, you know, it's been a lot of, we've kind of been looking at, you know, how do we, how do we shift critical mass to understand this such that actions, you know, people start adopting actions, business start taking this on, this becomes, you know, the way that we're growing food, fiber, and fuel is through a regenerative perspective. And how can we have our ecosystems being restored while we're producing the

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  goods that we need for, for humanity? And, you know, the, the good news is, is that farmers can make a lot more money. You know, we're not talking about, you know, it's not a get rich, you know, by no means, but. There's a lot of evidence and a lot of examples of where farmers have gone down this path and made this successful transition. And they're not going from it from an altruism or like save the planet, or even if they even believe in climate change. But they're going from a place of I'm watching my family farm degrade, I'm watching people

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  get sick, I'm watching, I'm watching I need to get more equipment, bigger pieces of land. You know, I think, you know, the fact that the same amount of nitrogen fertilizer to grow one bushel of wheat in 1970 has now tripled. So you have to use three times the amount of nitrogen to get the same bushel of corn in present day. So, you know, number one, the number one profession that has suicide, high suicide rates is farmers. And essentially, the opportunity here is that in the next, because the average age

• 1:33:57Speaker 01

  of the farmer, especially in this country, is between, you know, 60, 65, 68 years old. In the next 10 years, there's going to be, you know, one of the biggest land transfers, you know, since we can remember. And if in that transition, we have the precedent of regenerative agriculture is the way, and people in the way that young people are excited to get into business and entrepreneurship and businesses that have a purpose, which is, you know, a lot of young people don't want to just be part of the status quo, business corporation, blah, blah, blah. They want to be, just like kids don't want to be a part of the farming system, which is just chemicals, corn, soy, and sending it to, you know, China or ethanol, you know, to make ethanol, whatever.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  There's an opportunity to have the farmer be the hero, that we can actually restore our landscapes and restore our food system, restore our climate, and farmers can make a little more coin on it.

• 1:34:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. And you're seeing that. I mean, you are seeing. Lots of young people who are excited about this. Like when I was in college, like no one was interested in this. And now all these young people getting graduate degrees and in this field and, you know, going to work on these farms, it's, it's pretty cool. Like it is happening.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's happening. You know, you know, I'll just tell you, you know, some of the two programs that we've really landed on, um, that we're really thrilled about is the first is we have an advocacy training program. Cause we saw, wow, I learned some new information and I became a catalyst for so much. So how do we grow this army of, um, you know, messengers? Because right now the environmentalist, it's, there's not really a, an exciting path. There's not a pathway for an environmentalist to feel lit up. You're still just kind of fighting against and a, a system that's beyond winning. Whereas the context of regeneration, the North Star of regeneration is like you can

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  actually see the active participation. You can see the way forward from it. And so, um, we've trained over the last year, 1,400 people have paid us to do, um, to come and do a six week course on Tuesdays and you can do it in person in LA or online, really beautifully well set up, you know, online or in, from 25 countries. Um, and now we have advocates taking on projects, you know, all over the world that are lit up about this possibility, the possibility of regeneration, regenerative agriculture. And, you know, things like, you know, the Rodell Institute, uh, which is one of the longest standing kind of organic, um, it's actually, they coined the term regenerative many, many years ago.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Um, you know, we got a call from the executive director, Jeff Foyer saying, you know, we've been doing this for 50 years and I came up on here and kissed the ground advocacy, like, you know, the way you're communicating is, is working. People are getting it. They're getting inspired.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  And we got another call from another woman who's in the course right now saying, you know, I, I used to be an environmentalist raising millions of dollars and kind of just gave up. And now with this paradigm shift and understanding of regeneration that we can actually reverse the damage done. And it's actually, you know, we're already in manipulation and management of the skin of the earth, the majority of the skin through agriculture. And we can actually, I, I can see how that healing can actually be a solution for, you know, the, the crisis that we're in. And so, um, you know, it's just, so we're, we're basically training people to, um, to be advocates. We're also, you know, Jeff from Commune, Jeff Krasnow.

• 1:37:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Wanderlust.

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Uh, we, we did a free course on Commune, um, that's coming out. Um, I can look up the date.

