Accessing Model in utility in laravel

I'm trying to access the User model in a utility I built that will eventually send emails out, this is being triggered with by cron, and I'm using php artisan schedule:run to test it. Below is the utility I'm starting to build out, and currently when test it I am getting 'I was triggered'. This is being triggered by a registered console command. Thats all working.

<?php
namespace App\Utility;

use Log;
use Mail;
use App\User;

class ReferralProgramUtility
{

    static public function test()
    {   
        LOG::info("I was triggered");
    }
}

However, when I change this to pull in the User model....

<?php
namespace App\Utility;

use Log;
use Mail;
use App\User;

class ReferralProgramUtility
{

    static public function test()
    {   
        $user = User::all();
        LOG::info($user);
    }
}

I get the following error....

Trying to get property of non-object in /var/www/html/appname/app/User.php:32

I'm using another utility that has a similar configuration and uses the User model and this work fine, the only difference is that this is on is being triggered by task scheduler. Not sure what is causing this, and I'm fairly new to Laravel so any tips or recommendation would be hugely appreciated. Thanks, in advance.

via Chebli Mohamed