This is a guest post by Arthur Chow, Vice President of S2G Ventures

In trying to envision the future of grocery, we at S2G Ventures go back to how it all began. In 1916, Clarence Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly store and changed how people shop for food. The chain’s revolutionary self-service operations, which allowed customers to browse four times the product variety of the average store, unlocked a simple truth: Americans like to pick their own groceries.

While customers were delighted they did not have to wait behind a cramped counter for a store clerk to pick goods off a list, this was also a boon for retailer efficiency. With customers picking their own items, store traffic increased along with basket size from impulse purchases. (Who hasn’t grabbed candy or gum on the way out before?)

For the last century, this is how America has preferred to shop for its groceries, even as the internet became an omnipresent force in other areas of our lives. Prior to 2020, it has been well-documented e-commerce penetration of grocery spend struggled to reach more than 3% of overall spend compared to several other categories that are 30% or greater.    

Then overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic forced all retailers to pivot as previously covered in our Future of Food: Through the Lens of Retail report. Whether curbside pickup or delivery, offering some form of online ordering and fullfilment became table stakes for grocery retailers, with a few notable holdouts such as Trader Joe’s. This stressed the retailers who were not ready to meet the surge in online demand, and showed the cracks in the resiliency of an omni-channel model.  

Online fulfillment, which most traditional retailers had only begun testing 10 months ago, became a problem everyone needed to solve today.

Without the physical and technical infrastructure (which would have required investment years in advance) ready to manage online orders, many retailers turned to Instacart for a capital expenditure-light and scalable solution. But with an industry already operating at 3-5% margin, the 10% commission fee can become a losing proposition. There are no VCs at the beckoning to fund brick and mortar retailers’ growing losses as they effectively pay for the right to each additional order online. Thus, as Bain and others have concluded, supermarkets must invest in fulfillment automation to be profitable. Instacart’s recent layoffs and shift to its “Partner Pick” model, where retailers manage their own physical fulfillment of orders through Instacart’s online portal, further shows the need for grocers to own that part of the supply chain in order to build a profitable and resilient fulfillment model. 

But within that hefty investment decision, retailers are still faced with another choice: should they centralize automated fulfillment in a large facility dedicated to high speed and high volume, or go with a decentralized micro-fulfillment (“MFC”) model and still pick from individual stores? Asked differently, do you want all your groceries sitting in one big automated warehouse, or spread out among many little warehouses (aka your stores) closer to customers?

Enter the origins of Amazon and the supply chain principle it used to disrupt the entire book industry.

One could easily point to Webvan as the poster child of the perils of big-time automation, but that would miss a deeper lesson about logistics that catapulted Amazon. Before having the foresight to invest in cloud computing services, Jeff Bezos understood a basic supply chain principle that led to wild success: niche, specialized and slow-moving products are better suited to be sold online.

Amazon is now referred to as the “Everything Store,” but does anyone remember when it was just a bookstore? And what are most books? Niche, specialized items that consumers buy infrequently (relative to food). 

Why does this principle hold true? Because to minimize a good’s total cost of logistics, one must factor in 1) the cost to hold a product (inventory cost) and 2) the cost to ship a product (transportation or setup costs). Seems simple? To add a bit more complexity, how fast a good sells (its demand) should determine how much of the good to hold and where to hold it. This is a basic principle to forming your supply chain network strategy.

Here’s a hypothetical illustration. Imagine you are searching for a copy of Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought. You can shop online with Amazon or in-person at Borders at one of its 500 stores (because this is still ~2010). The publishing industry tracks that only 100 copies are sold on average each year. However, Borders doesn’t know exactly which stores the customer will show up at, so they still stock 500 copies (one at each store) to ensure there are no missed sales or “out-of-stocks.” 

In contrast, Amazon’s one storefront is virtual. They only need to stock 100 copies in a central warehouse to comfortably meet the expected demand. It will cost Amazon more to ship a book directly to its customer, since the Border’s customer helped solve the last mile by shopping at the store. But Amazon saves money on all that real estate cost and, perhaps more importantly, frees up more cash to buy other book titles. In fact, with its online storefront, Amazon can hold millions of titles that far exceed the physical capacity of any bookstore. Finally, the customer also enjoys the convenience of having the book delivered and usually doesn’t mind waiting a few days (again this is 2010). This is how you build an empire in books, CDs, DVDs, consumer electronics, toys, games… and subsequently start the “retail apocalypse.”

Thus, the supply chain concept enabled by the internet and pioneered by a man in a Seattle garage becomes very clear – if you sell a niche, slow-moving good, you should centralize your inventory in a big warehouse, sell online, and ship directly

But a banana is not a book – it is neither niche nor slow-moving, and it spoils a lot quicker. At 85% US household penetration, most people buy bananas and they buy them frequently. As a grocery retailer, you know customers will show up each day to buy food and basic staples with some predictability, 2020 notwithstanding. Groceries are the antithesis to books when it comes to demand, and a grocer’s supply chain should look vastly different to a book seller’s. Delivering bananas to individual homes each day across the US from one central warehouse in Seattle becomes an increasingly expensive proposition as you grow. Logistically with delivery, your customer base needs to have the stable route density of an urban environment to match how efficient a semi-truck is dropping off a trailer load behind a store. Factor in spoilage or damage, and it’s no wonder most of the grocery world still largely exists as brick and mortar.

Thus, this author believes the fulfillment of mass perishable grocery will remain decentralized, whether the customer is shopping online for delivery or coming to the store. For core perishable items reaching a mass audience, having a hyper local focus will be a winning strategy. Micro-fulfillment will be key in allowing retailers to adapt profitably to a changing consumer market. Brick and mortar can still be a competitive advantage in fresh, even with the increasing consumer shift to ordering digital. 

Amazon seems to believe as much. It bought Whole Foods in 2017, a decade after launching Amazon Fresh in 2007 and struggling to gain footing in the grocery industry. Doubling down on brick and mortar, the tech giant has opened up new physical supermarkets in LA and Chicago in 2021.

At the end of the day, 90% of what you buy is likely to have been carried on a commercial truck at some point. For ubiquitous fast-moving goods like groceries, it will always be most efficient to have products sourced from nearby the consumer. Fulfillment of grocery online, whether delivery or pickup in-store, will need to stay local to be profitable.  

Our conversation was a part of our Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series that was inspired by S2G’s recently released Future of Food: Through the Lens of Retail Report as a framework. The series will examine how innovations in content, commerce and community might transform the shape of the future of food retail.

Join us for future Redesigning Retail conversations here. 

Arthur Chow is a Vice President at S2G Ventures. He is focused on the evaluation and execution of potential investments as well as serving the needs of portfolio companies.

Arthur has nearly a decade of investing and operating experience in the food industry. He began his career as an investment banking analyst at UBS. He then joined Frontenac, a Chicago-based middle-market private equity firm, as an Associate focused on food and consumer buyouts. Seeking to explore an operating role within food, Arthur oversaw the commercial performance of a $2 billion P&L at the Kraft Heinz Company as an Associate Director in the Foodservice business unit. Searching for more early-stage mission-oriented companies, Arthur joined S2G as a Senior Associate. While pursuing his MBA before re-joining S2G, he worked for several food startups with exceptional founders in financial, marketing and operating roles. These include Tovala, a direct-to-consumer smart oven and meal kit service platform; Once Upon a Farm, a cold-pressed organic baby food brand; and Dom’s Market and Kitchen, a next generation grocery retail concept.

The post Where Does Grocery Go Next with Online Fulfillment? appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Tonya Bakritzes, Senior Vice President of Marketing at S2G Ventures.

The unprecedented events of the last year forced food brands to quickly adapt to their customer’s needs and shopping behaviors, while also navigating a rapidly changing grocery retail landscape.  

Last week, Food-Tech Connect and S2G hosted the second conversation in our Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series to explore how emerging food brands are navigating this pivotal moment in time and growing their businesses through new approaches to customer discovery, acquisition and loyalty. We spoke with Vanessa Pham, Co-Founder at Omsom, Jeremiah McElwee, Chief Merchandising Officer at Thrive Market, Katie Marston, Chief Marketing Officer at Once Upon a Farm and Kelsey Formost, Director of Content Strategy at Tagger Media.

Omsom, Once Upon a Farm and Thrive Market all grew during 2020 and attributed their success to a common set of themes: purpose, customer-focus and community. Tagger has a wealth of data across social platforms and Kelsey Formost shared her perspective on the increasingly important role social and specifically social influencing is playing in the strategy of successful food brands.  All the panelists shared actionable advice and specific techniques that emerging food brands can use to improve their marketing efforts.

The following are some of my key takeaways and favorite excerpts from the conversation.

Access the full video and join us for the rest of our Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series where we’ll be talking with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, Jody Kalmbach, Group Vice President, Product Experience at The Kroger Co., Birgit Cameron, Head of Patagonia Provisions and Errol Schweizer, Host of The Checkout Podcast, and more about reimagining retail for resilience and to better serve all stakeholders.

Purpose, Allyship & Community Were Keys to Growth in 2020

“This is a really challenging time. Knowing who you are and what you’re trying to do in the world allows you to react and respond quickly, both to serve your customers, but also to do greater good in the world.”

– Jeremiah McElwee, Thrive Market

As a result of Covid, consumer interest in healthier food choices was amplified.  Farmers, producers and food workers became essential workers. The spotlight placed on our food system raised consumer awareness of a complex set of questions about our food, beyond just price and taste, to animal welfare, source and authenticity, environmental impact, and the working conditions and compensation of employees that produced it. Transparency has become critically important.  

Our panelists shared their perspectives on the importance of being very clear in your brand’s mission and how that should direct marketing and communications but more broadly how it gave their companies a north star by which to make critical business decisions.  For Once Upon a Farm, that meant sending the proceeds of their new Farmer Jen’s Sweet Potato Pie product to Save the Children in support of their emergency food relief efforts.  Vanessa shared that Omsom’s mission to honor and celebrate Asian American communities inspired them to partner with iconic chefs of the backgrounds of each cuisine they represent to showcase their flavors and integrate them into the product development process in return for a portion of sales into the future.  Jeremiah shared that Thrive’s core mission and belief structure afforded them the opportunity to create a COVID-19 relief fund that has since grown to $3 million, and use the proceeds to give away free groceries, stipends and memberships to hundreds of families across the U.S.  Once Upon a Farm, Omsom and Thrive Market all experienced significant growth in 2020 demonstrating that customers value brands that take action to live up to their values and want to be associated with that greater purpose.

Customer-Focus: Being an Ally to Your Customer Builds Loyalty

“In 2020, it was about recognizing the need for seamless integration into her life, versus selling. Our customers are very busy moms that were all of a sudden dealing with work at home, school, intermittent childcare at best. We considered it our jobs to make things easier and best in class for her, from where she was going to learn about us, purchase us and try us.”

– Katie Marston, Once Upon a Farm

When Covid shelter-in-place restrictions came into effect, a series of events changed customer’s lives in big and small ways. It’s no secret that more people have been shopping online during COVID. As a result, online grocery penetration rose to 8% in 2020, up from 4% last year. Beyond shopping, people are eating and cooking from home more than ever before, many are juggling remote work and virtual school, navigating the challenges of essential work or dealing with layoffs.   

Our panelists touched on the need for successful brands to play a supportive role in customer’s lives more than ever during this time. Katie shared that Once Upon a Farm started with a focus on their loyal customers. She said, “We went right to the source and concentrated on our current customers over new customer acquisition and worked with our retailers on the retail.com platforms, our own e-commerce, rethinking trade programs and stacking influencers.”  Kelsey shared her perspective on why influencer marketing is such a valuable tactic for reaching customers where they are spending time.  She cited two facts  – that the amount of time we spend on social media doubled in 2020 and that  influencer marketing campaigns saw an 11 times higher ROI, as compared to traditional display ads. Thrive Market has a very curated model and small number of SKUs as compared to the average grocery store, so one way they are constantly adapting to customer needs is through the product mix.  Jeremiah said, ”It’s first and foremost, choosing those brands and finding those partners and finding really compelling, amazing brands and products that we can bring to our members that we know they’ll want.”

