Part 2 picks up with Alejandro Vélez fresh off turning down a signed investment banking offer to grow mushrooms with a friend named Nikhil. What came next was five years of urban farming and waste collecting, building equipment out of a local Home Depot, and running the "office" out of the Starbucks across the parking lot. Alejandro talks about the moment that idea turned into a mission: getting families and classrooms across America to experience the magic of growing their own food. He also shares the dream that's still driving him today: a Back to the Roots so woven into American households that gardening becomes a required part of growing up, literally written into how kids graduate from school.
This is Part 2 of 2. If you missed Part 1, you can listen to it here:
🔗 CONNECT WITH US:
Back to the Roots: https://backtotheroots.com
Alejandro's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandrovelezramirez
Nikhil's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aroranikhil
[00:00:00] Alejandro Vélez: Hey everyone, I'm Alejandro Velez, co-founder and co-CEO of Back to the Roots. This is part two of my interview, and if you haven't listened to part one yet, go back and start there. In this one, we get into the company itself, how Nikhil and I walked away from lucrative job offers to becoming urban farmers and waste collectors, and how we went from one product in one Whole Foods market to over two hundred products in over ten thousand stores today, and really what the American dream actually means to me. All right, let's get into it.
[00:00:40] Interviewer: What inspired you to start Back to the Roots?
[00:00:44] Alejandro Vélez: Giving up this investment banking job offer to become a waste collector was pretty crazy, right? I mean, people thought I was nuts. Nikhil, my co-founder, did the same thing. He was going into consulting, gave up his offer to start this thing that we called Back to the Roots.
We had no real supply, no real demand, but, uh, we said, "Hey, you know, we're twenty years old. Let's just... Let's go do this." The beautiful thing about this is above or before we had a product, we had a very clear mission, like, or an idea of, "Hey, this is beyond the products we create." Like, as we started learning to grow food, we're like, "This is magic."
Like, we're taking waste, stuff that we were throwing away, and we were using it not as a waste, but as a wasted resource that we could then use to grow other stuff and give life. And I'm like, w-we hadn't grown anything in our lives. We hadn't gardened before, and it just felt so cool, and we said, "Let's just do this, and let's connect people to food.
Let's let them realize where food comes from." And keep in mind also, we, we were standing on the shoulders of a lot of just the giants of the organic and natural food movement. You know, this was in two thousand and ten, so we already had a couple decades of folks like Michael Pollan, the author that has really broken down how broken our food system is, Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farms, John Foraker, the CEO of Annie's, John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods.
These are folks who had, were kind of] hearing about this, and then we're like, "Oh my gosh," like, "that is so cool," the idea of not putting thousands of chemicals into our food. And then on the other side, we were getting inspired to grow food. So that led us to just double down on this company, and we went from selling one, you know, item first, and, you know, it was a produce item that we sold to Whole Foods Market, and then we had a little mushroom kit that we sold to The Home Depot.
We walked in, and we just pitched The Home Depot, and for five years, that was it. We were selling fresh mushrooms and a little mushroom kit. And then five years doing that, five AM to, you know, we'd demo at nights. After we planted and harvested, we'd go and demo at night. And then it led to us saying, "Hey, we want other people to grow their own food," and that's really k- kind of the last evolution of Back to the Roots, which is now over 200 SKUs that we have in over 10,000 stores around the United States, and it's a very simple, we're the pure organic garden brand, brand that wants to get you to grow.
We want a garden in every home, every classroom, and we have to have that garden be organic. How did the mission behind Back to the Roots evolve? After giving up our offers, we, for five years straight, we became urban farmers and waste collectors. In that, we were actually building our warehouse and all our equipment from our local The Home Depot at the Emeryville, Emeryville Home Depot store.
And then our office was the Starbucks right in front. There's a Starbucks right, right in front of the Home Depot, uh, and that was our office. That's, uh... So we, for five years, did this continuously. And then through that we realized, like, "Oh my gosh," like, "we wanna be able to create, like, this magic of us growing in an urban setting."
Like, we want this to be in every home, every classroom of America. We want this. Like, imagine if we could get millions of people to experience this magic. Like, we don't know what it'll do, but just that spark of just curiosity around growing food. It's wild to grow food. I mean, it still blows my mind how you're turning nothing into something, and that's what the brand's about.