• 1:37:51Rich Roll?

  Did you shoot it up in the, up in Topanga at his spot there?

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  We shot it up in Topanga.

• 1:37:54Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool up there, isn't it?

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Super, super cool. Um, and so that is, um, that's happening. It's a free 10 day course, um, September 9th, um, on onecommune.com. Um, so yeah, we're basically, we have two programs. We're, we're training advocates, um, to be, be professional, um, spokespeople on behalf of soil regenerative agriculture, and then, you know, giving people pathways to participate in their own communities and how they can, you know, take action. Um, and then the other big problem, project that we're doing is a farmland training program where we're basically, uh, sponsoring farmers, uh, a three-year program. So for 8,000 bucks,

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  we can take a farmer with, you know, 10 acres to 5,000 acres and basically put them through a three-year training program that has an in-person course and then consulting through the three year, the three years and a soil test to know their baseline, you know, where they're at with their soil health and then at, uh, three years. And so, you know, people, you can fund, you can fund a farmer through our work and that basically facilitates a farmer to go through that transition process.

• 1:39:04Rich Roll?

  That's super cool.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  So. Yeah, those are our, those are our main two programs is, is, is, is training farmers and training advocates to really be, you know, the, because we, you know, we understand that to shift a paradigm, you have to have, you know, early adopters and then when you get like 14%, you know, then you can kind of get this bigger. So we're, we're, we're seeing, you know, again, even speaking here on, on your, on your show is kind of like, how do I, you know, connect to influential people, get this to become their narrative and a story that they're carrying, where they speak and they communicate as well as training, you know, any individual in a more long-term.

• 1:39:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  And then the final thing is we've been co-producing a feature-length film with Josh and Rebecca Taccall, filmmakers who made the film Fuel, that won at Sundance about 10 years ago. And the film is called Kiss the Ground, and it's showing some of the best examples nationally in this country of regenerative agriculture being done at scale and showing the, you know, incredible results of, you know, what people are experiencing from, you know, ecosystem restoration as well as from the economic opportunity.

• 1:40:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the interesting thing is how quickly it turns around, right?

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:19Rich Roll?

  Like how, how rapid you, you, when done right, how rapid it, you can regenerate the soil and create biodiversity in, in the ground and the impact that, that that has on water absorption and, you know, a whole litany of things that have downstream impact on improving our environmental health.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, when you heal the soil, you heal the, the ability for water to recharge our aquifers, which right now-

• 1:40:49Rich Roll?

  Right. Right now it just runs off-

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  Runs off, goes into the-

• 1:40:51Rich Roll?

  Goes into our tributaries and into our waterways, creates these algal blooms. It's terrible.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Terrible. So you're, you're, you're recharging aquifers, you're, you're putting nutrient-dense food on people's plates, you're getting rid of, you know, cat, all the chemical inputs that are being, that are, you know, ultimately going downstream as you just described.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  And you're, and you're, you're creating a regeneration of, you know, an economic system for farmers who are, you know, essentially dying. I mean, they're, they're literally struggling massively. So, you know, it's such a, it's such a win-win situation. And that's why, you know, when I, when I, when I, when I saw it and I just got it, it was just like, wow, this is what my life is for.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:41:44Rich Roll?

  Who was the one farmer who was saying he was getting 0.5% to 1%?

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Al, Al, Alan Williams.

• 1:41:52Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, remarkable. In three-year period on a 5,000-acre ranch, he was able to triple his forage. So basically, he was able to bring grassland that was very spotty and almost kind of desertifying, basically tripled the amount of grasses. And basically, through his adaptive rotational grazing of, of animals, of, of cows, he was able to basically regenerate the, the forage, which is the food for the cows, three times, such that he could have three times more cattle on that, on that piece, on that one piece

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  of land. So ultimately, you know, the neighbors is like spotty, almost, you know, completely desertified, growing corn and soy. And he's taken a land that's been that, that over so many years. And then every year, putting somewhere between four to 10 tons of carbon sequestered in the ground, able to produce more food per acre because he's tripled, he's, he's basically tripled his forage on, on that land. And so he's totally, you know, his, his, the ecosystem services have been regenerated, his, his, the economic opportunity has been regenerated.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  And essentially, you know, the, the, we're just in an orthodoxy that is, you know, we need chemicals, we need big ag, we need these to feed the planet, to feed the world. And, you know, as we, as we, you know, train farmers and create communities of farmers, because to have multiple farmers in an area together, having a success, then that becomes a very powerful symbol and reputation for people to, you know, maybe make that transition. Because as, as, as are all people, you know, we're all, we're all stubborn in our own ways. We think we've been doing things the right way and it's hard to change.