Download S2G Venture’ Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail Report to understand how innovations in content, commerce and community might transform the shape of the future of food retail.

Community: Shifting IRL Marketing to Digital to Acquire Customers and Build Community

“If you don’t have a lot of resources, do not try to talk to a wide audience, be very clear about who you’re speaking to, know what they care about, know their values, know what channels they use, know how they identify and what perspectives they hold. And I think if you can focus on them and get that one community to really care about you, you’re at a great starting point to then have them reach out to their kind of peers around them, and halo out to broader new audiences over time.”

– Vanessa Pham, Omsom

With so many people ordering groceries online, demos and other tried and true in-store marketing techniques weren’t possible. Brands turned to digital channels to acquire customers and build a following for their products.  

Our panelists shared that to build a loyal customer base it is essential to start with a small, targeted audience and not try to appeal to everyone or risk appealing to no one. Once brands have a core group of fiercely loyal customers those advocates can reach adjacent audiences. Vanessa cited RX Bar and Halo Top as examples of brands who started with a niche community of weightlifters and bodybuilders, credible sources in health and wellness, and leveraged their endorsement to expand to a wider audience.

We covered a variety of digital tactics that Omsom, Once Upon A Farm and Thrive Market are using to drive acquisition and build communities. Kelsey noted that social influencer marketing is valuable because it allows you to “reach people who are already predisposed to like you, even if you are a small brand.” 

Katie shared that search has been a valuable technique for acquisition and that they are testing and iterating on their strategy to find specific terms that indicate customer affinity to their products.  As an example she shared that, “We found that someone shopping for kombucha has a high affinity and conversion to buying our types of cold-pressed fruit and veggie blends.” These types of customer insights can be applied to other channels as well.

Jeremiah spoke about how Thrive’s is serving their members online through product discovery.  Their highly curated product mix allows for a simple shopping experience and they continue to invest in optimization of their website’s discovery features.  He also shared that email has been a high performing channel to drive awareness of new products with their members.

Vanessa noted that Omsom’s marketing strategy balances grassroots brand building with paid advertising. She said, “Our sweet spot is actually a hybrid of the two. Where we invest in super high quality and intentional community building.” 

Food Brands Build Trust through Repetition & Consistent Messaging Across Channels

“There’s no perfect attribution model, no algorithm that you can say, ‘This goes to this to this.’ I wish. Digital has helped, but it is all about seeing do all tides rise? And what we saw is when we amplified a really wonderful message about the strength of our brand, we saw even our e-commerce rose. We also saw our retail sales rise. So that halo effect is real. And it’s just about remembering that it is an omni-channel world.”

– Katie Marston, Once Upon a Farm

When the panic buying of March 2020 happened, retailers started rethinking what to put on their shelves and they began prioritizing the essentials and really larger established brands over smaller emerging ones. This caused emerging brands to reassess their strategies for discovery and acquisition, including how to balance investment in marketing to support retail channels versus launching or growing a direct to consumer channel which has a higher minimum price point. For small brands with a minimal marketing budgets, it can be difficult to prioritize and measure the success of their efforts.

Our panelists shared practical advice on how emerging food brands should think about their marketing investments in the light of the ever growing number of commerce options available to customers. Katie reminded us that campaigns for one channel, like D2C, can ultimately lead to sales through another channel, retail. Kelsey shared that, “repetition is recognition and recognition is trust. And you can’t have sales without trust no matter if it’s retail, D2C. You have to show up enough times for a consumer, especially in the absence of a physical trial, enough times for them to know you, like you, and trust you.” Vanessa shared advice on the three areas that food brands need to over invest in: content creation, to communicate what the food looks and might taste like; word of mouth, through product seeding and speaking to the values that resonate with your audience; and communicating a strong brand story to the press who are trusted influencers in food.

Live Selling is the Next Frontier in E-Commerce

“Live selling was a $60 billion industry last year, but the U.S. only accounted for $1 billion of that. We are way behind the rest of the world, which is why we at Tagger are predicting this is going to be the next frontier.”

– Kelsey Formost, Tagger Media

The top question from our community during the session was about live selling, a soon to launch offering from Instagram and Youtube that will allow brands to sell their products live, similar to QVC. Kelsey shares her perspective on the market potential for this new online social commerce channel.

Our conversation was a part of our Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series that was inspired by S2G’s recently released Future of Food: Through the Lens of Retail Report as a framework. The series will examine how innovations in content, commerce and community might transform the shape of the future of food retail.

Join us for future Redesigning Retail conversations here. 

Tonya Bakritzes is SVP of Marketing at S2G Ventures where she oversees the fund’s brand strategy, marketing and communications and provides strategic guidance to the fund’s portfolio companies.

She has over 20 years of experience working in the technology industry delivering large-scale digital solutions across a variety of industries including Financial Services, Energy, Education and Travel & Hospitality. Her past work has ranged from business planning, consumer research & strategy development to design, build and support of enterprise-scale platforms to marketing campaign planning, execution, and optimization. Tonya has over 15 years of experience working in digital agencies and consultancies as a strategic advisor for clients and 5 years delivering digital programs at J.P. Morgan Chase in the Treasury Services division.

The post How Thrive Market, Once Upon a Farm, Omsom and Tagger Media Are Reimagining Discovery, Acquisition and Loyalty appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Errol Schweizer, Host of The Checkout Podcast, Co-Founder, Board Member For Natural Products Retail and CPG, Writer at Forbes.com and Former Whole Foods VP of Grocery.

Mastered economics ’cause you took yourself from squalor

Mastered academics ’cause your grades say you a scholar

Mastered Instagram ’cause you can instigate a follow

Look at all these slave masters posin’ on yo’ dollar 

-JU$T by Run The Jewels

Covid-19 is the first real stress test that our food system and supply chains have experienced in the 21st century. The pandemic highlighted the deep fissures in the industry and ripped away the pretense of “sustainable food”, and showed that we have made little progress moving past our food system’s origins in plantation slavery, Native American genocide and land theft. The impacts of Covid-19 in the food and agriculture sectors have been felt most acutely by the essential workers foundational to the supply chain. Considering the potential impacts of the climate change related crises that are sure to come, we have our work cut out if we are to fulfill a vision of a more just, sane and sustainable food system. 

We have a responsibility to all stakeholders in our supply chains to pursue deep and substantive change, starting with the social and economic issues that underlie how we grow, make, distribute and sell food. Our inability to accomplish this mission so far has enabled catastrophic death, sickness and misery during Covid-19. Is this the best we can do?

We’ve Failed Our Food Workers

No stakeholder group has carried a greater burden during Covid-19 than essential workers in food service, retail, manufacturing and CPG. The latest data show that almost 83,000 supply chain workers have been sickened with the virus, and over 360 have died. This data doesn’t come near to illustrating the shocking impact of the pandemic on all supply chain workers, such as the hundreds of frontline retail workers that have also died, according to UFCW. 

The federal government failed to protect these workers, and even put them in harms way. OSHA, the agency tasked with protecting workers on the job, completely failed in its role, refusing to issue an enforceable emergency temporary standard. And the Trump Administration exacerbated the dangerous conditions by issuing an executive order last April, at the behest of big meat monopolies, forcing meat plants to stay open despite the rapid transmission of Covid within the plants. The administration later releasing guidance to increase line speeds, which surely sped virus transmission in dirty, crowded facilities staffed by exhausted personnel.

It’s not as though things were hunky-dory before March 2020. Essential workers have faced decades of wage stagnation. If wages had kept pace with productivity, we would have a $24 an hour minimum wage, and not still be haggling for a $15 an hour floor. Seen from another angle, working and middle class people have been robbed of nearly $50 trillion in income since 1975, or over $2.5 Trillion annually. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of income earners have increased their share from 9 percent to 22 percent in that timeframe, while the bottom 90 percent have seen their share fall from 67 percent to 50 percent. In a year of Black Lives Matter-catalyzed reckonings of race and inequality, do I even need to mention that it’s mostly old white dudes who inhabit that top income bracket? They made money the old-fashioned way, LOL.

The pandemic-induced economic crisis exacerbated these conditions. While over 400,000 died, 67 million folks lost work, 98,000 businesses closed and 1 in 6 Americans, over 54 Million people, were struggling with food insecurity, the Dow hit 30,000 and the collective wealth of 650 billionaires increase by $1 Trillion to over $4 Trillion, nearly double the wealth of the bottom 165 million Americans. And while thousands of individuals, enterprises and non-profits have mobilized to take care of their customers, workers and communities, retailers at the commanding heights of the food system and supply chain leveraged the pandemic to generate enormous profits for a small handful of shareholders and executives, while sharing little with the workers that kept everything going. The wealth of the Walton family alone has grown by $40.7 billion during the pandemic, nearly 26 times the amount of all hazard pay for all 1.5 million Wal-Mart associates in the same timeframe, putting to rest forever the misguided notion that better pay would result in higher prices.

But as Arundhati Roy has written, the pandemic is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. 

What could that portal lead to in our corner of the economy, in supply chains and the food system?

First, Breathe.

Next, I’d have a banner over that gateway, quoting legendary East Village artist Seth Tobocman, “You don’t have to fuck people over to survive.” 

Then I’d start some civil, yet uncomfortable conversations around what we could do to create and build this fair, just, sane food system and supply chain. The following is a discussion guide to help inform those conversations. You can also join us for Food+Tech Connect’s Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series and Slack group to have these conversations. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @grocery_nerd or Instagram @grocery.nerd how it goes.

Got a Vonnegut punch for your Atlas shrugs

-El-P

 

1. A Seat at the Table

Retailers need to give food workers a seat a the table. Unions, the folks that brought us the weekend. Unions, the folks that built the middle class. I grew up around family members, friends and neighbors that were unionized. But what a paradigm, shift I experienced in the natural products sector, not only a curious antipathy to organized labor, but an outright denial of the role that unions have played in our society. It was like another dimension, where the bosses, benevolent for the moment, knew best. Obviously, that moment passed.  

Is it any coincidence that the extreme wealth and income inequalities since 1975 paralleled a similar decline in unionization rates, particularly in the private sector? On the other hand, unions have delivered impressive wins for their members during Covid-19, in particular the Teamsters, UFCW and RWDSU, while also advocating for all essential workers to have hazard pay, living wages, paid sick leave and safer work environments. And workers in supply chain and retail sectors have been getting more restive given the conditions they face, walking out or going on strike to win better gains from employers. As I have written elsewhere , this year promises to be very interesting on the labor front, and history has proven the value of unions for working people, in particular women and BIPOC folks. Black people in particular have much higher wages, better health insurance and pensions when unionized. The PRO-Act, which passed the House a year ago, is the most important piece of pro-worker legislation in decades, promising to introduce enforceable penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights, expanding workers’ collective bargaining rights and strengthening workers’ access to fair union elections. Or as Abe Lincoln once said, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

Let’s Discuss: We need to reconsider the resistance to and avoidance of unions and worker’s solidarity. They have proven far and away to have been the best allies for all working people during the pandemic and deserve a seat at the table. What role can your organization play in the struggle for worker’s justice?