It's about inspiring a whole new generation to grow food, inspiring a whole just community to connect to food, know where your food comes from. That's what we wanna build. We wanna... Like, that's, that's what Back to the Roots is all about. So if we kind of fast-forward to what happened, we went from one product in one store, and then which we would demo at, and at this point now I've demoed in hundreds of the Home Depots. I mean, I've been in hundreds of Home Depots in this decade-long overnight... This has been a long, a long night, but it's an overnight success story. And through that, we now have 200 different products that all hit at the same clear mission. We wanna get every single person to grow their own food, and we want that to be organic.
[00:05:15] Interviewer: Do you think you've achieved success?
[00:05:17] Alejandro Vélez: I think so. A lot of people now, I think, talk to me about success, and I don't like to talk about success. I like to think about what is it that you do every day, and does it give you energy or take energy away from you? So when I wake up every day, I'm so energized to come to work.
I work with people who I have tremendous respect for. I work with partners that are super smart, have extremely high expectations for this brand and what we can achieve, and that is really energizing. I get to solve problems every day, really tough problems, and competing against some fierce competitors.
That ultimately is a lot of fun. Like, I love that aspect of it. So I am absolutely living the American dream. Is that success? I don't know, and I don't care. Like, I wake up, I have energy every day, I'm doing something I love with people I love. I believe in this brand, and I want more people to live this too.
I fell in love with retail, creating products. I mean, it's mind-blowing how a product gets to a shelf. It is the number of touchpoints, the number of people that have to be involved and coordinated to get a product perfectly on a shelf. Like, you have to get raw materials that are sourced from all around the country, sometimes around the world.
You bring it to some probably warehouse, for the most part. You then put it together with, you know, a team that then get puts into case packs, palletized, truckloads that again ship to distribution centers, which then end up to a local store or the Home Depot. And then you have a Depot associate that magically knows what to do with that widget and put it in that perfect location.
That is, like, the coolest thing, and somehow that product looks perfect, and it's $4.98 on the shelf. Like, that is, like, capitalism at its best. That is America. Like, to me, that's just beautiful, like how you have so many folks working together towards one purpose. But that became my purpose. I thought I was gonna be a tennis player, and I ended up realizing I was pretty bad at it once I got to college.
And now, like, through that action, I've realized that this is my passion, this is my calling. I was born to do this. I wanna create products with a purpose, with incredible people around me who are super smart, and I wanna do this for the rest of my life. I don't wanna retire. I, I will stop when I die. Like, that is the American dream, I guess.
But maybe this idea of like success or failure, I'm like, "What is that?" Like, I've failed continuously. I'll open up my phone after this, and there's tons of failures from the last few months of decisions that my team and I made that were probably bad decisions, so I'll fail continuously. But I still am, like, getting to decide to come to work and do what I wanna do, and that I feel like is the American dream.
And I think it's-- both have to be true for the American dream to be real individually for every person. I think it's the freedom to choose and do the work. Choose to be present in whatever you're doing. I'm launching a brand that I love, but you know what? Maybe that's not your American dream, but find yours and commit to it. I think both have to be true. Choose it and commit.
[00:08:56] Interviewer: What advice would you give to someone who's still trying to find their purpose?
[00:09:01] Alejandro Vélez: It's so easy to open up your phone and see people who are doing so much more than you are at a younger age and bigger and better. So I think the first step is just to take a breath and relax and pause.
And if you assess what's in your life as it is today, don't blame your parents for not doing this or that or bad decisions. You, you're somehow you're here, and there's a reason you're here. Inventory your garbage, throw it out. Throw out that garbage. So whatever things in your life you don't wanna have, get out of that, and try to simplify it.
And now, whatever job you're doing today, we're all working. If you're in school, you're working. Do that job fully and be present, and maybe that won't be what your ultimate calling is in life, but you're not gonna figure that out in your home sad or at your job sad. You're gonna figure it out by being extremely present in whatever you're doing.
If you're an associate at the Home Depot, be all in, and maybe the Home Depot's not your long-term calling, but maybe working for a vendor of the Home Depot or maybe working for the technology company that provides the technology for the inventory system of the Home Depot. Like, there is something there that's gonna just spark your curiosity, but you will never find it if you're not present, if you're not looking.
If you're just sitting back and worried about all the bad stuff that you have in your life, you will never find it, and nobody has the answer but you. So, whoever you are, wherever you are, get out of whatever, you know, garbage you have, be present, and go all in and learn, and opportunities will start opening up in your life.