• 1:43:52Rich Roll?

  Right. Speaking of stubborn, like, how do you, how do you square philosophically this work that you're doing with Kiss the Ground with the fact that you're like an impresario of the plant-based lifestyle and this vegan restaurant empire? Like, you know, part of me feels like, I get it, but also like, let's move away from the cows. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm sure you're on the receiving end of criticism, like, hey, you're supposed to be this vegan guy, but you're talking about sequestering carbon in these farms by virtue of grazing. Right? So how do you think about that or respond to that?

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's been a big, that's been a big, I mean, I don't know if you remember, we, there was this whole

• 1:44:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  Kind of

• 1:44:45Rich Roll?

  There was big controversy.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Big controversy. We had six weeks of protests and people, you know, saying, "My family are murderers." And it was intense. And, yeah, I mean, you know, I think the thing that we as human beings, the thing that

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  We most dislike is when people know new information but continued to lie to your face based on, you know, it's good for business to do that. This was not good for business to tell the story of, hey, we went, we moved to, we went to open Be Love Farm as raw food vegans. And we were, you know, figuring out how to grow vegetables for our vegan restaurant, realizing, wow, to grow vegan vegetables, we need remnants of animals, nitrogen, manure, either coming from a CAFO situation of, you know, a really terrible situation, or, you

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  know, blood meal, bone meal, fish emulsion, and, you know, reckoning like, wow, a lot of these vegetables that, you know, were, you know, making up our vegan diet are coming from the fertilization of the decomposition of dead animals. And so that was like a big kind of shocker. And

• 1:46:18Rich Roll?

  There's no way to grow those vegetables otherwise in a scalable way?

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  I mean, there's agriculture called veganic agriculture, which, you know, I think it's a beautiful, you know, I think that people have made that their, like, their, their, their edge and they're doing it. But if you look to biodynamics and, you know, all the, all the organic pioneers of agriculture that really were thinking in holism and whole cycle systems and really seeing, how do we make agriculture mimic nature? Because most

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  monoculture or grain or vegetable production is tilled monoculture, vegetables, grains, legumes. And

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  Essentially, the way you fertilize that is you work in partnership with animals to graze over that and re-fertilize. But again, inside of, you know, everything has to bring something to the table. And, you know, people are farmers, they're cultivating food to have it be a way that they can cultivate food as well as an economic opportunity. You know, for us, it was like, alright, we saw, we'd rather steward cows and have them be able to eat our grass and fertilize our soil versus getting cafo manure from down

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  the road, or fish emulsion from Lake Superior. And, you know, some people eat meat on the farm, and just felt like, alright, we're humbly learning how to grow organic food in the most sustainable or regenerative way, looking to the forefathers of that wisdom and what we're understanding and what makes sense. Oh wow, there is this architecture of life and death that's always been in nature that has cycling nutrients. And while there is life and death in that system, there's overall a proliferation of

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  more life and life continues, not as a, you know, not like, there's not individuals that die, but the overall system remains healthy and continues to rejuvenate itself. And so, you know, as we walk through that process ourselves, and, you know, my dad had been 40-year vegetarian, I had been vegetarian for 35 years, and I'm still mostly, I live mostly, you know, 90% a plant-based lifestyle, and eat plant-based diet, because it's what I've eaten for my life and I feel good on it. But I hope people would honor that we went to learn how to do it, you know, and do it

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  ourselves, and growing food, and what we came to, to create this 21 acres of, you know, and to have this continual regenerative effect. It was going to require, you know, the grazing of animals and the fertilization of those animals and to pay for the cost of that, you know, whether it's they bring milk to the table as an income opportunity or meat or bone, you know, there's, you know, everything has to, you know, every, in a farming system, we're harvesting crops to sell it and it's kind of the, the, the system.

