My guest today is Rinaldo S. Brutoco, Founder and Chairman for Seven Oaks Ranch. We’ll be talking about all-organic Aloe Cadabra®, the USA’s first FDA-cleared organic vaginal lubricant and daily moisturizer, and toxic chemicals found in lubricants that can easily be absorbed through the skin. Rinaldo is a successful entrepreneur, executive, author, and futurist and the Founding President of the World Business Academy. His work includes clean energy; climate change analysis and mitigation; sustainable business strategy; values-driven leadership; global reconstruction; organic products; and financial products for Sustainable Responsible Impact Investment. Certified organic for more than fifteen years, Seven Oaks Ranch grows and distributes organic produce such as tomatoes, Aloe vera, Meyer lemons, Hass avocados, and garlic. More than seven years ago SOR opened its certified organic kitchen and production facility, where great care is taken to handcraft each of its products. What began as an eleventh-grade economics-class project for young Orion Brutoco and his classmates at Oak Grove School, the project quickly grew into something more: a real business manufacturing a variety of organic and natural products with nationwide distribution. The first product was Garlic Gold®. In 2011 SOR created an organic cosmetics division and proudly announced the nationwide release of its first all-organic cosmetic product Aloe Cadabra. Rinaldo and his wife of 34 years reside in Santa Barbara, where he is also a very active father of four grown children and three grandchildren. www.aloecadabra.com | www.garlicgold.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
All Organic Lubricant for Women
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Rinaldo Brutoco
Date of Broadcast: December 11, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. And if I sound a little different today, it’s because I don’t have much voice.
Actually, I do other things besides talk about toxics. One of the things that I do is at Christmas time, I sing with a group. We get all dressed up in Dickens costumes and sing Christmas songs at various places. We had our first performance over the weekend and I think too many parties. Too much singing, too many parties, so I have a little bit of laryngitis this morning, but the show must go on and we’re going to have a really good show today.
We have good shows every day. And if you haven’t listened to all the shoes (I think there’s more than 200 of them now), you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and you can listen to all the shows we’ve ever done except number one. We didn’t get number one recorded.
But also, I’m working on the shows transcribed. And so we’re transcribing all the current shows, but also, as quickly as I can get them done, the past shows too. So I can read about them. You can listen to these shows. There’s so much great information and we’re going to have more great information today.
It’s Tuesday, December 9th 2014 and we’re going to talk about something that I think a lot of women (and men too) would be interested in and that is a lubrication for women over a certain age who needs such a thing. We’re going to talk about that because it’s something that people need and want, but many of the commercial products are full of toxic chemicals (which we’re going to find out). But there are natural and organic products available to use instead.
My guest today is Rinaldo Brutoco. He’s the founder and chairman of Seven Oaks Ranch and we’ll be talking about one of the many products that they produce called Aloe Cadabra. It’s the USA’s first FDA-cleared organic vaginal lubricant and daily moisturizer and there are no toxic chemicals.
This is so important because toxic chemicals in lubricants such as this can easily be absorbed through the skin and especially mucous membranes in those sensitive parts of the body.
So let’s get right to it! Hi, Rinaldo.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Hello, Debra Lynn. Thanks for having me on the show.
DEBRA: Thank you so much for being on. I originally wanted you to be on because of Aloe Cadabra, but I see from your bio that you do so many different things. Tell us how you became interested in making natural products.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Sure! I’ve been an organic customer for over 35 years. It’s always been something to keep toxics out of my diet and in a constant [inaudible 00:03:55] that way. And when I moved to Ojai, California (about almost 20 years ago now), I decided to take a chemical ranch and prove that you can turn it into a vibrant, organic property. It was only about 12 ½ acre, which is fairly small for a ranch, but there was enough for me to do. We opened up Seven Oaks Ranch as an organic facility with three years of transition of course. And then I got it certified. It remains certified to this day. I sold it almost five years ago now.
And when I was there, I had started growing products. My first product was garlic. And then I started adding all kinds of other organic products. Every week, were at a farmer’s market. The garlic became an indicator for me of how to improve my yield as a farmer, move further up the food chain so to speak and become a producer, a manufacturer. That’s where I thought the profits were.