2. Farm Worker Justice

We have long exploited farm workers, and a just and sustainable future requires that we rethink the way we treat and pay them. None of us could eat without them. Yet they are among the most exploited and under appreciated members of our supply chain, lacking the basic labor protections that the rest of us take for granted. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act established workplace protections, such as the minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, overtime pay and a ban on child labor. To pass this bill, however, FDR needed to appease Southern Dixiecrats who didn’t want to compensate their workers fairly, so they left farmworkers (and domestic workers) out of the bill because they were primarily Black. Now farmworkers, who are majority Latin American and immigrant, have been exploited by generations of farmers big and small and consumers have been inured to prices not taking into account the dignity and wellbeing of farmworkers. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, whose home state of California passed overtime pay for farmworkers in 2016, has introduced legislation, called the Fairness for Farm Workers Act, that would mandate overtime and end minimum-wage and overtime exemptions. A recent study in Massachusetts added credibility to this bill, concluding that giving workers overtime pay would add just 2 percent to farmgate cost, meaning that while it could easily be amortized into a rounding error by the time a product got to the consumer, it would also mean a 17 percent pay bump for farmworkers. According to Foodtank, farmworker advocacy groups such as Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC) are collaborating to help secure protections for farm workers impacted by Covid-19. In a letter to congress, Alianza de Campesinas articulated critical concerns: the exclusion of food system workers from relief, addressing food supply disruptions, and the lack of healthcare and economic assistance for marginalized communities, as well as the resurgence of sexual violence faced by women farmworkers. Farmworker justice exists at the intersection of race, gender and class in the food system, and literally none of us would be here now without these folks who are growing and harvesting our food, so it’s time we looked out for them and treated them with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Let’s Discuss: What can we do to ensure that farmworkers are compensated fairly and treated with dignity, even if that means making adjustments to cost structures and value propositions that have been built upon their stress and exploitation?     

3. Confront White Supremacy

I once remarked to Carla Vernón, vice president of consumables at Amazon, that I’ve attended many natural products meetings that were whiter than Ku Klux Klan rallies. And author Raj Patel has a test that he gives food companies: if the Klan took over your business or your board of directors, how much would they have to change? 

As context, Julie Guthman writes, in the United States “land was virtually given away to whites at the same time as reconstruction failed in the South, Native American lands were appropriated, Chinese and Japanese were precluded from landownership, and the Spanish-speaking Californios were disenfranchised on their ranches.” This pattern was repeated in the 20th century, as thousands of Black farmers were displaced or chased off the farms they built after Reconstruction. The consolidation of this rural land for conventional agribusiness production, as well as the cheapness and availability of it for the back-to-the land counterculture that gave rise to the natural products trade, both further entrenched land ownership and food production by and for white people. Is it any wonder that the organic/regenerative sector idolizes Wendell Berry, Sir Albert Howard, or this guy but rarely mentions George Washington Carver, Booker T. Whatley, or Fannie Lou Hamer ?

The point here is that white supremacy is pervasive in the food industry, not only in terms of the ownership, management and governance of most major food and supply chain enterprises, but also in terms of the values, priorities and belief systems. From the conditioned belief in bootstrap individualism that blames health and wellness outcomes on individual lifestyle choices, to the persistent, nagging paternalism of NGO’s and CEO’s telling BIPOC folks what they should be eating. Or the dominant economic dogma that such problems can only be resolved by competition and free markets, like opening glitzy chain stores in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is no wonder that retail stores are heavily policed spaces of racialized trauma, as Dr. Naya Jones says. If I had a dime for every time I heard or experienced a white supremacist-rooted trope in a respectable retail setting over the past 20 years, I’d be retired by now. And it’s very rare that I have worked with any outright sieg-heil’ing knuckle-draggers. The casualness makes it that much more insidious and tough to address. 

But those of us who present as white have the most work to do here: we must confront our privileges, deprogram ourselves and our organizations and question and correct decision making, ownership and financing structures that do little to redress these imbalances in power, talent development and resources in our industry. Back in the 1990’s, some of us anti-racists in the New York hardcore punk scene had a saying: Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity. Word.

Let’s Discuss: How can we confront and address white supremacy on an individual level, by looking at our assumptions and biases, but also on an institutional basis, regarding who is making decisions, who is benefiting, and who is left out?

4. Values-based procurement

My chosen trade is retail purchasing and supply chain, and I’ve held these roles at the store, regional and national levels for a range of retailers. I am fortunate to have worked with companies that fought the good fight for ethical and mission-based procurement in the private sector, enabling the development and popularization of Organic, Non-GMO, Fair Trade, humanely-raised and sustainably caught products, categories and supply chains. Likewise, NGO’s working with the public sector have picked up these ideas and run with them, further refining the standards and applying them outside of the retail sectors where they could continue to grow and prosper. 

Leading the way is the San Francisco-based Center for Good Food Purchasing , whose program “provides a metric based, flexible framework that encourages large institutions to direct their buying power toward five core values: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare and nutrition.” (Disclosure: the author has volunteered with the Austin cohort since 2015). 

The standards framework was inspired and influenced by private sector retail folks like myself, as well as community members, trade unionists and elected officials. While its primary use has been for school systems and other public and institutional contracts, the Center’s standards framework is just as relevant to other private sector actors in the supply chain who have not yet started to address these issues. As procurement becomes a hotter employment trend, procurement professionals will need to focus on more than just getting the best cost of goods or quick turnaround times that stress and exploit stakeholders downstream. They will need critical thinking skills and considerations of diversity and inclusion, and this values-based framework will make the roles accountable, holistic, and compelling as a career path in such a chaotic, crisis-prone food system. 

The darker side of procurement is how much of the supply chain utterly failed to take into account ethical issues in supplier management during the pandemic. Every single worker death at a meat processing plant or produce operation was immediately followed by a purchase order from a retail or wholesale customer, whether they were mass market chains, natural food stores or smaller, specialty distributors. There were no ramifications in the supply chain for hundreds of deaths and thousands of illnesses, communities stressed and wrecked, families shattered. Business kept grinding on, workers kept getting sick and dying. 

This isn’t the only way. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Florida-based and farmer-led standards and advocacy organization, has negotiated legally binding contracts and codes of conduct with buyers that articulate clear penalties for growers who abuse their workers or create conditions that lead to sickness and death: the growers lose the business. According to a 10 year, longitudinal study by Harvard University, such worker driven initiatives are the most effective way to establish responsible supply chains, particularly by giving workers a seat at the table. Greg Asbed, co-founder of CIW, recently told me; “If you have a lot of purchasing power, you can demand more humane conditions, you can demand compliance with fundamental human rights in your suppliers’ operations, you can improve the lives of millions of people… if you decide to wield that same volume purchasing power for good as opposed to evil. All of this comes together to form an actual enforcement of the rights in the Fair Food Code of Conduct. That’s the power of the purchase order.”

Greg also laid it all out for us pretty starkly, “Whatever they call social responsibility in the food industry has been a joke, a fraud… it is absolutely empty and soulless and unreal. It is everything that has not worked and has been done for public relations purposes for the corporations, not the workers. That all became clear when Covid came down and all these outbreaks came to the press, did any of the buyers step up and say that we can’t allow this to keep happening? Not one.” 

The frameworks and best practices for values-based procurement have already been stress tested, and it protects and empowers the stakeholders most prone to abuse otherwise while assuring the supply chains function optimally. We just need more retail and wholesalers to get with it.

Let’s Discuss: Values-based purchasing was birthed in the natural channel, but has been stalled and watered-down in the greater food industry. With its adoption growing in the public sector, how can we make these standards foundational to our whole food supply?

5. Worker ownership and a solidarity economy

Ownership and governance are two major hurdles for racial and economic justice in the food system. Fortunately, there is a movement afoot to diversify the wealth and decision making power for enterprises, and there is significant historical precedent and momentum. Worker ownership models, such as employee stock ownership plans (ESOP’s), worker cooperatives, employee owned trusts, perpetual trusts and multi-stakeholder cooperatives are becoming more popular, particularly among millennials and younger BIPOC workers who have been marginalized and exploited in traditional corporate environments. The benefits are many for all involved, including greater employee engagement, better company performance and better employee wellbeing and happiness, and are well documented across thousands of such enterprises. This includes familiar brands like Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur Flour and Equal Exchange, or international icons such as The Mondragon Cooperative Complex and John Lewis UK. There are also dozens of scrappy startups involved with USFWC and NYC NOWC, values-driven businesses that are putting worker and community benefit at the core of their purpose. This should be a familiar clarion call to those of us in the natural products trade. 

The financial considerations for employees are well documented, with household net wealth 92% higher for employee-owners than for non-employee-owners; employee-owners having 33 percent higher median income from wages; employee-owners are much more likely to have great benefits, including flexible schedules, retirement plans, access to childcare, parental leave, and tuition reimbursement; and employee-owners having substantially more job stability than non-employee-owners. The model is also spreading to the tech sector and flourishing among website and mobile app developers who are getting wise to the predatory and extractive practices of unicorn tech startups. 

Many of the folks in this sector are looking beyond the atomized marketplace they must function in and building networks towards a solidarity economy, a 21st century version of the cooperative commonwealth that social reformers envisioned in the Gilded Age to overcome poverty, exploitation and racism by creating networks of like-minded enterprises that could supply and support each other. And in the shadow of the silver tsunami of baby boomer business owners facing retirement, Alternative Ownership Advisors, who recently helped Organically Grown Co. transition into a perpetual trust model, has articulated a set of legislation needs to enable the growth of the employee/worker owned sector, including tax incentives for business owners, incentives for capital providers to finance such enterprises and encouraging more states to allow these enterprise forms to legally incorporate.

How do we make worker and employee ownership norm? 

These are just a few ideas that I’ve been noodling on recently. As someone who is pretty busy supporting a number of mission-driven retail, CPG and NGO enterprises, I have been privileged to keep a roof over my head and food in the pantry. I have had the time and energy on nights and weekends to consider the current crisis, research and articulate what we could do differently from here on out. 

I know and love so many wonderful colleagues in natural products retail, supply chain and startup land who are committed, energetic and well-resourced to remake society towards justice, equity and sustainability. But I am also deeply anxious and skeptical that those of us who have stayed healthy, housed and employed will not anticipate and prepare for the next crisis, especially in solidarity with those on the frontlines that are bearing the highest costs. I am very concerned about the resistance we will face from vested interests, reactionaries and conspiracy theorists who can’t see past their own short term self-interest. Covid-19 is doing a lot of damage and we should consider it a preview of what’s to come. Climate change is here, and there will be no mask mandates or vaccine rollouts that can save us from the growing threats of wildfires, superstorms, rising sea levels, mold epidemics and ocean acidification. We can only imagine how these climatic events will drastically impact the folks who are already disempowered. We have yet to correct, resolve and heal from these power imbalances. There’s a shit ton riding on this and we have work to do. 

Let’s Discuss: What are your learnings from this crisis and what is your commitment to building supply chains that are fair, just, sustainable and transparent?

Join us on February 4 for an interactive discussion on how retailers might better support all of their stakeholders needs around transparency, equity, diversity, health and sustainability with Errol Schweizer, Host of The Checkout Podcast, Co-Founder, Board Member For Natural Products Retail and CPG, Writer at Forbes.com and Former Whole Foods VP of Grocery, Sam Polk, CEO at Everytable, Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Greg Asbed, Co-Founder at Coalition Of Immokalee Workers, and Jessica Murphy, Business Development Manager at S2G Ventures.

Join us for future Redesigning Retail conversations here. 

Born and raised in The Bronx, Errol Schweizer brings more than 25 years of experience in the natural and organic food movement. Errol is a Board Member and Strategic Advisor for over a dozen food and retail brands, including Good Eggs, Merryfield, Farmer Direct Organic, Ka-Pop’s and Nuttzo. He is also a co-founder of Goodfish, Basics Market, Mood33, Herbl Distribution, and BeyondBrands, as well as Good Catch, a plant-based seafood analogue. Errol previously served as the Vice President of Grocery for Whole Foods Market, leading the merchandising, purchasing and product assortment for more than 80 categories and $5 billion in annual sales. His team enabled many progressive, innovative companies to become mainstream, including Vital Farms, Beyond Meat, Siggi’s and Saffron Road, as well as shepherding more than 10,000 items through Non-GMO Project Verification. Errol was named a retail game-changer by Supermarket News and received a Lifetime Advocacy Award from Hemp Industry Association. He is the co-founder and host of The Checkout Podcast, a show that centers the efforts of working class and BIPOC folks on the frontlines of our food system.

The post 5 Actions to Reboot Food Retail appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This past December, we partnered with S2G Ventures and gathered over 370 entrepreneurs, executives, investors and industry professionals for an interactive discussion exploring the future of food retail with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and Audre Kapacinskas, VP of S2G Ventures. The conversation explored how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system.