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  So, you know, I, I get what felt like a really hard, almost betrayal from like, hey, you guys were the vegan family and, and, and I, and I get that there's like this disappointment when you feel like you, someone embodies something or you think they embody something and this is what they represent for you and then they say, hey, I changed my mind or I, I'm doing something different. But again, I would, I would just hope that people would have to respect that, you know, we're just telling the truth of what we're learning and we're in our process of understanding

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  what is the, the best way to care for, you know, this living planet and have it be continuously alive and vital. And, you know, in that system, death has always been a part of that.

• 1:50:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's, uh, I mean, certainly I'm no expert on, on agriculture and farming and, and these issues, but I think as humans, we have this impulse to be reductive in our reasoning. And, you know, the vegan community obviously didn't, there was a portion of it that didn't embrace this, you know, this, this fact as, you know, as welcoming as, as I would think that you would have wished. And it's hard, you know, I think life and issues like this are more complicated and nuanced. And again, it goes back to telescoping out and trying to look at these things from 10,000

• 1:51:37Rich Roll?

  feet and grappling with, you know, what the best possible solution is. I mean, if you're, you can be the most ardent hardcore militant vegan of all time, but if you're, you know, Consuming a ridiculous amount of single-use plastics. I mean, I just saw a news article, I think it was yesterday, that it was snowing plastic in the Arctic. Like, then are you really in the solution? Like, there's always more things that we can do. We all have blind spots. And sometimes the the truth of these matters is a little bit more nuanced and complicated than than we would wish it to be.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:52:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, this was this was terrible for business to like, you know, share this story.

• 1:52:20Rich Roll?

  We were like boycotted, and there were all kinds of articles about this when it happened.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it was.

• 1:52:27Rich Roll?

  But then, you know, telescoping out, like, you're the guys who are who are serving up more plant-based meals than almost anybody on the planet. So are you in the solution? Or are you in the problem? You know, these these answers are are not there, you know, there's a lot of gray. It's not everything is black and white.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:52:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  And again, we, you know, five, 10 years from now, you know, I I hope there'll be an evolution in the story of, you know, that I'm telling and, you know, what we've continued to learn as we've explored down this path and understanding the the process of regeneration and the, you know, the importance of animals in that system. And it's, yeah, it's just what what we understand at this point. And, you know, I I I hope that I continue to be able to tell the truth about the process of learning.

• 1:53:23Rich Roll?

  Well, there's certainly plenty that we can all agree on. And that is that we are running out of time, that we are definitely in the midst of a insane cataclysmic environmental crisis, that actions need to be taken. They need to be taken swiftly and intelligently. We do need to reduce our our, you know, our meat consumption, our plastic consumption. We need to live more sustainably, and we need to live more in rhythm with nature's, you know, gestalt. And we've moved so far away from that. And I'm heartened by.

• 1:54:01Rich Roll?

  The younger generation's desire to live more purpose-driven lives and and the care that, that, that, you know, people younger than myself tend to tend to take for the planet that my generation has failed to do so. And so I remain hopeful and optimistic, but also tentative because so much work remains to be done.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  Do you know Charles Eisenstein? Has he ever been on your show?

• 1:54:26Rich Roll?

  Uh-uh.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  You know his name or no?

• 1:54:28Rich Roll?

  It sounds familiar.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  He wrote two beautiful books, one called The Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, and then one called Climate: A New Story. But a really beautiful philosopher thinker, like a modern day brilliant mind of our time. And, you know, he quotes Thich Nhat Hanh's term of interbeing, which really, I think, to, you know, as far as how do we, how do we live in reverence and appreciation and understanding that we are all part of a life and death cycle? And how can we be grateful and appreciative?

