As of July 2024, Elevated has enrolled 6,385 acres of specialty crops and has committed $3.88 million in incentive funding to more than 23 partner farms in the West and the Southeast.
programs. As of July 2024, Elevated has enrolled 6,385
Sonos, Quiksilver, and Stance. “I believe that 85% of the stuff in your life is a product or label that’s just a thing that does something just fine,” says Brown, as he picks up items off his desk in Park City, Utah. “Like scissors or a water bottle, whatever it is, it’s just a thing. Ten percent of companies are really good at talking about the thing that they make. Sonos make great speakers — so, a great product company. Now, 5% jump this Evel Knievel Snake River and make it to the other side which is Brand. Brand to me is a fully formed, fully realized entity that has opinions and a point of view on everything. It is essentially like sitting across the table from a human being. My intention is to build brands, not to build companies, and sure as hell not to make stuff.” Brazeel was an early Hits investor and was looking for someone to help Elevated Foods. He invited Brown to his house in Palm Springs — a mid-century masterpiece tucked into the mountains right under a cliff — and since he’d never seen the Hits brand bible, Brown presented the full 150-slide pitch on his big Samsung flat screen. “Austin’s Hits deck was just insane and the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen on my wall,” says Brazeel. “My daughter Cassidy was there and Cassidy was like, ‘This guy is cool. You need to work with him.’ She was 28 at the time, so I’m like, if he can speak to that consumer...” This was before the USDA grant and Brazeel took Brown through the early business concept for Elevated Foods. Afterward, Brown couldn’t shake one thought from his mind: “I don’t have any experience in agricultural produce, I probably wasn’t the best person for these guys.” But he decided to sleep on it and the next day, when he was walking through the produce section at a grocery store, he had an epiphany. “At Paul Frank we had
the concept of everything as a canvas whether it was furniture, or bicycles, eyewear, and watches; we did stuff that no one had ever done before and we made it our own. What if we did that to the produce section of grocery stores?” After meeting Brazeel, Brown started seeing the produce section in a new way. He realized there were no real logos, just a couple Chiquita and Dole stickers, things most people are blind to. He looked at the boxes and it was all nondescript line drawings: an avocado, a berry. “I don’t remember seeing anything worth remembering,” says Brown now. “And then it came to me: I could turn this part of the grocery store into an art gallery. All those different colors, shapes, and sizes. And I couldn’t turn it off. Then I remembered Steve and Peter telling me that Elevated Foods is a produce company that will do good, and there it was in the name: Elevate.” Over the next few months, Brazeel and Wells would meet with Brown to brainstorm and talk about the produce section as a white space ripe for takeover. As Brazeel puts it, “Right now an apple is just an apple and an orange is just an orange. We knew they can be transformed through branding and reinvention with creativity and a story.” They riffed on different cross opportunities like functional foods and an Elevated Foods drink and maybe even a health sports bar. It was then that
Brown was recruited to run the Elevated Foods brand. (One of his first moves was to create and become publisher of The Rooted Journal.) “Austin was thinking out to 2050 and I’m just trying to see if we can raise a few bucks to keep this thing going,” says Brazeel. “He was like: You can Elevate anything .” IKIGAI It’s an early summer day and Brazeel is sitting at his desk in his house on Balboa Island in Newport Beach, California. He’s been talking about his journey from picking fruits and vegetables with his dad and siblings in Brawley, to Porsche dreams, to running a successful produce company that almost went bust. Then he gets back to the mission ahead. “I think we have the opportunity to work with these larger growers and larger retailers to move the needle,” he says. For exponential change to occur, however, big operators have to move in the right direction. Brazeel is convinced that will happen. “If you’ve met any of these farmers, they’ll do anything that is best for their land and their production as long as it has merit and is financially sustainable. Because of the grant, we have the opportunity and visibility to make an impact at a higher level and have it resonate throughout the growing community.”
Asked how he would define success, Brazeel first mentions executing the grant in a way the USDA intends and showing what Elevated Foods can do. For next year, success is launching a premier brand that lets consumers know what they are getting, who produced it, and how it was produced when they buy an Elevated Foods product. “We’re building relationships with the retail side of things and I’m excited to place Elevated Foods branded products throughout the fresh
acres of specialty crops and has committed $3.88 million in incentive funding to more than 23 partner farms in the West and the Southeast. “I’m a process builder and we need to build processes that are going to work for us long beyond this grant for when Elevated Foods activates its commercial enterprise,” said Hood Cattaneo. “We are a farmer-centered organization and I’d say we are 99% about the farmer. But Elevated Foods is 100% about making business decisions through a lens that elevates the entire food system.” HIGHER ELEVATION Brazeel worked for years in the produce industry before he realized what it was missing: a defining narrative. Storytelling. Something for consumers to care about. Then he met Austin Brown. At the time, Brown was the branding chief for a cannabis company called Hits. Hits was the result of the cash wave that came after marijuana legally became recreational in California, and Brown and some partners decided to create a company that stood out from the entire landscape. “I saw that there were a bunch of things missing in the industry, so we decided to take a new approach,” says Brown. “We were going to cater to affluent adults and make the product experience more luxurious.” Brown grew up in Southern California and in his teens took photographs of the Orange County music scene and showed his work at group shows with the Beautiful Losers street-artist collective. Now, Brown lives at the confluence of art and commerce, where he channels the outlier influence of alternative cultures and captures that spirit for global lifestyle brands such as Paul Frank,
“Steve runs multiple companies and is the visionary that builds community around him and has the connections to the farms. Peter is the visionary on our approach to all things sustainability,” says Hood Cattaneo. “I present things to them in a way they need it presented so they can make critical decisions. I just consistently check in to see how things are going, what’s unfinished, and how I can help move things forward.” From the moment he met Hood Cattaneo, Brazeel was impressed by her energy and critical-thinking skills and had no doubt she’d be able to manage a $20 million government grant down to the penny. “Peter found her and it was immediately apparent she has this ability to just get stuff done and not need direction,” says Brazeel. “She would just go do stuff and tell us after — beg for forgiveness, not ask permission. Which we like!” Elevated Foods is still quite lean and Hood Cattaneo’s role is something of a hybrid between chief of staff and chief operating officer. The critical part of her role is signing farm partners, working with them to collect data on the climate-smart practices they are implementing, and helping farmers connect with retail partners to increase sales or direct a percentage of their crops to food banks and food box
fruit and vegetable aisle,” says Brazeel, whose goal
is to see this concept live in 2025. “But more importantly, it’s about creating relationships so these growers can build more resilient and profitable relationships with retailers and food- service buyers to stay in business.” As Elevated takes shape, and support for his vision consolidates, Brazeel feels like all the threads of his life are coming together. “I recently spoke to one of the potential early investors for Elevated and I was telling him about the grant and where we are taking Elevated Foods, SunTerra, and Project Food Box. He said to me, ‘You’ve found your ikigai.’” Brazeel didn’t understand so he pulled the word up on his phone and saw that “ikigai” is a Japanese term that refers to doing what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. “And so I started thinking about that. I’m good at produce, I love food and agriculture, I’m good at connecting people, and what the world needs is healthy food and sustainable growing systems,” Brazeel says. “And I know I can get paid for it, that’s where the for-profit part comes in, right? It’s like this nirvana of being where your life encompasses all those pieces and is just magic.”
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ISSUE 01
ELEVATED NATION
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