I wanted to make this something permanent, so we launched a product line called Garlic Gold, which is 100% organic. All of our products are 100% organic including the lubricant. And so what we did is we launched Garlic Gold. There are only two ingredients in Garlic Gold, extra virgin organic olive oil and organic garlic. It says in the label that’s all. There are no monosyllabic words on my label.
DEBRA: That’s good.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: So we started making that product. That’s now become a line of 15 different SKU’s. And then about three or four years ago, we decided to launch an organic cosmetics division because I became increasingly aware of the toxicity in cosmetics. It troubled me greatly because I’ve been very much in love with my wife for 35 years and I did not want her to continue to be subjected to what I thought as a toxic stew when we were both being so careful of what we ate.
And so we created that division called Live Well Brands, by the way, which is the division that sells Aloe Cadabra and we launched the Aloe Cadabra product. It went nation-wide almost immediately. It’s in every CVS in America. It’s in a whole ton of Walgreens. It’s in Whole Foods and most places. It’s in a variety of other outlets, plus of course, it’s always available on our website, which is always the best price you’ll get, from our website with typically free shipping and stuff like that.
So we’re happy to support retail chains to put an alternative on the shelf, which is non-toxic and which is extraordinarily pleasurable and so we launched the product.
And by the way, you mentioned in the opening, it’s true, vaginal dryness affects about 85% of all women in peri- and post-menopause. But it also turns out that we’ve got a customer market in young women who had just given birth. I could show you testimonials from young women who really found their marriages on the rocks because they just could not return to their normal, naturally lubricated state after giving birth. It was terribly challenging for them and their significant others.
We also discovered that it’s phenomenally well-regarded in the LGBT community (although we never thought of that at the time). I now know that about 40% to 45% of our customers are men and I’m really proud of that because men who care enough about the women or the other men in their life to use something non-toxic is a mark of a good man.
DEBRA: I totally agree with you. I do have your product and I’ve tried it and I do think that it is remarkably pleasurable. It really makes a big difference. I mean, it feels really nice. It really feels nice and it doesn’t feel like you’re using something artificial at all…
RINALDO BRUTOCO: …which we’re not.
DEBRA: No, you’re not! It’s just as natural. I think it says on your website something like, “It’s as natural as nature. It’s as natural as you are.” It feels natural.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah, and the reason is we actually went into some trouble to create it, so it mimics natural feminine muscosity, so it actually feels like the normal, real thing that your body used to produce.
DEBRA: It does, it does.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: And it also totally matches vaginal pH, which is really important because drying or osmolality has now been identified by the Whole Health Organization as one of the leading contributing factors of the transmission of sexually-transmitted disease or STD. So if you don’t want to increase your vulnerability, you don’t want to have a high osmolality rating and things like K-Y and Astroglide are off the blooming charts. I mean, the Whole Health Organization could never distribute them. They’ve asked for us for samples of our product because our osmolality is the lowest known to any lubricant.
DEBRA: What is osmolality?
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Osmolality is drying factor. So when you use something – and particularly, we sell our product both as a vaginal moisturizer. Most women tend to moisturize their skin, faces and what-not at least once or twice a day and they forget that the part of their body which becomes most adversely affected by their hormonal changes is their female organ. They become very, very dry.
And not to get too graphic for your audience, but if you look at the skin in that area under a microscope, you could literally see the cells have cracks between them very similar to a dry lake bed. It’s through those little cracks that infection and vaginal yeast infections, urinary tract infections, that’s where they enter. That’s why they’re so common today.
Well, osmolality rating is how much more drying a product is that you use. And in that category, the only product that is dramatically below the maximum that the UN recommends is Aloe Cadabra.
I’ll just give you an example. You’ll find this fascinating. If you look at the osmolality rating of K-Y – and I can refer you to a website that has all these. I’m trying to see if I can find it for you quickly. Sexual Wellness News will tell you all about osmolality. The reality is that the amount of drying that occurs from almost every conceivable lubricant is way off the charts or is actually below its maximum [inaudible 00:10:43] by World Health Organization.