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  You know, whether it's plants or animals that, you know, die and we consume to create our life? How can we live in reverence and appreciation of that, that process? Of life and death is the architecture of this universe. And every time we do have a meal, whether it is plants or animals and, you know, even the best vegan meal required, you know, a, a system of cropping that ultimately killed lots of beings. And, you know, can we be in reverence of, you know, that we engage and are participating in this universe with that architecture? And can we be grateful and do our best to make sure that we're caring for

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  those things that we require along the way? And that those that require, you know, that we require to consume and to, to, you know, sustain our lives? And I think there's a beautiful quote by a guy named Wendell Berry, who's kind of a godfather of natural farming. And he's also a poet. And he said, "Every day, we break the body and spill the blood of creation. If we do it knowingly, carefully, and reverently, it is a sacrament. If we do it with greed, gluttony, and carelessness, it is a desecration." And yeah, I mean, to me, the big, the big wake up is it's not just,

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  you know, it's not just one thing. It's, it's, it's our relationship to all things. And how do we live more in an awareness of interconnection? And awareness of gratitude for everything that supports our life? And then when we are grateful for it, you know, the inclination is to care for it and want it to have its best expression of life that it can have.

• 1:57:08Rich Roll?

  Hence, "Kiss the ground," which comes from Rumi.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:57:12Rich Roll?

  The name of your child.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  The name of my child. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

• 1:57:15Rich Roll?

  What is the full quote?

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  The full quote is, "Let the beauty you love be all that you do. There's hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

• 1:57:28Rich Roll?

  Beautiful. I think that's a good place to round this out.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:57:34Rich Roll?

  Thank you for the work that you do and that you continue to do. It's been inspiring, being in your orbit over the years. I can't remember when we first met. It was many years ago. We just continued to cross paths and our friend circle definitely overlaps. And I can always count on a hug from you when I walk into the restaurant. You're not always there, but you're there quite, you're, you're there more than I would suspect, right?

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  Totally. Yes.

• 1:57:59Rich Roll?

  And with everything that you're doing with Kiss the Ground, so if people are listening and they want to learn more and get involved with Kiss the Ground.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we'd love everyone to become a soil advocate. It's the new environmental movement. Be the regeneration generation, the regeneration generation. So yeah, our soil advocacy training, you can find that on KissTheGround.com. Follow us on IG, Instagram, KissTheGround, at KissTheGround. And then Fund a Farmer, if you're inspired by this story. And we just got, you know, someone just, we just got an anonymous Fund a Farmer $8,000 arrived this morning from someone who just said, wow, I want to fund a farmer towards regeneration. So for $8,000, we can have a farmer be on the path to regenerating their land. And it's very, very exciting.

• 1:58:50Rich Roll?

  It's similar to Farmer's Footprint a little bit.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're actually their fiscal sponsor.

• 1:58:54Rich Roll?

  Oh, you are? Okay, cool.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  So we're very connected and tied in with Zach Bush and their whole team and stuff.

• 1:59:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Nice, man. And what's coming up on the horizon?

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  What's coming up on the horizon? Let's see. Kiss the Ground Wise, the feature-length film narrated by Woody Harrelson.

• 1:59:10Rich Roll?

  When's that coming out?

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  Last quarter of this year. So we're still working on what's the distribution plan for it. But the film is done. So very, very excited about that. The, yeah, please, we have a couple more soil advocacy trainings this year, so jump in that. And as I said, Fund a Farmer. And then on the Cafe Gratitude front, we have a Meatless Mondays, which is kind of like, why are you guys meatless Mondays? You're meatless every day. But we're basically encouraging omnivores and carnivores to come and have a great plant-based experience, and we'll pick up half the tab. So we basically, every week at all of our restaurants, we have two or three items,

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  or two items, that are 50% off as a way to encourage, you know...

• 2:00:00Rich Roll?

  For everybody, or only if you declare yourself to be an omnivore?