Some of the key topics we discussed:

• What they learned in 2020 that transformed the way they think about food retail.
• If they were to start over, how they would design a 21st century grocery store to better serves all stakeholders.
• Overview of S2G Ventures’ thesis on content, commerce and community shape the future of retail over the next 5 years, and the most promising areas for investment.
• How automation, robotics, omni-channel and smart fulfillment will impact retail, as well as how retailers should be thinking about technology adoption.
• New opportunities that might be unlocked across the value chain by tapping into increased e-commerce data about people’s shopping behaviors and preferences.
• What leading with heart means for the food industry.

We also explored some great questions from the community, including:

• John Foraker, CEO of Once Upon a Farm: How do you see conflict between every store becoming an online distribution center and consumer desire for retailer theater and in-store experience playing out?
• Peter Droste, Independent Experience Designer: What do you do specifically to practice and cultivate your agility and curiosity?
• Mike Hotz, Business Developer of Carma Chocolates at Barry Callebaut: What chances do you see for small producers in micro fulfillment solutions bypassing traditional retail?
• Mike Lee, Co-CEO of Alpha Food Labs: Where do we find the sweet spot in our food system between large, consolidated production models and smaller, more decentralized production models?
• Harry Rhodes, Executive Director of Food Animal Concerns: How can farmers get their fair share by selling through retail? How can we make it worth it for them to work with retailers?
• Andrew Mayne, Senior Associate Director of Culinary Arts at Stanford University: Do you think the retail companies of the future need to have a different ownership structure, a move towards community based ownership or co-op based ownership?

Join us For the Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series

This was the first in our new Reimagining Food Retail Conversations, a series of discussions exploring how this unprecedented moment in time will shape food retail over the next five years that we’re co-hosting with S2G Ventures. Our goal is to create a space for stakeholders from farm to fork to come together to discuss how we might fundamentally reimagine food retail to make it more resilient, equitable, accessible, diverse, delicious, healthful and climate-smart.

Join us for the rest of the series from January 21 – February 18 where we will be exploring how we might reimagine grocery for discovery, resilience and to better serve all stakeholders. For our conversation on January 21, we will be joined by Vanessa Pham, co-Founder of Omsom, Jeremiah McElwee, chief merchandising officer at Thrive Market, and Katie Marston, chief marketing officer at Once Upon a Farm, and Tonya Bakritzes, SVP of marketing at S2G Ventures, to explore the various new approaches retailers and emerging brands are taking for customer acquisition and discovery.

You will also be able to participate in ongoing conversation with the community through our slack group. RSVP for Reimagining Food Retail today!

Bonus: What People Are Reading to Self Educate Themselves

There was a great discussion in the chat about what people are reading right now to self educate themselves. Here are some of the books and articles mentioned:

• S2G’s The Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail Report
• Audre’s Blog Post: S2G Ventures on the Future of Food Retail
• Conscious Leadership, by John Mackey
• On Food and Cooking – The Science and Lore of The Kitchen, By Harold McGee
• Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia
• We Fed an Island by Jose Andres
• The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success, by Albert-László Barabási (read community member Allison Geller’s summary)
• Salesforce acquires Slack, DeepMind’s AlphaFold breakthrough, Trust Fund Socialists & more
• Know when to fold ’em: How a company best known for playing games used A.I. to solve one of biology’s greatest mysteries

The post Walter Robb & S2G’s Audre Kapacinskas on the Future of Food Retail [Video] appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

We’re at the beginning of a new food revolution. COVID-19 has shone a light on the vulnerabilities across our food system and created an imperative to reimagine what is possible. In the face of the pandemic, eaters have begun demanding greater diversity, transparency, health, safety, convenience and accessibility in our food supply. This new reality is changing the relationship between retailers, brands and eaters, while also accelerating innovation and the adoption of technology across every part of the value chain.  

We are thrilled to be partnering with S2G Ventures to bring the best and brightest minds together to understand how this unprecedented moment in time might shape food retail over the next five years. Using S2G’s recently released The Future of Food: Through the Lens of Retail Report as a framework, we will be hosting a 4-part interactive conversation series exploring how innovations in commerce, content and community will transform the industry. Our goal is to create a platform for discussion and collaboration, a place for people from diverse backgrounds from farm to fork to come together to explore how we might create a more resilient, equitable, diverse, delicious, healthful and climate smart future.

How to Participate

We’re creating a platform for discussion and collaboration, a place for people from diverse backgrounds from farm to fork to come together to explore how we might create a more resilient, equitable, diverse, delicious, healthful and climate-smart future.

You can attend individual sessions or purchase an all access pass, which gives you access to our dedicated community Slack channel where you will be able to connect with others to discuss how to navigate the evolving grocery retail world.

All of our conversations are highly interactive and include 45 minutes of live Q&A with our speakers via Zoom.

Virtual Conversations

Walter Robb & S2G Ventures on The Future of Retail | December 10, 2020 |  2-3:30p ET [Free Event]

Join Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and executive in residence at S2G Ventures, Audre Kapacinskas, vice president at S2G Ventures, and Danielle Gould, founder of Food+Tech Connect, for a conversation about how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system grounded in trust that better connects consumers to their food.

View the full video from the discussion here.

Content: Reimagining Discovery | January 21, 2021 | 12:00-1:30p ET

In response to the panic buying of March 2020, retailers began to rethink what they put on their shelves. They prioritized the essentials, and larger, established brands over smaller, emerging ones. In a pandemic era grocery store, demos and other tried and true in store marketing techniques no longer work, which has further hurt emerging brands. Today, brands are being forced to rethink how they find and attract customers. This conversation will explore the various new approaches emerging brands are taking for customer acquisition and discovery.

Speakers:

• Vanessa Pham, Co-Founder at Omsom
• Jeremiah McElwee, Chief Merchandising Officer at Thrive Market
• Katie Marston, Chief Marketing Officer at Once Upon a Farm
• Kelsey Formost, Director of Content Strategy at Tagger Media
• Tonya Bakritzes, SVP of Marketing at S2G Ventures

Community: Reimagining Grocery To Better Serve All Stakeholders | February 4, 2021 | 12:00-1:30p ET

The US’s top 20 grocery stores represent over 70% of the retail market. They are gatekeepers of our food supply chain and have had profound impacts on what food is produced and by whom, as well as the health and wellbeing of their staff and communities. This discussion will explore how retailers might better support all of their stakeholders (ie their customers / neighborhood, employees, brands, farmers, etc.) needs around transparency, equity, diversity, health and sustainability. We’ll also look at the ways digitization and digital storytelling are changing retailers’ responsibility to and their relationship with their stakeholders.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Errol Schweizer, Host of The Checkout Podcast, Co-Founder, Board Member For Natural Products Retail and CPG, Writer at Forbes.com and Former Whole Foods VP of Grocery
• Sam Polk, CEO at Everytable
• Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Key Leader at Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Greg Asbed, Co-Founder at Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Jessica Murphy, Business Development Manager at S2G Ventures

Commerce: Reimagining Grocery For Resilience | February 18, 2021 | 12:00-1:30p ET

The pandemic has expanded how and where we shop. Conventional grocery retail initially struggled to meet the demand shock caused by pantry loading. Consequently, many consumers turned to online grocers, meal-kits, farm e-commerce sites and other delivery services that were once seen as niche. In this discussion, we will examine how some of these food retailers have pivoted business models or adapted supply chains to enable them to be more resilient and better serve their customers’ needs around convenience. We will also examine what may have staying power as conventional retailers invest in omni-channel and smart fulfillment strategies to solve the last mile.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Jody Kalmbach, Group Vice President, Product Experience at The Kroger Co.
• Birgit Cameron, Head of Patagonia Provisions
• Rob Twyman, Executive Vice President at Whole Foods Market
• Moderated by Walter Robb, EIR at S2G Ventures

The post Introducing The Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Source: S2G Ventures’ The Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail

This is a guest post by Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President at S2G Ventures

Food+Tech Connect and S2G Ventures are partnering to host Reimagining Retail, a series of conversations exploring how this unprecedented moment in time will shape food retail over the next five years. 

Why Now? How the Pandemic of 2020 is reshaping grocery retail, why today is different and what it will change about how and what we eat. 

The pandemic of 2020 is shining the brightest of lights on our present day food system and exposing both its resiliency and vulnerabilities. No industry touches more aspects of our lives than food – it employs 11 percent of our population, represents 10 percent of household expenditures, underpins our social fabric and directly relates to the health of our communities and planet. Over the last 100 years, we have developed a massive food supply chain that is efficiently humming in the background of our everyday lives – delivering food consistently, cheaply and without question. Over the last year, cracks emerged across our food system and showcased some of the tradeoffs we have made over the last century — efficiency at the cost of resiliency; scale at the expense of variety; price at the expense of value; globalization at the expense of our local communities. 

At the same time, Covid-19 accelerated trends that had been percolating for years – expanding digital footprints, refining e-commerce offerings, exploring automation opportunities. As Covid-19 persists and retailers continue to forge ahead, the pandemic is separating the leaders from the laggards. New technologies and behaviors are becoming engrained and we are crossing a chasm from which the industry will not return unchanged. 

Taking online grocery shopping as an example, the last 30 years have seen a slow evolution. Peapod was founded in 1989 – despite requiring customers to physically download software, the company had enough buzz to go public in 1996 but ultimately closed its digital doors in February of 2020 (ironically). Webvan received its first order in 1999, spent $1 billion building distribution centers in 2000 and closed in 2001. Instacart was founded several years later and offered a more accessible, hybrid model for consumers and retailers that connected physical and digital. Despite these fits and starts, online grocery sales remained low – 3-5 percent of total grocery in the US. As Covid-19 persists, it is influencing behavior and offering a real opportunity to make online grocery shopping a meaningful part of our food system – projections estimate that 1 in every 5 grocery dollars will be spent online in 2025. Today’s emerging digital models are underestimated in their ability to change how, what and why we eat what we eat.

While we have built a massive supply chain, when we compare the capital that has flowed into other sectors like pharma or technology, food pales in comparison. For decades, the food industry has been underinvested, under appreciated and under digitized. Today, we have the opportunity to reimagine it taking into account technology advances, consumer preferences and impact to our economy, planet and health. We are at a distinct moment in time where critical infrastructure is coming together, technology costs have decreased and consumers are open to behavior change. Internet usage reached critical mass in 2000 in the US; the iPhone was launched in 2007; falling sensor costs are driving the proliferation of personal and IoT devices which in turn are contributing to the exponential rise of data – we have 44X the amount of data today than we did a decade prior. As we think forward to the next 100 years of food and retailing, there is opportunity to reimagine sourcing and verification, go-to-market channels and market places and ultimately who controls access to the market and the products that will win in the next century. 

The increasing role of technology in retail transcends the growth of e-commerce during the pandemic. It will impact not only where consumers buy, but how and why they buy. It is within this context that we at S2G Ventures see opportunity to build a better food system by integrating content, community and commerce, which we outline in full in our Future of Retail Report. By leveraging cutting edge technologies with stakeholder-focused business models, we have an opportunity to build a 21st century food system grounded in trust that better connects consumers to their food.

Commerce: How emerging sales channels and new operational approaches are enabling 21st century business models and building a more resilient food supply chain.

In the early days of the pandemic, vulnerabilities across our food system emerged – from early stock-outs, to stories of infected workers to euthanized pigs. As consumers, we were confronted with the limitations  of supply chains built for affordability, consistency, efficiency and safety. Using the meat industry as an anecdote, in the last 45 years the number of meat plants has been cut in half; in the US three pork processors control nearly two thirds of the pork processing capacity and four beef processors control nearly three fourths of beef processing. In some ways, consumers benefited from the greater access to cheap, safe, abundant food that this vast system enabled. According to ERS, “the average share of disposable personal income spent on food by Americans fell from 17.0% in 1960 to a historical low of 9.5% in 2019.” In other ways consumers became increasingly disconnected from food producers and more exposed to highly processed and less nutrient dense foods. This supply chain made sense for grocery retailers who also faced consolidation and were often competing on price. In 1996 the 20 largest grocery retailers represented 42 percent of the market; in 2018 they represented over 70 percent. 

