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Look, I never planned on selling sanitizer for a living.

My wife Karin and I run Southland Organics. We sell biological products to chicken farmers - probiotics, enzymes, that sort of thing. Good business, steady customers, nothing too exciting.

January 2020, we added Alpet D2 surface sanitizer to the lineup. Figured it would be a nice add-on. Our poultry customers could use something for cleaning their barns. Extra revenue, minimal effort.

Two months later, COVID hit.

Every food processor in Georgia started calling. Their regular suppliers? Completely sold out. We had product on the shelf. That's really all there was to it. I spent March and April doing nothing but answering phones and packing boxes. Karin was doing the same. We'd work until midnight, sleep a few hours, then do it all over again.

Mike and Karin Usry, founders of D2 Sanitizers and Southland Organics

The farm boxes

We also started putting together these farm boxes for our regular customers. Care packages, basically - seeds, sanitizer, masks, whatever we could get our hands on. Just trying to help people keep their operations going when the supply chain fell apart.

Farm boxes packed with essential supplies during COVID-19

Here's what I figured out during all that: food safety people think about completely different problems than farmers do. Farmers want healthy birds. Food safety managers need to pass inspections. They care about EPA registration numbers and kill claims that will actually hold up when USDA walks through the door.

So we made D2 its own thing. Same warehouse here in Bogart - 189 Luke Road, if you want to look it up. Nothing fancy, just a warehouse. But different customers, different conversations entirely.

Who actually calls us

Food Processors

USDA inspections, FDA compliance, pathogen control programs. The people who absolutely cannot afford a recall.

Commercial Kitchens

Health department compliance, surface sanitation, hand hygiene. Restaurants, cafeterias, institutional kitchens.

Grocery & Convenience

Deli areas, food prep surfaces, display cases. Anywhere food gets handled by staff.

Small to Mid-Size Operations

Most of our customers found us because the big distributors never called them back. We're fine with that.

Nothing complicated. We ship when we say we will and we answer the phone when it rings.

Call if you need something.

Address: 189 Luke Road, Bogart, GA 30622

Phone: (762) 255-8353

-Mike