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no, for everybody, but you have to, you have to join our loyalty program. But basically, yeah, every Monday, and we've encouraged Tokai to take it on, and they might jump on, Sage might take it on as a way to, yeah, I mean, Meatless Mondays is a, you know, it's a, it's a cool way to shift the collective consciousness to have, you know, one day a week where we say, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take care of my body, and I'm gonna take care of the planet by not consuming, you know, you know, what is oftentimes the most destructive food on the planet. So, and then, another cool thing, we're doing a partnership with Jaden Smith. It's kind of an upgrade to the gratitude bowl.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  It's called the I Love You Bowl, and it's gonna be a dish that'll be kind of his favorite, you know, meal in a bowl, a pink bowl, which is kind of his color, and it will say, "I love you" on the bottom of the bowl, and for every bowl that you buy in the restaurant, we'll feed one homeless meal that same bowl off of his truck, because he has a truck called I Love You Bowl.

• 2:01:07Rich Roll?

  He calls, he's got the I Love You Truck.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  I Love You.

• 2:01:09Rich Roll?

  I was wondering whether you guys might be behind that?

• 2:01:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah, you know, he, he said there was parts of it that were inspired by Cafe Gratitude, but when I saw him do it, I called him, and he was like, "Let's do this."

• 2:01:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  And so, we're now in the development, and we're, we're aiming to launch it the last quarter of the year, and hopefully, serve 10,000 bowls, so we can give away 10,000 bowls.

• 2:01:28Rich Roll?

  That's cool. That's amazing. How cool is that kit?

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 2:01:31Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 2:01:32Speaker 01

  What a, what a bright, heart-centered, human being, present, that whole family. Yeah, beautiful. So, that's happening, and, yeah, I love you, and thanks for listening, and thanks, Rich, for this amazing opportunity to share.

• 2:01:48Rich Roll?

  I love you too, Ryland. Thank you for sharing. You are amazingly grounded, and centered, and present, and calm amidst all the amazing things that you're doing, which is a whole other podcast conversation that we could have about how you comport yourself in the world. But I respect you so much. I'm in awe of what you've created, and it's an honor to talk to you today. So, thanks, man. Cool. So, websites, all that kind of stuff, Kiss the Ground.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  Send it to you or we're writing it down now?

• 2:02:21Rich Roll?

  No, just tell me where people can go directly.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  So Love Being Ryland is my, that's actually my first Abounding River board game name. Love Being Ryland. So it's an abundance word, a spirit word in my name, and I chose it as my Instagram handle because I'm a love being. Love Being Ryland is my personal Instagram, and at Cafe Gratitude, at Gracias Madre, at Gratitude Kitchen and Bar, which are our third restaurant. Actually, that's another cool thing that's happening is we just hired a brand new chef for the Gratitude in Beverly Hills and are going to kind of totally revolutionize that menu.

• 2:02:56Rich Roll?

  Nice.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  So it'll be not kind of, I mean, it'll be foundationally gratitude quality ingredients, but like on the next level culinary expression, a guy named Jason Wood. So really excited about that. And then as far as Instagram, it's at Kiss The Ground, KissTheGround.com is, you know, the website there. And then I said CafeGratitude.com, GraciasMadre.com, and GratitudeKitchenBar.com. And I think that is, yeah.

• 2:03:33Rich Roll?

  I think that's it. I think we did it.

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  We did it.

• 2:03:35Rich Roll?

  How you feel?

• 2:03:36Speaker 01

  I feel great.

• 2:03:37Rich Roll?

  Feel good?

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  Feel great.

• 2:03:38Rich Roll?

  We did good, right?

• 2:03:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought it was really, yeah, I was concerned how the whole meat conversation was going to come up.

• 2:03:46Rich Roll?

  It's tricky.

• 2:03:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:48Rich Roll?

  But we had, we had, we had, the only way out is through, my friend.

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:03:52Rich Roll?

  And we walked through it.

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  Totally. No, it felt, it felt, it felt honoring and responsible and truthful and yeah.

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. We'll come back and talk to me again sometime.

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  Amazing. I just, I just, I figured I'd tell you this news because I was just in. Orcas Island this past weekend.

• 2:04:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  For the first time, beautiful place, by the way. But I talked to Mike Posner while I was there.

• 2:04:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  The last time I talked.

• 2:04:17Rich Roll?

  Get it on the mic. I gotta hear this.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:04:20Rich Roll?

  You talked to Mike before or after the rattlesnake bite?

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  After the rattlesnake. Yeah, after the rattlesnake bite. He told me, he told me play by play, the whole story. I mean, it's, it's a miraculous story.