While today’s grocery retailers have more power than ever, the industry is concurrently becoming more complex as lines between physical and digital blur, new capabilities and organizational structures are required and relationships between consumers, sellers and producers evolve. Just as the television networks began to be disintermediated in the early 2000’s, the food system is beginning to experience a shift. Consumers are engaging across a variety of platforms and expectations are carrying over from other industries. If Netflix can serve-up content that is tailored to my tastes and preferences, why can’t the food providers in my life do the same? 

Customer expectations around convenience and personalization are forcing retailers to do more, carry more, manage more as they compete with a new set of players. As complexity in grocery retail increases, retailers are digitizing their operations and investing in robotics, automation and smart fulfillment to improve the economics of personalization and convenience. The omni-channel evolution is changing the supply chain and even organizational structures – overhauling existing divisions between “digital” and “store” teams to create a unified approach both internally with their teams and externally with their customers. In some instances, the physical world is mimicking the digital as stores are being reconfigured to reflect online organization and digital footprints.

In addition to increasing organizational complexity, there are also supply chain shocks to manage. In 2019 there were 337 food safety recalls in the US. This highlights an opportunity for retailers to add value and resiliency by moving up the value chain. To enable transparency across our supply chain, we need better data and interoperability. The FDA is actively working on refining industry standards and many retailers have taken it upon themselves to work with their suppliers to put these systems in place. As concerns around sustainability, climate change and resource availability mount, there is another path to explore resilience: controlled environment agriculture (CEA) or “indoor ag.” A number of partnership models have arisen between retailers and CEA farms, ranging from hub and spoke organic models to operational improvements to bring down the cost of indoor produce to hyper-local agriculture. These new approaches to food production reduce freight cost, better balance supply and demand, improve sustainability and can even repurpose under-utilized real estate. Technology advances have made this opportunity more real than ever before. Advances in LED lighting systems, IoT capabilities, seed breeding platforms, to name a few, continue to make the economics of indoor agriculture compelling. With more controlled systems, there is opportunity to introduce more variety, more nuance that could not withstand the traditional supply chain. Through initiatives like better data from growers and indoor agriculture, retailers can shape not only what food is on a shelf, but how and where it is produced. This is reimagining the fresh perimeter and unlocking a more nutritious, sustainable and transparent food system for 21st century consumers.

The competitive landscape is evolving quickly for food retail. Traditionally, grocers competed with grocers. In the last decade we saw dollar stores (e.g. Dollar General) and general merchandisers (e.g. Target) establish greater footholds in food retail as a means to drive store traffic. During COVID, the food retail space grew increasingly noisy. Restaurants, farmers and brands were forced to seek new sales channels as restrictions, SKU rationalizations and tightening supply chains disrupted previous paths to market. New sales platforms and technologies offered flexibility and matched consumers with their desired food supply – from restaurants becoming local markets to brands selling through social media platforms. The consumer is no longer limited to what is available at their local supermarket; they are expecting more and have never had easier access to products that fit their needs and wants. This enables much more nuance in demand and supply – from locally produced food, to methodologies of production, to subscription-based convenience and nutrition for toddlers, to managing health conditions, to supporting local economies. Niches that previously fought for a spot on a retail shelf, are forging their own path to their customer.

The last mile continues to challenge economics. To enable convenience, new capabilities are required to shift massive infrastructure into more flexible deployments. A recent analysis by Bain laid out various sample scenarios: traditional grocers doing their own picking in store experienced -15 percent margins; those picking from a warehouse experienced -8 percent, 3rd party services improved margins to -5 percent. Ultimately, to get to profitability, automation and micro-fulfillment are necessary. By proactively laying the groundwork from the bottom up of a distribution model that takes last mile delivery into account, the economics begin to look more reasonable long-term but require significant capital upfront to invest in automation. 

Target has been a leader in the digital arena, making digital a priority for the company. As CEO Brian Cornell stated in 2017: “We’re investing in our business with a long-term view of years and decades, not months and quarters. We’re putting digital first and evolving our stores, digital channels and supply chain to work together as a smart network that delivers on everything guests love about Target.” Target’s conviction around this strategy has been paying off: in Q2 2020 it reported a 24 percent surge in sales (their largest increase, ever) and 195 percent growth in digital. This paired with partnership strategies with players like Ulta Beauty to reimagine space and expand serviceable footprints both digitally and physically are positioning the retailer well. While the economics of last mile delivery are being sorted out, hybrid offerings like click-and-collect are providing convenience to consumers while maintaining economics for retailers. Kroger was playing catch-up in the e-commerce space early in the pandemic, but has successfully accelerated a number of programs. Kroger’s buy online, pick-up in store (“BOPIS”) program is currently offered across 2,100 locations; this has contributed to the 127 percent increase in e-commerce sales in Q2 2020. To enable this model, Kroger is leaning into a partnership with Ocado to enable automated micro-fulfillment and improve margins for click-and-collect and delivery. Tomorrow’s supply chain will be built from the ground-up, with last mile delivery and automation being core considerations. These changing dynamics offer new partnership opportunities around technical capabilities (robotics; data; AI) and financing (CAPEX). 

Join us on December 10 for a conversation with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President at S2G Ventures, and Danielle Gould, founder of Food+Tech Connect, to discuss how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system. RSVP here.

Content: How reimagining product discovery can unlock opportunities for true product differentiation across taste, nutrition and function.

How do your parents decide what food to buy? While brands have more ways than ever to reach their customers, the way retailers enable product discovery is not so different from the first self-service grocery store 104 years ago. Shelf placement, in-store promotions and branded packaging were pillars of product discovery and key to the success of products in a pre-pandemic grocery store. There have been improvements to this discovery model, for instance, Whole Foods offering a community experience in-store by highlighting local / regional products and a “third place” to gather, but the model has remained largely unchanged for the better part of a century. 

Today, we see two models at play. First, a legacy model that focuses on scale and volume. This top-down approach gives the broker and buyer control and positions the retailer as gatekeeper of shelf placement, which in turn determines brand exposure to consumers. The second model takes a bottoms-up approach and focuses on user needs and product attributes (verified organic, gluten free, etc). As the world continues to increase in complexity, centralized decision making will reach its limits. Keeping up with shifting preferences will require an open-source approach to curating products – retailers will need to think differently about category management, relationships with brands (including their own private label) and community engagement.

As consumers do more online, retailers must reimagine product discovery from the ground up, using data to better tailor products for consumer needs. Without granular data retailers will be unable to compete with digital platforms that understand user needs, wants and can begin to anticipate them. Amazon has written the playbook on this in other industries and is increasingly interested in the food space through its new grocery formats and delivery services. Data is critical because it enables the sales channel to add value to their consumers by reducing noise and surfacing content that is relevant to them in the moment. For those in the business of food manufacturing (branded or private label), it also offers an innovation path. As data about products and consumers improves, we will be able to better match attributes with needs. Companies like Thrive Market and Good Eggs are exploring new models that are built from the ground-up – aggregating data about ingredients, production methods, holistic product specifications –  and can offer nuance, discovery and specificity that traditional models cannot. There is a long way to go to scale these concepts for the mass market, but they offer a glimpse into an attribute-based system where a dad looking for peanut-free snacks is not reviewing the nutritional labels of 15 boxes, but rather can review a curated set of products based on his needs. These models are also more brand-friendly, offering them better data and discoverability.

The concept of retailer as gatekeeper is changing. As more digitally native brands launch and leverage new selling platforms (e.g social media channels and e-commerce sites), brands can understand their consumers at a level of granularity nearly impossible in-store. This will enable brands to emerge that are laser focused not only on selling their products to consumers, but on understanding their motivations and iterating on new products based on the data they collect. Whether it’s a busy mom trying to find snacks for her child with an allergy or a baby boomer managing a recent diagnosis of osteoporosis or a Gen Z looking to vote with their pocketbook around sustainability. As the grocery channel becomes digitized, there is an opportunity to move beyond the ‘buyer’ model in which a single individual determines what is made available to consumers, but rather an open source approach which can cater to the preferences of various communities and curate products based on function, authenticity and needs. This model is unlocked when we have a bottoms-up understanding of our products and our supply chain. In this new digital context, authenticity has never been more important. And for investors, it will be the brands who are able to develop these kinds of relationships with their customers that will be the most compelling investment opportunities. 

Another, longer wavelength variable to consider is the impact of biometric data being more widely available to consumers. Today, 21 percent of Americans use a smartwatch or fitness tracker. As this number expands, the intersection between food and wellness becomes more concrete at a personal level. The ability to pair personal biometric data (e.g. your blood pressure is 140 today, 10 percent higher than last week) with information coming online about ingredients and products will enable people to make more personalized decisions about what food they buy and why. Personal and IoT devices unlock new forms of engagement that enable the collapse of physical and digital worlds and offer bi-directional digital interactions between consumers, producers and retailers. This will create a feedback loop of information sharing that can unlock new discovery processes and product innovation.

As material science, genomics, food production and other technologies advance and we dig deeper into a treasure trove of better flavors and nutrition, we stand at the precipice of high throughput product innovation and true differentiation. We see some of this happening already – partnerships between retailers and heirloom seed breeders; cancer treatments paired with specifically bred plants; natural blue dyes that are price competitive with synthetic colorants; tomatoes that don’t taste like cardboard; more nuanced strains of cannabis. We have been living in the world of black and white television and we are about to go to HD Color. Just as the online world has gotten noisier, the food world is begging to experience the same, and it is the role of the retailer to help their customers navigate the 21st century food system. Retailers are poised to play a critical role in understanding customer needs, tailoring products that suit them and conveniently making them available. 

Community: Tomorrow’s business models recognize the ecosystem we are part of and are built on trust across customers, employees, suppliers, local communities and shareholders.

As we move deeper into an era where sales channels are more fluid and consumers have the opportunity to discover products and purchase them through a variety of means, customer engagement is more important than ever. Millennials and Gen Z, a demographic of 150 million, are overtaking Baby Boomers in their purchasing power and their values are poised to have an impact on the trajectory of business. According to a recent Deloitte study, 80 percent of millennials and seventy percent of Gen Z said they will make an extra effort to buy products and services from smaller, local businesses to help them stay in business post-pandemic. Sixty percent of respondents plan to buy more from large businesses that “have taken care of their workforces and positively affected society during the pandemic.” Tomorrow’s consumers are looking to spend their money with organizations they trust.

According to Edelman’s ‘Trust Barometer,’ ethics are 3 times more likely to drive trust in business rather than competence. In this context, engagement across a variety of stakeholders is more important than ever. In 2019 Business Roundtable redefined its statement on the Purpose of a Corporation – showcasing how engagement across all shareholders is imperative to long-term success. Key tenants to building a community include delivering value to customers, investing in employees, dealing ethically with suppliers, supporting local communities and generating long-term value for shareholders. Humana’s Bold Goal of improving the health of the communities they serve by 20 percent by 2020 is an example of supporting local communities.

“By taking a broader, more complete view of corporate purpose, boards can focus on creating long-term value, better serving everyone – investors, employees, communities, suppliers and customers,” said Bill McNabb, former CEO of Vanguard. Retailers are in a unique position; having been a cornerstone to local communities they already occupy a trusted position among their customers. While trust exists it cannot be taken for granted, it needs to be earned on a daily basis. Whether it’s the products a retailer chooses to carry, how they maintain the health and wellness of their employees, support of community organizations, or enabling the health and wellness of the customers they serve. In an era that is going to have more information and optionality than ever better, being a trusted participant in your community is critical.

In the march toward low-cost production, we lost sight of some of the upstream and downstream impacts of our food system. Today’s burgeoning consumer class is increasingly paying attention to those considerations. Given advances in technology, data, food production methodologies and e-commerce platforms, there is an opportunity to improve our food system, to think holistically about the communities we are serving and drive long-term sustained results for business. 

Looking Ahead: A 21st century food system grounded in trust

As 2020 draws to a close and we set our sights on a new year, we stand at the crossroads of what was, is and will be. New technologies are shortening the space between consumer and producer and as Gen Z and Millennials gain economic power and vote with their pocketbook, trust is more important than ever in what, how and why we buy what we buy.