DEBRA: We can talk about this more after the break. We need to go to break for the commercial. Otherwise, the commercial will start playing right over you. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Rinaldo Brutoco. He is the founder and chairman for Seven Oaks Ranch that makes and sells Aloe Cadabra, a wonderful organic lubricant for women. You could go to his website AloeCadabra.com and you can enter coupon code DEBRA20 – check it out – to get a 20% discount on this product through the month of December, so try it. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rinaldo Brutoco. He’s the founder and chairman for Seven Oaks Ranch and we’re talking about his product, Aloe Cadabra. That’s the U.S.A.’s first FDA-cleared organic vaginal lubricant and daily moisturizer.
Rinaldo, you did a great job on your website. I’m going to actually go there right now. You did a great job on your website. You have a page called ‘Why?’
RINALDO BRUTOCO: ‘Why?’ Everybody loves that page.
DEBRA: I love that page. Let’s talk about the ‘Why?’ page. Go ahead and tell us about it.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Well, first of all, you were asking, “Who needs this?” And of course, the reason to have it, not just the menopause or age, stress, childbirth, allergies, chemotherapy, vaginal dryness is a major cause –
And our product is natural plant-based, which is really key because it means it’s safe with condoms and toys and all that sort of things as it should be. But it’s also a very powerful way to moisturize.
What we decided to do under the ‘Why?’ page is we showed people what the other products contain. So for example, if you look at K-Y, which is the most popular – the two most popular in the country are K-Y and Astroglide, they both contain propylene glycol. We have a chart that you can see that. We, of course, don’t. Proplylene glycol is the thickening agent used in Anti-freeze. It’s literally used in Anti-freeze.
DEBRA: Yeah, it is.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Talk about a drying agent!
Then petroleum or synthetic-based products. Both K-Y and Astroglide use petroleum-based products that are used traditionally in industrial application. Benzoic acid is a food preservative. We don’t use it.
By the way, all of our products, although we’re not saying that people should use them orally, all of our products are made to food-grade organic standards. So everything we make is 100% edible and toxic-free organic and FDA-cleared.
But then, things I found out like K-Y has hydroxyethylene cellulose, which is using in cleaning solvent, that’s in the product. And then, polyquaternium-15 is used to create body in shampoo and Astroglide uses that as their thickening agent. These are things you would not want to do to a friend, let alone to yourself.
DEBRA: Or to your loved one.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah, particularly where it’s the most sensitive, absorbent part of your female anatomy. And for the LGBT community, they have a similar issue. If they use it in other parts of the anatomy, which are extremely sensitive to absorption.
So the point is if you’re going to watch what you put in your mouth, that’s not only the orifice in your body, please be careful and don’t put highly toxic chemicals that are extraordinarily drying, which will cause you, by the way, to get an undue number of urinary tract infection, et cetera, et cetera.
In fact, I invented the product originally because that’s what my wife was going through. She was like on this yo-yo of going constantly back and forth to the store and having to buy the next cure for what happened. We didn’t know why until –
I’m a bit of a frustrated inventor/scientist and so I started looking into it and oh, my goodness, what’s the oldest healing plant known to human? Well, aloe vera. I looked at 440 strains of aloe vera and only one of them is known to be the healing agent. That’s Barbadensis.
So I started studying Barbadensis, I find it antibacterial and antifungal by nature. I go this is the building block for a great product. About 95.7% of our product is basically organic aloe vera, which has never been heated.
DEBRA: I mean, there’s nothing more healing than that.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Nothing, no.
DEBRA: And so what better product to use in that area of the body. You just got it exactly right.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah. And because it’s natural in every way, there is no clean-up. It will, over time, absorb into your body. You won’t experience any staining of sheets or any of the normal things that can happen because it’s totally natural. Your human body just loves it.
In fact, I tell people, if they haven’t used it before, they should put it on at least once just to get their skin more moisturized before they use it for any intimacy because it will be that much more pleasurable and soothing. We have people write us and say it was sort of like putting water at dry sand at first because it was so absorptive. They loved it. There’s all kinds of wonderful letters.
I just heard Joy Behar on the radio the other with Howard Stern and she was telling the whole audience – this is like last week that she has basically given up sex with her husband because of vaginal dryness and there’s nothing that she can do because she didn’t a single product. So if anybody listening knows Joy Behar, tell her an emergency care package is on its way to her agent for her.
