4 questions with Revol Greens CFO James Bradley

Produce Grower: What you lead you into joining the CEA industry and Revol Greens?

James Bradley: My background is in food and beverage, so I was looking for something in food or beverage. I looked at other things, but I really like the team [at Revol] when I met them and spent some time with them early on. And ag-tech is really interesting. Know what has happened in the tomato industry and knowing that the expectation is that we are in the early innings of that here in leafy greens. Working with the team and investors that want to heavily invest in this and grow the space and be a part of that sounded exciting. 

It's also close to home - that worked out well also. 

PG: What has been the early experiance been like working at Revol?

JB: It's been internally focused, just on Revol. We've invested heavily in technology and have a lot of great resources that help us enable it. It's about trying to connect those dots and tie everything together has been a big part of what the focus has been. The financial planning and analysis and building out the tools that allow us to forecast and plan the future has been the focus. I've been working on building out out forecast model. It's all the normal stuff when the CFO jumps into a position like this where you need to build out the tools that you want in place to make the transition from being really a start-up business only a handful of years ago to where it is today and where it's headed. 

PG: What have you learned from your previous stops that you think applies to this industry?

JB: My background has been in consumer businesses since 2009. I was the CFO of the Big Red group and we grew some other brands organically. We acquired other brands and built out that business and ultimately sold it to Keurig Dr. Pepper. And then after that, when SPACs were all around, I became CFO of a SPAC and focused really just on consumer businesses. 

Before that, I did [mergers and acquisitions work] for several years. Another thing I did was at  Red's All Natural, a frozen burrito [and breakfast sandwich] business. Their CFO passed away unexpectedly and I stepped in and we ultimately sold to Bansk Group earlier this year. I jumped in to help them get through that process. I think across any industry, you see companies transition from a small scale business to something bigger and learn what it takes to do that. We want to grow organically - organically is always the best type of [fiscal] growth - but also through acquisitions, so we look at opportunities all the time. That's a big part of my background. 

PG: How do you view the financial outlook for Revol?

JB: We're a start-up. Like most start-ups, you're building a business from scratch. Take Temple, where we just opened that [growing facility] up this year, only a few months ago. We continue to expand that and it's going to be the largest leafy green greenhouse. You incur costs in setting those businesses up with the expectation that they are going to make money in the future. We're a start-up. but looking to grow profitably in the near future.