Commerce

• Physical and digital worlds are blending together; integrated teams and systems focused on the holistic customer journey are key to providing consistency, flexibility and trust.
• Retailers are moving from gatekeeper to tailor; as digital sales channels become more common retailers can differentiate and add value to consumers by leveraging data and curating products.
• Food producers, brands and food service providers have an opportunity to sell in new ways to their consumers and benefit from better data and direct user feedback.

Content

• Online product discovery needs to be improved.
• Health and wellness are top-of-mind for many – as more functional ingredients come online, truly differentiated branded and private label products can build trust with consumers.
• Data is laying the foundation for tomorrow – having a data strategy is more important than ever.
• Complexity is increasing – in order to keep up, you need to decentralize and partner.

Community

• Trust is the currency of the 21st century food system. This needs to be earned through data, verification, consistency, transparency and authenticity.
• Long-term resiliency and value will be achieved through broad stakeholder engagement with customers, employees, the local community, and shareholders. 
• Values have never been more important – as Millennials and Gen Z gain economic clout, they are looking to align their spending power with their values. 

Channel digitization, advances in automation, new approaches to food production, the proliferation of data, new customer engagement models and the evolution of societal norms provide an opportunity to revisit some of the tradeoffs we made in the past century. Food is unique in its ubiquity. Everyone eats, and as the food supply chain evolves, we have an opportunity to build a system based on trust that is good for the health and wellness of consumers, producers, local economies and the planet.

Join us on December 10 for a conversation with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, and Audre Kapacinskas, VP of S2G to discuss how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system. RSVP here.

Join us for future Redesigning Retail conversations here. 

Download S2G’s The Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail Report here.

___________________

Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President at S2G Ventures

Audre Kapacinskas is a Vice President at S2G Ventures, where she focuses on unlocking value for S2G, its portfolio companies and strategic partners. Throughout her career, Audre has worked at the intersection of technology, strategy and operations to incubate new ideas and drive growth across organizations.  Prior to S2G, Audre was a Director of Sales and Corporate Strategy at a predictive analytics start-up delivering artificial intelligence and IoT solutions to the Industrial sector. She started her career at a boutique strategy consulting firm working with private equity firms and corporate clients with growth acceleration, value assessments and investment diligence. Audre is a Fulbright Scholar, holds an Honours BA from the University of Toronto and an MA from Vilnius University.

The post S2G Ventures on The Future of Food Retail appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Michelle Burns, Senior Vice President of Global Coffee & Tea at Starbucks as part of Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability.

As a point of Starbucks background, when we approach coffee, we do so from three lenses: quality, responsibility and innovation. As part of our focus on responsibility, we’ve developed ethical sourcing standards in partnership with Conservation International for more than 15 years. We call these our Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices. Currently, more than 99 percent of Starbucks coffee is ethically sourced according to these standards, and our goal is to get to 100 percent; the balance comes from new coffee origins we’re exploring.

Yes, we prioritize biodiversity in these standards. For C.A.F.E. Practices, third-party auditors examine many aspects of farm operations – criteria related to social responsibility, environmental leadership and economic accountability. As part of these criteria, farms need to follow numerous practices to help protect biodiversity and wildlife habitat. We ensure farms are not only following minimum standards, but also have access to tools and training to continually improve.

To illustrate areas promoted in the program and included in the third-party auditing process, several measures are checked that relate to biodiversity on farms and in coffee-growing regions:

• Bodies of water protected from degradation
• Irrigation tracked
• Surface erosion controlled, soil productivity maintained
• Diverse coffee shade canopy maintained
• Wildlife protected
• Land conserved (e.g. no tolerance for natural forest converted to agriculture since 2004)
• Pests and plant diseases controlled under ecological standards
• Long-term productivity measures taken (e.g. a pruning and renovation to help productivity, and extra points for working with a research institute)
• Water consumption minimized
• Wastewater impacts minimized
• Climate change risks and crop impacts tracked
• Waste managed properly
• Energy conserved

In the auditing, there are several further detailed statements under each of the topic areas above.

To help support farmers – whether they already meet C.A.F.E Practices standards to sell to Starbucks, or whether they’re striving to – we’ve established nine Farmer Support Centers in key coffee-growing regions. These offer agronomy research and development, technical support for farmers and other support for the communities in an open-source model both for farmers who sell to Starbucks and farmers who don’t.

We’ve also committed to provide 100 million healthy coffee trees to farmers, and in doing so, our intent is to help increase their quality and yields while also supporting the conservation of biodiversity; we can make existing lands more productive and not expand into forests. As is noted above in the C.A.F.E. Practice standards topics, we have zero tolerance for deforestation.

It’s no incidental statement that our success in sourcing, roasting and preparing coffee, especially for the long term, is directly linked to the success of the farmers who grow our coffee. This is why over the years we’ve worked – with the help and expertise of many partners – to help coffee farmers continually do better for the long term, again whether they sell to Starbucks or not. In total, we’ve invested more than $100 million in supporting coffee communities. We buy 3 percent of the world’s coffee, but we work to have our impact outweigh our buying power. When we help farmers improve their quality and productivity in a sustainable way – including helping foster biodiversity in their surroundings – it serves both us and them well in the long run.

In 2015 we worked together with Conservation International to conceive and launch the Sustainable Coffee Challenge. Today more than 100 international partners have joined, and we’re working together with a goal to make coffee the world’s first sustainable agricultural product. We’re also a supporter of World Coffee Research and its open, global work with us and others to accelerate and apply research and development on coffee farms. These collaborative efforts are encouraging, and there’s still much more to do.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

_______________________

Michelle Burns, Senior Vice President of Global Coffee & Tea at Starbucks

Michelle Burns is senior vice president, Global Coffee & Tea at Starbucks. Promoted to this role in May 2018, Michelle is responsible for leading all things coffee and tea – both Core and Reserve – including strategy for growing, sourcing, buying, quality, sustainment and education. She will oversee programs that are grounded in our heritage, including Origin experiences, Farmer Support Centers, and the Visitor Center at Hacienda Alsacia.

A 23-year Starbucks partner, Michelle recently led the Branded Solutions team and has been a key member of the Starbucks Channel Development and Licensed Stores leadership teams. Prior to joining Starbucks in 1995, Michelle worked in sales and distribution in the Natural Foods Industry with Frontier Cooperative Herbs where she found her passion for coffee and was responsible for developing the natural and mass market channels for the coffee category in the U.K. and United States.

Michelle holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa. She serves on the board for FareStart, serves as a sponsor for the Starbucks Access Alliance Network, is actively involved in Google Food and Beverage Innovation Lab and is a longtime member of the Women’s Foodservice Forum.

After a great Starbucks journey living in many cities across the country, Michelle, her husband and two children all enjoy calling Seattle home. Her passions include family, travel and great food and wine. Michelle is a Starbucks Coffee Master and starts her day with coffee in a Starbucks store.

The post How Starbucks Promotes Biodiversity Through Its Sourcing Standards appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

The first 365 by Whole Foods store in Silver Lake | Source: Whole Foods Market

Every week we track the business, tech and investment trends in CPG, retail, restaurants, agriculture, cooking and health, so you don’t have to. Here are some of this week’s top headlines.

In retail news, Whole Foods has announced the end to its 365 format. The existing 12 stores will remain in business. Robomart announced that its self-driving vehicles will be used by Stop & Shop in the greater Boston area starting this spring. Giant grocery stores will replace robotic assistants at 172 of its stores. And finally, Postmates has raised $100 million ahead of its IPO.

In CPG news, Oatly is set to open a factory in New Jersey in late March or April to boost production by as much as 10 times. Laird Superfood, maker of plant-based creamers, has received $32 million in funding led by WeWork.

As part of biodiversity month here at Food+Tech Connect, we’ve launched an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 CEOs, execs, farmers and investors.

Check out our weekly round-up of last week’s top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

_______________

1. Introducing Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability

We interviewed 45+ CEOs, execs, farmers and investors about the role biodiversity plays in our food industry. Read this week’s published responses from Crop Trust, General Mills, Impossible Foods, Kuli Kuli, Row 7 and Sir Kensington’s,

2. The Future of Food Is Biodiverse

Biodiversity is crucial to the health of our food supply and it sits at the intersection of taste and sustainability. Biodiverse food is sustainable food.

3. Amazon-Owned Whole Foods Scraps Smaller 365 Store Expansion – Yahoo

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey told employees the grocery chain will not open new Whole Foods 365 stores anymore. The existing 12 stores will remain in business.

4. Oat Milk Buzz Triggers a Factory Expansion and New Brands From Big Food – Bloomberg

Oatly is set to open a plant in New Jersey. Other companies are jumping on the oat milk bandwagon amid signs that consumers are switching from almond milk in their coffee, including Califia Farms, PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats and Danone’s Silk.

5. New Diet Guidelines to Benefit People and the Planet: More Greens for All, Less Meat for Some – New York Times

The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health brings together 30+ leading scientists to reach a scientific consensus that defines a healthy and sustainable diet.

6. Rethinking CPG

Join us to hear from some of the game-changing startups who are rethinking CPG at our January Food+Tech Meetup. Oatly, Sir Kensington’s and Four Sigmatic will do a deep dive into their business models, technology, challenges and lessons learned.

7. Forget Lab-Grown Meat and Blockchain. This Is the Future of Food – Food Business News

Mike Lee of Alpha Food Labs argues for a simpler solution — we need to create a more biodiverse food system to support a healthier planet and people.

8. A New $100M Investment Values Postmates at $1.85B Ahead of Its IPO – Recode

The investment includes participation from BlackRock, Tiger Global and other current shareholders. Postmates hopes to go public at the beginning of a wave of highly-touted tech offerings that is likely to include Uber.

9. Laird Superfood Seals $32M Funding Led by Tech Firm WeWork – Food Navigator

Funding will be used for product development and make small acquisitions of like-minded health food brands.

10. Robomart Drives Home a Deal with Stop & Shop for Mobile Commerce – The Spoon

Robomart announced that its self-driving mobile commerce vehicles will be used by Stop & Shop in the greater Boston area starting this spring. Vehicles will carry produce, meal kits and other convenience items directly to customer’s doors.

11. Giant Food Stores Will Replace Robotic Assistants at 172 Locations – The Washington Post

The robotic rollout is part of a plan by Giant’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize USA, to deploy about 500 robots to stores such as Giant, Martin’s and Stop & Shop.

12. Israeli Drone StartUp SeeTree Comes Out of Stealth with $15M Series A for Perm Crop Service – AgFunder

Hanaco Ventures led the round. SeeTree will use funding to further the development of its technology for citrus orchards.

13. France’s Sencrop Closes $10M Series A to Expand Agro-Weather Station Network – AgFunder

BpiFrance led the round. Funding will be used to accelerate Sencrop’s international development by expanding its network of weather stations, as well as its community of farmer users.

14. Pensa, AI-Enabled Drones Maker for Inventory Monitoring, Raises $5M – Xconomy

Signia Venture Partners led the funding, which will help Pensa do additional store trials.

15. Shake Shack Plans to Launch Food Trucks in February – Skift Table

Shake Shack’s food trucks are a smart play to boost company sales in the lucrative private events and catering space.

16. Women, Women of Color & Gender Non-Conforming Innovator Database

We created this open-source list to increase representation, support and investment in women, women of color & gender-nonconforming innovators in food. Join the list & help us spread the word using #womxninfood

Our newsletter is the absolute easiest way to stay on top of the emerging sector, so sign up for it today and never miss the latest food tech and innovation news and trends, Already signed up? Share the love with your friends and colleagues!

The post Whole Foods Shelves 365 Format, Oatly to Open New Jersey Plant + More appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7-31, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. See the full list of participants and read about why biodiversity in food is important here.

We are also producing a biodiversity exhibit at The Winter Fancy Food Show, so please stop by to say hello.