DEBRA: Well, I really can’t say enough about how nice it feels. I mean, even if you just rub it on your hand, it feels nice. And so there are other things that you have besides the aloe. So tell us what else is mixed with it, with the aloe to make it be the texture that it is?
After using it, I thought, “Well, let’s just try…” – I also have just plain aloe vera. I thought, “Let’s just try some aloe vera and see if it’s the same” and it’s not. You’ve definitely made something made its own thing based on the aloe base.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah, it took a while because this product is shelf stable for two years. We don’t use any non-organic ingredient that are not, as I’ve said earlier, food-grade. So it’s not even that I used organic ingredients that you could use in a skin cosmetic preparation. I require everything to be made – we’re the first organic kitchen in Ventura County. We used our organic kitchen as a place where we make our organic products like aloe vera because I want it made literally to that standard.
DEBRA: Right.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: This is for my wife and my friends and as she says to the “sisterhood”, she wants it to be pure. We put things in it like natural vitamin E oil, which we find helps add some lubricity. We like the nourishing quality of vitamin E also as a soothing agent. We do use a little Xanthan, which thickens it up a little bit. It stands up a little stronger than it would if it was just the gel itself.
We do use a very small amount of citric acid from fruits and vegetables. It sounds like that may be stingy, but it’s not. We use a so small amount. That’s how I balance the pH identical to vaginal pH as normally found. In other words, we want vaginal pH to be absolutely identical, so that nothing we’re doing throws the woman’s body off its rhythm.
DEBRA: We need to go to break again, but we’ll be right back and we’ll continue on talking on this subject. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rinaldo Brutoco. He’s the founder and chairman for Seven Oaks Ranch. We’re talking about his product, all organic Aloe Cadabra. Now, again, you can go to AloeCadabra.com like “Abra Cadabra,” like the magic of oil, the magic you’ll feel when you use it and you can get 20% off by entering DEBRA20 at checkout. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rinaldo Brutoco. He’s the founder and chairman for Seven Oaks Ranch. They make all-organic Aloe Cadabra, organic lubricant for women. You can go to their website, AloeCadabra.com and for the month of December, you can get 20% discount if you enter the coupon code, DEBRA20.
Rinaldo, let’s just talk about how Aloe Cadabra is different from other lubricants. You have a very good FAQ page on your website. Let’s start by talking about how is Aloe Cadabra different from other organic and natural lubricants because you’re not the only one in the market, but you were the first and you are unique.
Hello? Are you there?
RINALDO BRUTOCO: I’m right here, Debra. Thank you. I was going to say – I would like to just finish up. I’m going to make an offer also to your listeners. There’s this great doctor. Her name is Dr. Laurie Steelsmith. You may have heard of her. She’s a naturopathic position. She’s literally an MD as well. She’s an acupuncturist. And she’s a huge fan of our product and recommends it in her practice.
She did an article. It’s called ‘Could Certain Lubricants Increase YOUR Risk of Sexually-Transmitted Infections’. We will send a copy – it’s two pages long. We’ll send it electronically to anybody who writes us at info@aloecadabra.com.
And on this second page, I want people to refer to the personal lubricant osmolality chart I was referring to a moment ago. We looked at 15 other products in the marketplace. Now, an osmolality rating for a woman should be close to 260/kg. That’s natural. We come in at 172, which means we are a moisturizer, not a drying agent. We come it 172. Two hundred sixty is the maximum you should hit according to the World Health Organization. K-Y warming jelly is over 10,000.
DEBRA: Whoa!
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Astroglide is over 8000. So what this is telling you – and there’s 15 of them here. Wet Original Gel is over 4000. Even Liquid Silk is over 3000. So I want you to look at that chart because when I say it’s bad for you – I’m literally quoting Dr. Steelsmith. I’d be happy to send you that two-page article. That’s a very extremely well-regarded practitioner. It’s not me writing. It’s her. I urge people to look at it.
The other thing I was going to complete before the commercial came on, you asked us about our ingredients and I wanted to just let people know we do make flavored ingredients. We make Tahitian Vanilla, which is the flavor. It’s delicious. It’s very creamy. It’s delicious. And we flavor it with, for example, organic Stevia just to keep with our organic theme and we only use organic vanilla.
