Matt O'Hayer estimates he's started"about 50 businesses," from carpet cleaning to chartering sailboats.
"I think we've shocked a lot of the marketplace, to think that people would be willing to pay extra for eggs," O'Hayer, 68, says, adding:"It shows that ... people really care about what they eat and where it comes from."O'Hayer's first"sizable" business, which he began at age 20, was a carpet cleaning and janitorial services company in Houston. Other ventures have included aIn the 1980s, he and his ex-wife bought and tried to run a small farm.
The company's free-range chickens roam across a minimum of 108 square feet of farmland each day, foraging for natural grasses and insects. That's not enough, O'Hayer discovered: The hens required additional feed, made from corn and unprocessed soybean meal, to ensure high egg production rates. "The way we expanded was not through relationships, necessarily, but through the fact that our eggs were selling," he says.
It also creates a challenge. A lot of farms don't meet Vital Farms' specifications for humane conditions, from animal welfare and safety requirements to geographical features like tree coverage, a lack of standing water and outdoor grazing space."We work really hard on the front end of a relationship with a farmer to help make sure that that farmer ...