Below, I speak with Thrive Market co-Founder and CEO Nick Green about how the retailer is promoting biodiversity by prioritizing supply chain partners that farm regeneratively or biodynamically. Green encourages brands to prioritize Demeter Biodynamic Certification and Regenerative Organic Certifications, as he predicts they will become more prevalent in the next 18 months. He also talks about how he’d like to see more products that focus on soil health, both on the meat and meatless side.

________________

DG: Is biodiversity a priority for Thrive Market? If so, how and why?

Nick Green: Yes! Biodiversity is one of the key tools for ecosystem health and longevity. At Thrive Market, whenever possible we prioritize supply chain partners that share this view, partners that consider how their practices will affect soil health, water quality and surrounding plant and animal life. More and more that means supporting producers who are farming not just organically, but regeneratively or biodynamically.

DG: How does Thrive Market define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like?

NG: Biodiversity is a broad term but, at Thrive Market, we focus primarily on the importance of a place-appropriate abundance of plants, insects and animals to achieve a balanced soil and water system. The “good” level will depend entirely on place, but the primary measure we use is when minimal inputs external to the system are needed to maintain nutrient levels in the soil.

DG: What is Thrive Market doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

NG: As a retailer and maker of our own products, we promote biodiverse practices whenever possible by choosing to sell or source from partners farming regeneratively or biodynamically. For example, our pork partner in Georgia has long been a Savory Institute Hub, a teaching ground for regenerative agriculture, and was recently announced as one of the first farms to be included in the Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) pilot. Soon we’ll even be launching a regeneratively-farmed popcorn!

DG: What is the business case for products that promote a more biodiverse food system?

NG: Put simply, even if a farmer is producing a product organically, that product may not be around in 20 years if the health of its broader ecosystem is ignored. This is why practices like crop rotation, promotion of symbiotic plant systems (often in the form of “weeds” that return or capture nutrients for the soil) and use of animals to naturally fertilize and graze in moderation are so important. Practices like this not only make sense because they improve the long-term viability of the food system, but, done correctly, they can actually save the producer money by using inputs found internally in the system, rather than expensive soil supplements and fertilizers. Lastly, there’s a business case because more and more shopper want to buy products that are adding back to, rather than depleting, the food system.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

NG: Moving towards a more biodiverse food systems requires real risk and investment for producers. Consider the farmer who wants to transition away from the highly efficient, highly mechanized monoculture planting of corn. If they’ve been planting that crop for years, the thought of rotational planting might have long-term appeal but still presents massive tradeoffs in near-term revenue and business predictability. This is why it’s so crucial that consumers become more educated about how their food products are being made, so that the collective demand presents real financial opportunity for a better supply chain.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities your organization faces for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

NG: By far the greatest challenge is finding biodiverse supply chains that are both affordable for consumers and available in a large enough quantity to reliably be offered to our members.

DG: Does your average consumer care about biodiversity today? Why should they care? How do you (or will you) get them to care?

NG: We’re excited because, yes, more and more we’re seeing stronger demand for products that promote healthy soil through biodiversity. One of the huge advantages that we have as an online retailer is that we’re able to create content for our membership community that they can then share with other members or non-members alike. Whether this is educational content about how healthy soil can help sequester more carbon from the atmosphere, or sourcing mini-documentaries about partners transitioning to regenerative practices, we see the Thrive Market platform as an important voice in support of a move towards a more biodiverse food system.

DG: What are some of the most important things retailers, food manufacturers and other key parts of the food supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

NG: Learn about soil health via resources like Regenerative Organic or the Savory Institute. Learn about biodynamic farming via Demeter. Look for those certifications to become more prevalent in the next 18 months. And support food systems that are aligned with the practices above!

DG: If we get to a perfectly biodiverse food system, how would that change the typical selection of products we see in a grocery store?

NG: More and more, we think the Demeter Biodynamic Certification and Regenerative Organic Certifications will become important to consumers.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry — either in foodservice or CPG — that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

NG: On the meat and meatless side of things, we’d love to see more focus on soil health. This means multi-species rotational animal systems that move animals according to what the soil can support or actively needs, and plant-based or vegan options that are sourcing ingredients from low or no-tillage supply chains.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

NG: Our vision is for biodiversity, ecosystem health, regenerative farming, Biodynamic practices — for all of these to be household phrases in 10 years — sooner we hope, so that enough demand will exist from consumers to reward the transition for farmers, CPG companies, and retailers alike.

DG: Anything else you want to share?

NG: Thank you to readers and to Food + Tech Connect and The Future Market for helping get the word out about this!

____________________

Nick Green, Co-Founder and CEO at Thrive Market

Nick is the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, the online membership platform on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for every American family. For $5/month, Thrive Market members get access to the top natural and organic products at wholesale prices shipped anywhere in the U.S. for free. A serial social impact entrepreneur, Nick began in the education space with his first business Ivy Insiders, a college test prep and mentorship program that made tutoring more affordable and helped over 20,000 students get into better colleges. More recently, Nick and his Thrive Market co-founders launched Alliance for Good, a philanthropic community that they seeded with $13 million to fund charitable work and social enterprise. Outside of work, Nick loves traveling, investing, reading biographies, and spending time with his wife and 1-year old daughter. He originally hails from Minneapolis, MN and earned his B.A. in Economics from Harvard.

The post Thrive Market on The Next Big Food Certifications appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

The food industry has increasingly prioritized sustainability, as eaters care more about where and how our food is produced, as well as who produces it. There is even growing interest around soil health and the potential for agriculture to regenerate the health of the planet, not just sustain the status quo. There has been far less attention, however, to the diversity of what’s being grown.

About 75 percent of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and 5 animal species. Almost half of our plant-derived calories come from just three foods: wheat, corn and rice. While estimates vary, it is believed that there are over 30,000 edible plants, and we only eat 150 of them. Thirty percent of livestock breeds are at risk of extinction, and six breeds are being lost each month.

This concentration around just a few food sources puts our food system at risk, as evidenced by the story of the Cavendish Banana and The Irish Potato Famine. It also robs eaters of awesome, nutrient dense foods and flavor experiences.

How did we get here? Historically, the food industry prioritized commoditization, mass yield, and uniformity over flavor, nutrition, and sustainability. As a result, we are losing plant and animal species at an alarming rate, while diet-related disease, obesity, and micronutrient deficiencies are on the rise.

Now, we as an industry have a chance and a responsibility to make things right.

The Future of Food is Biodiverse: Where Flavor and Sustainability Meet

Building a food industry that promotes agrobiodiversity – the variety and variability of plants, animals, microorganisms and biocultural systems linked to agriculture and food – makes our food system more sustainable and allows us to delight eaters with new and exciting foods from a diverse set of cultures.

As an industry, agrobiodiversity ensures supply chain resiliency and food security by safeguarding the genetic material needed to ensure crops can evolve in the face of pests and disease, climate change and extreme weather. A biodiverse food system also supports economic development, enables greater dietary diversity, which leads to better health, and helps preserve cultural traditions, techniques, and flavors.

39 Industry Leaders Explore Biodiversity in Food

Intellectually, you might agree with our premise that the future of food is biodiverse, but what does it mean in practice?

To help us understand what a biodiverse food industry looks like, we’ve partnered with The Future Market to host an editorial series from January 7-31 inviting leading CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers to share insight into their thoughts and strategies for supporting biodiversity in food. Check out our incredible list of contributors below and read all of the interviews here.

The Future Market at Fancy Food Show

The Future Market is producing a Biodiversity Exhibit at The Winter Fancy Food Show January 13-15. The exhibit offers a deep dive into biodiversity in food and explores what a more biodiverse grocery aisle might look like. It will feature 9 new concept products, 26 biodiverse crop spotlights, and a digital shopping experience filled with concept product ideas for the next 5-25 years. See content from the exhibit and learn more here. We hope to see you there!

Editorial Series Contributors:

Read all of the published interviews here.

• Aerofarms – Marc Oshima, Co-Founder & CMO
• Applegate – Gina Asoudegan, Vice President, Mission and Innovation
• Back to the Roots – Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Vélez Ramírez, Co-Founders
• Believe in Bambara – Tamara Cohen, Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer
• Bowery Farming – Susan McIsaac, Head of Agricultural Sciences
• Burlap & Barrel – Ethan Frisch, CEO
• Crops For The Future – Professor Sayed Azam-Ali, CEO
• Dig Inn – Larry Tse, Farm Manager, and Taylor Lanzet, Director of Supply & Sustainability 
• Edenworks – Jason Green, Co-Founder & CEO
• Farm.One – Rob Laing, Founder & CEO
• Food Systems 6 – Renske Lynde, Co-Founder & Managing Director
• Food Tank – Danielle Nierenberg, President
• FoodShot Global – Victor Friedberg, Chairman and Founder
• General Mills, Natural & Organic Operating Unit – Shauna J. Sadowski, Head of Sustainability
• Global Crop Diversity Trust – Marie Haga, Executive Director
• GODAN – Andre Laperriere, Executive Director
• Gotham Greens – Viraj Puri, CEO
• Health Warrior – Casey Emmett, Director of Strategic Sales
• Impossible Foods – Pat Brown, Founder & CEO 
• Institute for the Future – Sarah Smith, Research Director, Food Futures Lab
• KAIBAE – Barbara Berger Maes, Dr. Luc Maes & Thomas Cole, Co-Founders
• Kuli Kuli – Lisa Curtis, Founder & CEO
• La Quercia – Herb Eckhouse, Co-Founder
• Lexicon of Sustainability – Douglas Gayeton, Director
• MAD – Melina Shannon-DiPietro, Executive Director 
• Masumoto Family Farm – Nikiko Masumoto, Farmer, Artist, Community Leader
• National Young Farmers Coalition – Lindsey Shute, Executive Director & Co-Founder
• Rebbl – Sheryl O’Loughlin, CEO 
• rePlant Capital – Robyn O’Brien, VP
• Row 7 Seed Company – Charlotte Douglas, COO
• SDG 2 Advocacy Hub – Paul Newnham, Director
• Sir Kensington’s – Rebecca Gildiner, Impact Strategy Manager
• Slow Food USA – Richard McCarthy, Executive Director
• Starbucks – Michelle Burns, Senior Vice President, Global Coffee & Tea
• Sweetgreen – Nicolas Jammet, Co-Founder & Chief Concept Officer
• Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University – Kathleen Merrigan, Executive Director
• Tender Greens – Erik Oberholtzer, CEO
• Thrive Market –  Nick Green, Co-Founder & CEO
• Wholesome Wave – Michel Nishan, Chef, Author, Food Equity Advocate, Founder & CEO
• Yolele – Philip Teverow, Co-Founder & CEO 

The post Introducing Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This post is sponsored by Relish Works.

Are you a startup rethinking the foodservice value chain and ready to scale to the next level?

Relish Works just launched The Food Foundry, an accelerator program designed to support startups who are positively influencing food’s journey to our tables. Apply Today.

Program Overview:

• 16-week startup accelerator program based in Chicago, IL
• Open to early-stage startups with solutions across the foodservice value chain (excluding CPG and agriculture)
• Selected startups will receive blended investment of $100k in exchange for 3% equity, as well as valuable connections to national foodservice business resources, distribution and supply chain resources, advanced curriculum, access to restaurant operators, mentors, and more
• Program developed in concert with 1871 and Gordon Food Service

Key Dates:

• Accepting Applications: August 15-October 15, 2018
• Finalist Selection Event: November 13 & 14, 2018
• Program Begins: January 21, 2019
• Program Graduation and Demo Day: May 15, 2019

Questions?

Register for an informational webinar on October 10^th at 12PM CST, visit the website, or reach out to Program Manager, Laura Habegger, laura@relishworks.com.

The post Apply Now: The Food Foundry Foodservice Accelerator appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Cannabis condiments, luxurious cellular agriculture and chickens raised alongside the Blockchain. These are just some of the latest themes that we at the Future Market explore in our latest release of six new concept products, now live on our site and on display at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, CA Jan 21-23.

In the past 4 years we’ve created nearly 30 food concept products that take the innovative trends, behaviors, and technologies in food today and illustrates what they might look like as everyday products in our grocery stores. We continue this mission as a way to inspire and enlighten the food innovators of today to create better products and services for tomorrow.