We have French Lavender, which is a scent. The scent is quite delightful. Again, essential oil made from organic lavender. We also make – we started last holiday, we’ve kept it around all year now – Peppermint Tingle, which as you can imagine has a peppermint flavor and adds a certain tingle.
So we have these different flavors. We have Piña Colada, which people really seem to love. We have these flavors as well. All of them including the natural aloe are 100% food grade.
But to go to the FAQ page you asked about –
DEBRA: Wait! Before we go there, I wanted to ask you. You have one that’s unscented, unflavored?
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yes. Yeah, that’s the original, Natural Aloe Cadabra.
DEBRA: Good, good because I know some people who are listening just want things to be very plain and even if it’s essential oils. The lavender is lovely and the French Vanilla. I haven’t tried all the different flavors, but they certainly are enjoyable. You’ve done a really good job.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Thank you. And I’m the chief formulator, so it’s kind of fun. I have to eat my mistakes as well as the staff. If I ended up liking it, that’s what I put on the market. But the point is that the things you’ll find that’s really delightful is our commitment to 100% non-toxicity. That’s what makes us unusual. We were the first organic lubricant in the market. We’re the only one that was cleared by the FDA as well until I think recently (there might be a second one now). But we are very committed to 100% organic.
And many of the good products out there refuse to go to the point of being organic. So for example I like the company Good Clean Living. I think it’s a shame that they don’t get an organic certification. I think I know why they don’t. They don’t apply for it. So they put on their product, on their advertising “uses organic ingredient.” I’m sorry, that’s not good enough. Anybody could use inorganic ingredients. We only use organic ingredient.
DEBRA: And that’s a big difference.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: So the point is we are organically certified.
DEBRA: That is a big difference. We’ve talked about this on other shows, talking about different personal care products, other shampoos and lotions and things like this. There really is a lot of people who put ‘organic’ on the label, but it’s not totally organic and it’s also often not certified.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah. And they’re using the word because they know it attracts people. But let me tell you one of the reasons people do that just so you’ll know. In order to get that, you have to meet a standard, which most people just won’t meet including in my kitchen – I make it in the kitchen, not a factory. I want people to know that. I’m an organically-certified kitchen. That’s the quality level I commit because this was something I wanted to make for my wife. I didn’t care what it took to get it perfect. Not everybody comes to that level of dedication and they tend to go what’s it going to cost before they figure out how they’re going to make it.
But in our kitchen, we are audited on what cleaning solutions we use so there are no toxic residuals on any of our cleaned utensils. You got to go a long way to get that certificate.
DEBRA: I understand. Yeah, we’ve talked about this too about how people, sometimes when you go to a natural food store, for example, the store itself will not be certified organic, but they’re making things like salad bars and deli items and things. They’re making them using organic ingredients, but theoretically, they could be cleaning their kitchen with something toxic. And so you’re not always getting the whole picture of being organic.
So this is one of the reasons, listeners why this is so important, what he’s done because everything is certified throughout. It’s certified ingredients. He’s making it in a certified facility. It’s just organic, organic, organic and not all the products are that way.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: And I think we should demand that of everybody.
Debra; I do too.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: You know why? Because it costs money. I hate to say it because I’m a businessperson. But I think we make decisions. We sort of short shift our customers because we think, “Gee, we can’t afford to do it exactly right, so we’ll do a close to right.” And I’m really impressed by what the great retailers – Neiman Marcus was founded by a guy named Stanley Marcus. He had this quote, “No one ever went broke giving the customer a good deal.”
I think if you’re willing to spend the extra money, yes, you’ll get less money for margin and you’ve got less for advertising. But at the end of the day, people will talk about it and they’ll go, “Wait a second. I don’t want to settle for second best or almost okay. I want toxic-free.”
Plant-based is huge! Everybody should be plant-based. What are we doing in an oil drum making up lubricant?
DEBRA: They shouldn’t even be there. They just should not even be on the planet. We need to go to break again. When we come back, we’ll continue with my guest, Rinaldo Brutoco. I think that we can talk about some other things besides what we’re talking about. I want to talk about your Garlic Gold because I really like it.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Oh, sure.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rinaldo Butoco. He’s the founder and chairman for Seven Oaks Ranch. We’re talking about his all-organic Aloe Cadabra organic lubricant for women. Would you give your email address again and tell people what they can get from you, the article?