I guarantee you. I guarantee you, once you're present and you're all in, people will show up in your life that you never expected, people that will guide you and give you that calling, whether you believe in God... I believe in God. Others don't have to believe in God, but at the end of the day, like, once you're present and you're part of this tiny little ex- you know, short window of time that we get to call life, and we get to partake in this experiment that we call capitalism, like, if you're all in on this, it will absorb you and make you the person that you wanna be.
[00:11:21] Interviewer: What have you learned from working with The Home Depot?
[00:11:24] Alejandro Vélez: The Home Depot's the largest home improvement retailer on Earth, and you'll happen to have a lot of the consumers who are seeking out to solve a problem at home, which is to, you know, create a garden or landscape in a more organic way, and that's what our brand is about, and that's what we're about.
So I think that's like, obviously there's a natural partnership there, but it's so much more than that. And I say that from, I'm not a hired CEO. I'm not, like, an executive they hired. This is the only job I've ever had. Like, so I learned on the job. I mean, this is... And my job was hitting stores and talking to associates, and them, you know, getting mad at me and giving me crap for, "Hey, you're the company that doesn't deliver on time.
You're the company that's late." "What do you mean? You track that stuff? I mean, I'm 22. You track how our, you know, one SKU gets to the stores?" "Absolutely." And then they'd show me how, and they'd look at it and like, "Hey, your products doesn't sell." "What do you mean it doesn't sell? Relative to what?" "Well, your shelf space is, you know, we measure."
And they, you know, they would take measurements. We do it all the way to, you know, somebody Charlie Rossi is somebody, so we're, we're local to his region. We're in Oakland, California. That's where we started this company. That's where we're headquartered. And Charlie runs a garden department at the San Rafael Home Depot store.
And gosh, the amount of lessons that we take from him. This is over 10 years, back when we were just selling one little product. We put it in our store, and he just taught us so much of just the detail. And he's over 30 years at the Home Depot. I believe it's 34 years this year that he's with the Home Depot.
And, you know, I had my whole, we had our board of directors meeting, and I had my whole leadership team come and do a walk with Charlie, and I just want them to absorb his energy. We get to stores. We get to the store, and Charlie's Alex, your delivery time, that's the first thing. He doesn't say hi. He say, "Your delivery time to our store on your soils is is one day too slow.
I need you guys to speed it up." And then he's like, "Good to meet you all, but let's go and take a look at the products." And then he just starts going through all the rights of retail and, like, knows so many details and cares about every detail. He says, "I'm gonna change this," and then within 24 hours, that change is done.
Like, he moves so fast. So, I mean, talk about just learning about execution in retail, how important speed above overthinking. Just, yeah, I think attention to detail, working hard, listen, I mean, in the middle of our conversation, he'd pause and a customer's stopping by. So we pause, and we help the customer, and then that's part of our Back to the Roots culture.
So we now go, and if we're in a store, we work for The Home Depot and Back to the Roots. We are out- if a customer comes in thinks they, a lot of times they think we work at The Home Depot- and we say, "Great, how can we help you?" The beauty now with nice billions of dollars of investment from The Home Depot, now we pull up our phone, and we can look it up for some consumers that maybe, you know, aren't using the app.
So we get to look like and solve their problem. So there's just, like, endless just examples of over 11 years.
[00:14:38] Interviewer: What's your vision for the future of Back to the Roots?
[00:14:41] Alejandro Vélez: Maybe it's the theme of my life. It's the two truths. I just wanna have the same energy that I have now towards Back to the Roots in 20 years.
Like, that will be hugely successful. That's one. I think the other part of it is I want this brand to be a household name, where hundreds of millions of Americans have experienced the magic of Back to the Roots, which is through the amount of detail we put into every one of our products. I want them to feel that, touch that, be inspired by that.
I want to have a whole generation that's more connected to food. I want for the US government to actually make it a requirement to have gardening as part of a graduation from eighth grade to high school. How cool would that be, and come Back to the Roots be part of inspiring that? And I want kids' workshops that The Home Depot does every single year and has done it just because it's the right thing to do.
I want that to be done everywhere. I want every kid to be able to, every Saturday, wherever they live, to be able to go into their local shop and be able to build stuff. I want that to happen. So I think those two things are true. I wanna have this energy that I have, work with the amazing team, work with my co-founder Nikhil in 20 years, and I wanna see some really cool stuff continue to get built around me.