• 2:04:33Rich Roll?

  I mean, he is like hurting, dude. Like he got, I mean, you see the video of him and you're like, this is not, no joke.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  This is, yeah, could be a month plus of recovery. And yeah, just be, he's in an amazing space about it. He, he, you know, he sees the opportunity to, he sees it as the perfect temptation for giving up or stopping or having total justification.

• 2:05:04Rich Roll?

  But the positivity with which he's, he's walking through this is so impactful for everybody that loves and follows him because they're like, look at this guy. Like, look what happened to him. And still he checks in every single day and he's like happy and forward looking and all of that. And it's, it's like, I aspire to that.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is.

• 2:05:26Rich Roll?

  Level of character.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  A beautiful being and he's doing great and he's gonna walk it out and I'm gonna, I'm gonna meet him in Venice for his final, his final stretch.

• 2:05:35Rich Roll?

  Are you? I'll, I'll join you. I, I was thinking of flying out and joining him for a, you know, part of the walk.

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  Oh, awesome. Yeah, I, I hadn't, I hadn't thought about it.

• 2:05:43Rich Roll?

  Even up before the bite though, I'm like, this dude is taking his time. Like, he's still like in the middle of the country. How long is this gonna go on for? You know, he could be out there for like an entire year at this point.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  I, I think his, I think he, what he, how many, I think he's what, 30 days, 30 or 60 days from after, after he comes back from two months.

• 2:06:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  Thirty, one, one or two months, I think. But I know in queue, you know, in queue, the poet.

• 2:06:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  He's a good friend of his and he's gonna meet him on, on, on Lincoln or something to do the final stretch.

• 2:06:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, well, I'm definitely there for that.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'd love to do that final stretch with him.

• 2:06:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, but it came up because the last podcast I listened to of your show was his, was his episode with you, which is awesome.

• 2:06:30Rich Roll?

  He's the best.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:32Rich Roll?

  So.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 2:06:33Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:06:34Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Talk soon.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Peace, plants.

• 2:06:40Rich Roll?

  Good stuff. I love that dude. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Please do me a favor. Hit Ryland up on the socials. Show him some love. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter at LoveBeingRyland. And you can even learn more info about all of his amazing work at KissTheGround.com or at CafeGratitude.com. Plus, I'll put links up to everything that we talked about in the show notes at RichRoll.com as I always do. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, subscribe, rate, and comment on the show on Apple Podcasts. That really helps new people discover what we're doing here. Tell your friends about your favorite episodes. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and you can support us on

• 2:07:23Rich Roll?

  Patreon at RichRoll.com/donate. I want to take a minute to appreciate the people, my team, that helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the podcast and the short clips. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ally Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Anna Lama. Appreciate the love, you guys. I will see you back here next week with American marathon runner Scott Falbel. You might remember him from last year's Boston Marathon when he ran an incredible 209. Here's a clip to take you out, but until then, why don't we take a minute to remember what

• 2:08:06Rich Roll?

  Ryland told us today? "Love is not something found in a person, place, or thing. It's something that is ever-present in our hearts and always available as a gift, and it costs nothing to share it." Peace, plants. Namaste.

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  The sport is a lot simpler when you just don't worry about all this stuff. It's just running, realistically. Everyone wants to make it this big complicated thing, but it's a pretty simple thing. Everyone can go for a run. And you don't have to think about all these tactics all the time. You don't have to worry about the courses, or the hills, or the turns, or the weather. It's just running. Just get out of your own way. One of the buzzwords in sports and business right now is "process-oriented." And for me, what that means, being process-oriented, means A, focusing on day by day, and B, not judging my performances down the line against other people. They're based on what I feel like I can do and whether or not I got the most out of myself.

• 2:09:08Speaker 02

  And so, for me, I don't need to worry about anyone else. I just want to do the best that I can do. And the more I get sucked into what other people are doing, the worse the end result ends up being, I think. Really, I'm free to take big chances. I'm free to go out there and just run as hard as I can, and whatever those results are will be fine, because the things that are really important, the people that I care about, will still be there.