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Sure, it’s info@aloecadabra.com. We’ll be glad to send you the Dr. Laurie Steelsmith article on the risk of sexually-transmitted infections from using other lubricant.
DEBRA: Good. Thank you. I’m interested in seeing that. I’m going to send you my email address, so you can send one to me. I wanted you to particularly mention, on your FAQ page, you’re talking about how a plant-based lubricant like Aloe Cadabra differs from a water-based or an oil-based lubricant. And specifically, you made a point about oil-based lubricants running the risk of damaging condoms.
I think that that’s really important. If people are using condoms to – you know, what they use them for. I can’t think of a word today.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Prophylactic.
DEBRA: Prophylactic! Thank you. If they’re using condoms so they don’t get pregnant, if they then use a lubricant, that interferes with the effectiveness of the condom, that’s a big deal.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah, I know. And many, many times, it’s like 200% more likely to break if it’s oil-based. In fact, it says on the box. I’m very proud of something I want to share with you. We made a contribution at the request of the local Planned Parenthood of Ventura County and they asked us for $50,000 worth of our products, so they could give some to each young woman coming in who receives condoms to avoid pregnancy. The reason they asked for it was no. 1, they wanted something non-toxic and no. 2, they wanted to use something that wouldn’t break the condom.
So we’ve done that. we’ve actually delivered right now close to $30,000 of that already. I think we’ve still got over $20,000 in the pipeline because we have it in our warehouse and they pull it out as they need it. It’s all brand new product. None of that is dated. None of that is stuff we were going to throw. And we did that because we want these young women to be able to avoid pregnancy. That’s why they went to Planned Parenthood. We were grateful that they were smart enough to ask us for the product. We’re happy to supply it.
So yes, it’s a very big problem. And you know, silicon itself, which is not good for your body, it stain sheets and everything else, it can also be damaging or less desirable for use with condom. So a plant-based natural product is always the best whether you’re LGBT, female, whether you’re just a nice guy and cares about the other man/woman in your life that you’re interacting with. Let’s be kind to each other and let’s not in pursuit of something, which is normal and healthy like either sexual relationships or self-pleasuring, let’s not introduce toxicity into our lives when we don’t need to. Let’s not do that.
DEBRA: I totally agree, totally, totally agree. Well, I do want to make sure that we talk about Garlic Gold because we only have a few minutes left of the show.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Darn! I enjoyed it. Let’s do it again. I love sharing the good news.
DEBRA: Thank you. And this has been a great show.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah, good.
DEBRA: This has been a great show. You sent me some samples of your Garlic Golden and what I got was these little nuggets of organic garlic that are crunchy (and I sprinkle them all over my salad and they’re gone now because they’re so good and the come in different flavors), you said you had 15 different products? So tell us a little bit about your products.
I also want to mention that his whole business here started because you were doing a class project with your son. Tell us about that too.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yeah. Well, my son was in the 11th grade. He and some buddies of his used to come to me for kind of just advanced economics like how do you apply theoretical economics that you learn in high school to the real world of business. And so I was challenged one day. And my son yelled at me while I was in the kitchen, he said, “Dad, why don’t you make a product out of that garlic thing?”
Now, what he was referring to is I used to do what you now know as Garlic Gold Nuggets. I used to put them on broccoli or string beans or extra virgin olive oil and people would invite themselves to dinner. When we invited them, they’d say, “By the way, would you mind doing that garlic thing when we come.” It got to be a little thing around town.
And so my son and three of his friends decided they wanted to learn how you would create a product out of thin air, so to speak.
We started. They each had a lab notebook. I said, “Well, if I’m going to do this not for five or six or eight people, if I’m going to do it ten gallons or a hundred gallons at a time, we’re going to have to figure out a whole lot of chemistry, we’re going to have to figure out what we’re going to call it, we have to figure out what people would be willing to pay for it.” I mean, this is an entrepreneurial exercise.
And these young men stayed with me all the way through the product launch at the farmer’s market. The reception was so overwhelming, we were kind of like flabbergasted. We decided to keep going and we developed a permanent label and we ramped up the whole situation. At that point, we already had an organic kitchen, so we just made more of it.
Long story short, my son who went through college and did several other things, just about two months ago returned to the company and is now the brand manager for Garlic Gold.
The Garlic Gold, the original product are those crunchy nuggets which stay crunch indefinitely in a bottle, that’s in the bottle we sell you with extra virgin olive oil. They have no after bite or bitterness. Many of our customers would…
DEBRA: That’s right, they don’t.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: None whatsoever. Everything I do is organic of course. So it’s delicious. And what I like it for is because I was looking for a product also that would have no salt in it, but still be full of flavor. So we do have the sea salt nuggets blend that we do, which you’re more than welcome to buy, it’s very popular. But for those people who are like myself, in their late sixties, we make it also with imported parmesan cheese.
DEBRA: Oh, that sounds delicious.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: I was asked years ago, “Why don’t you get domestic parmesan cheese?” and I said, “Because it isn’t as good.” And so I just like to do that to my customers. You sprinkle it on and it’s just phenomenal. And then we make Sea Salt Nuggets, Parmesan Nuggest.
We make a tremendous blend called Italian Herb Nuggets with organic herbs. And if you use that while you’re cooking, it’s just phenomenal. You put it into some tomato sauce, all of a sudden, you’ve got an Italian pizza sauce or you’ve got a great lasagna or whatever, spaghetti.
And we also have Southwest Nuggets, which have that southwest, Hispanic flavor. And then we have Nuggets de Provence, we call it – French nugget. We have several others in the waiting line that we’ll introduce eventually. Please go to our site. It’s called GarlicGold.com. The reason for the name is it looks like little flakes of garlic when it’s floating in the oil. It looks like miner’s gold.
DEBRA: Yes, it does look like that. It does. It’s so delicious. I mean, do you just dehydrate them. How do you get them crunchy like that?
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Well, first of all, I should point out. We’re the only company allowed in the world to sell that product in California. Many states have real strict standards. California is the strictest. You cannot use garlic and olive oil together because normally, they create a bacillus. Many people die here actually. It’s a very strict standard.
DEBRA: Hmmm… I didn’t know that.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: It took us over a year to clear multiple hurdles with state government including we had to submit everything we do in – I think it was 10-second increments of the manufacturing process before we got approved. We are 100% legal in every state, in every country in the world because to your point, we toast the garlic to a point where it has no moisture left. We do it with a flash toasting process. So when you do that, because it has no moisture, the bacillus can’t live. It requires moisture.
So once you’ve done that, you’ve got a crunchy little nugget. Once you’ve got the crunchy nugget, you could put them in the olive oil and it’ll float around, but it’s not going to absorb the olive oil because there’s no water in olive oil. And so we get the benefit of this extra virgin olive oil case.
I really recommend the original product, which is the olive oil and the nuggets together. If you just spoon a couple of tablespoons over any vegetable, particularly broccoli, green beans, you name it, people will go, “Wow! That’s amazing!”
In fact, what I often tell people, “Cook the most expensive dinner you can for your best friend,” like really expensive steaks or lobsters or whatever it is you like (and hopefully, you’re getting sustainable seafood and grass-fed beef), “cook the most expensive dinner you can and then serve that either on your garlic smashed potatoes or your vegetable bowl” and the thing they will talk about after you just spent $10 or $15 a person on raw ingredients, what they’ll talk about is the ¢25 to ¢35 of garlic you put on their vegetable or the potato. They’ll go, “Wow! That was amazing.”
DEBRA: That sounds really delicious.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Yes, they’re crunchy.
DEBRA: They sound so delicious. Anyway, we’re at the end of our time together. I just want to make sure that everybody knows that they can go to either of your websites and get 20% off their purchase whatever people buy for the month of December. And so the websites are AloeCadabra.com and GarlicGold.com. You just enter the coupon code, DEBRA20 to checkout. And if you forget the names, you can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look at the description of the show and those websites are right there linked. You just click on the websites and the information about the 20% discount is there well.
And this show will be transcribed and available next Tuesday. Thank you so much for being on the show. I think you’re doing wonderful things. I really admire how organic you’re being.
RINALDO BRUTOCO: Thank you very much for having me.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