Below is a preview of the six new products we’re launching in San Francisco this week, visit the Future Market for more details or come say hello to us in person at the Esplanade Ballroom within the Winter Fancy Food Show.

Kernza® Krunch

Kernza® Krunch is a deliciously sustainable and fun way to start your mornings. Fill your bowl with crispy flakes made from Kernza®, a long-rooted, perennial grain that helps preserve soil health by resisting drought and reducing erosion. Read More.

Micro Green

Micro Green brings recreational Marijuana to the dining table in an elegant, refined way. Each bottle of Micro Green THC infused olive oil spray is designed to deliver a precise dose of relaxation to whatever food you wish. Read More.

Block Bird’s

Block Bird’s is the first, fully transparent supply chain line of chicken products verified by Blockchain technology. All chicken is sourced from a multitude of small farms in the American midwest, where the entire journey of the chicken, from egg to grocery store, is recorded and plainly visible on the front of the package. Read More.

Faux Fin

Faux Fin, Shark Fin Soup is a premium, indulgent soup for Asian food lovers looking to celebrate a special occasion at home, or simply make an everyday meal just a little more special. Our main ingredient, shark fin, has been cultured in a bioreactor with an algae based nutrient medium. Read More.

Mini Mill

Fresh flour is better flour. With Mini Mill, you have access to a multitude of fresh, whole grains that you grind into flour at the push of a button, all in one compact kitchen appliance. Once you taste the fresh flour difference, you’ll never go back. Read More.

Plant Plate

Plant Plate is the heartiest, most convenient way to fill up after a long day. No appetite is any match for what Plant Plate has to offer. Packed with 30g of plant based protein, Plant Plate never lets you down and always leaves you satisfied. Read More.

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Come see us at the 2018 Winter Fancy Food Show, Jan 21-23 in San Francisco, CA. More details here.

The post Introducing Six New Concept Products From The Future Market appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Jordan Gaspar and Lauren Jupiter, Managing Partners of AccelFoods, an investor in disruptive food and beverage companies.

By now we have had a few weeks to digest the news that Amazon will be acquiring Whole Foods. While startling at first, upon reflection it makes perfect sense. Amazon has been developing its brick-and-mortar strategy; Whole Foods has been trying to “get” online for years, particularly through its burgeoning partnership with Instacart. Consumers now increasingly demand the ability to browse the shelves on and offline for new and exciting natural products. Instead of Amazon building the capabilities from scratch – buy them. It is a $14 billion solution. Plain and simple.

The marriage of these two companies could not have come at a better or more natural time. As consumers have become more educated and more demanding of quality, the industry has boomed. Packaged Facts estimates that the natural foods market reached $69 billion in retail sales in 2016, an incredible 32 percent growth rate over 5 years, and far outpacing flat conventional food growth over the same period. Natural food is no longer a small, alternative piece of the market, due in large part to the success of retailers like Whole Foods who have brought awareness and loyal consumers to this growing market.

At the same time, the natural foods industry is no longer being driven by only mom-and-pop founders. A new generation of entrepreneurs looking to bring their expertise and passion from tech and life-sciences into food are changing the industry. These entrepreneurs are pushing the boundaries of what is standard: new and unique ingredients (see: mushrooms), new marketing platforms, and, maybe most importantly, new methods of sales and distribution. We are seeing the e-commerce phenomenon begin to put a stake-in-the-ground and lead changes in go-to-market strategy across the natural foods industry.  Through online retailers like Amazon, food companies have built sizeable businesses, sometimes growing far more quickly (and more profitably) than their brick-and-mortar focused peers. It is an evolution that led us last year to become increasingly focused on e-commerce as a relevant, and in some cases a primary, channel for our brands.

The best way to consider the unification of these retail channels is through the lens of one of our portfolio companies, Four Sigmatic, a mushroom + superfoods company. At launch, Four Sigmatic’s strategy was to sell online through its company controlled e-commerce platform, allowing for custom content to educate consumers about the health benefits of mushrooms while also building a loyal and engaged consumer community. It also enabled the team to test and launch new products with their loyalists, who were excited by new discovery opportunities. Through this test model, the company launched its leading product line: mushroom coffee. After perfecting its product and branding through its e-commerce platform, Four Sigmatic then launched on Amazon. It quickly reached top of the instant coffee category on Amazon, no doubt driven by its passionate consumer base. Fast-forward a year later and Four Sigmatic is in the midst of hockey stick growth, competing with Starbucks Via for the bestseller slot in instant coffee on Amazon.  In fact, last week it reached #7 in all coffee and #59 for all grocery (1 spot behind Cheerios).

It was this success online that led to inbound interest from multiple regions of Whole Foods to expand an existing small partnership with Four Sigmatic. Last week, the company learned it will be rolling out nationwide with Whole Foods Global this coming Fall. The line-up online has also been expanded from sachets, single serve units into bagged and pod formats – a true disruption in coffee.

As more and more brands realize the potential of online growth with its ability to scale in a fast and cost-effective way, coupled with the strong marketing opportunity to connect directly with their consumers, we expect to see an increasing subset of brands that will launch online – similarly to Four Sigmatic. Amazon created a shift in the original discovery paradigm of the Whole Foods model – hyper-focused attention to curated, local, natural products talent. If new companies are redirecting their launch strategies to Amazon then the Amazon/Whole Foods deal brings these companies back home. As for Four Sigmatic, we are looking forward to seeing the team take it to a whole new level this year as the Company moves from online to offline.

Check out our complete coverage of the Whole Foods acquisition. 

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Jordan Gaspar is a Managing Partner of AccelFoods, an investor in disruptive food and beverage companies. AccelFoods has invested in over 30 portfolio companies across a broad range of categories and regions and works with founders to bridge the gap between their innovative thinking and the resources needed to scale to the highest levels of growth. Jordan is a member of the AccelFoods investment committee and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Element Snacks and Four Sigmatic, and as a board observer to KidFresh.

Prior to founding AccelFoods, Jordan was an attorney at Morrison Cohen LLP where she worked in the Corporate department, advising venture and private equity firms and their portfolio companies on acquisitions, sales, mergers, financings, fund formation, leveraged buyouts, and debt financings. She has also served as a Managing Director of Golden Seeds, a national angel network that invests in women-run companies. Jordan graduated from Columbia College and received her J.D. from Fordham Law School.

Lauren Jupiter is a Managing Partner of AccelFoods, an investor in disruptive food and beverage companies, providing its portfolio with industry access, expertise, and infrastructure to propel innovation and fuel growth. AccelFoods has invested in over 30 portfolio companies across a broad range of categories and regions. Lauren is a member of the AccelFoods Investment Committee and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Wandering Bear Coffee.

Prior to founding AccelFoods, Lauren was an investment banker in the Consumer Products and Retail team at UBS where she advised large cap food and beverage companies and consumer-retail focused private equity firms. While at UBS, Lauren worked in strategy on-site at Birds Eye Iglo Group, a leading European frozen food company, owned by Permira Advisers. During her time in business school, Lauren worked in brand management at Unilever. Lauren holds an A.B., cum laude in field, from Harvard College and an M.B.A. with Honors in Finance and Strategic Management from The Wharton School of Business.

The post Moving Offline: How Brands That Succeed on Amazon are Moving onto Whole Foods Shelves appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

What a momentous day for the food tech community. Meal kit startup Blue Apron, which in just five years grew to $795 million in sales, launched its IPO today.

It was a lackluster debut, which has been the focus of most all media coverage, but I wouldn’t write the startup off just yet. Yes, the company raised just $300 million at a $1.9 billion valuation, one third less than it anticipated before Amazon announced it was acquiring Whole Foods. It offered 30 million common stock shares at $10 per share, which was a significant cut from the $15 to $17 it estimated just two weeks ago. Yes, shares spiked slightly in the morning to $10.46 but ended that day back at $10.00. But no one is talking about the positive impact it might have on the food system and public health.

We caught up with co-founder Matt Wadiak at the New York Stock Exchange to see what the IPO might mean for farmers and eaters, and we couldn’t be more excited by what he had to say.

“This is just the beginning for us,” Wadiak told me this morning. “It’s a great milestone. And this empowers us, as a public company, to really get in and change the food system and the way food is grown. [By] engaging more deeply with our agroecology team, with our farmers, with our cattle ranchers, with our fisheries all over the world, [we can] really bring agriculture into the mainstream focus of Americans and educate them that not all food is grown equally, that not all food is equal. We really want to advocate for regenerative agriculture, for better organic systems, and through the reduction of system inputs lower the price of sustainable agriculture and increase the availability to Americans. We think that not just good nutrition, but good food, good ingredients is a basic human right, just like clean air and fresh water.”

You read that right. Blue Apron has an agroecology team and they are committed to regenerative agriculture, which goes further than sustainable, organic agriculture by focusing on regenerating soil and ecosystems.

According to Wadiak, the IPO gives Blue Apron more leverage to promote this vision. “We raised a big round, so we’re going to continue to invest into our food system, into our supply chain, engage more deeply with farmers, and continue to invest more deeply in our internal team.”

What does it mean to invest in the supply chain? Blue Apron already provides a free soil testing service to the farmers it works with that allows them to evaluate the nutrient load in their soil. With that data, Blue Apron then makes recommendations for crop families the farmers could be growing to improve soil health and yields. For example, if a farmer grew a brassica last season, the company might recommend it grow a legume this season to fix nitrogen naturally. Blue Apron then guarantees that it will purchase the full crop production and uses it in a future recipe.

By combining this service with sensor technologies, heat units and satellites, Blue Apron is developing a “national database of farms and growing conditions, so we can predictively analyze from germination to harvest time when that food will become available at harvest and by measuring the yield output estimates we can predict that and put in our menus in an appropriate forecast, so we can plan our menus around it,” explains Wadiak.

As demand for sustainable food outpaces supply, the companies that have the best chance of winning the hearts and dollars of eaters are those that are investing in the growth of the supply chain. With the acquisition of BN Ranch and its investment in its supply chain, Blue Apron is setting itself up for success from an ingredient perspective. That being said, there are still tons of areas for concern, which we’ll dive into over the next couple of weeks.

As I wrote earlier, I wouldn’t write Blue Apron off just yet – things are just starting to get really interesting.

Check out our full interview below and share your thoughts on the Facebook Live Post.

Have questions for the Blue Apron team? Let us know!

The post With IPO, Blue Apron to Invest More in Regenerative Agriculture appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Gunnar Lovelace, Co-CEO of Thrive Market.

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods validates our core investment in developing a socially conscious business that speaks directly to the needs of the conscious consumer who wants low prices and to support products and brands that represent their values. This acquisition comes as part of a larger shift in consumer dynamics fueled partially by increasing political dysfunction, as consumers exercise their collective power by voting with their dollars.

In light of this shift, we at Thrive Market see the emergence of Millennial conscious consumers as a mindset and not merely an age group. Millennials rightly want to have their cake and eat it too — they want price and convenience, but also deeply value authenticity, transparency and true sustainability.

Thrive Market never set out to out-Amazon Amazon; they’re the everything store. But being the everything store makes it nearly impossible for Amazon to earn the trust of the conscious consumer – a concern I’ve seen voiced by many in the wake of Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. Thrive Market is a socially conscious platform offering a highly curated catalog of formerly premium products for less, backed by an authentic social mission having real impact on issues related to how we produce and consume food. We also want to have our cake and eat it too.

Our mission at Thrive Market is to democratize access to healthy food, as it always seemed crazy to us that heavily processed, chemically laden foods were less expensive than their healthy alternatives. In fewer than three years, Thrive Market has become the largest exclusively non-GMO retailer in the US, selling the world’s best organic and non-GMO groceries at the same price or less than their conventional equivalents for the first time in history. We recognize that 85 percent of Americans want to shop organic, but have been unable to do so previously due to price or local availability. With continued investment by retailers like Amazon and Thrive Market, more consumers will be empowered to make the shift to healthy, sustainably produced groceries through affordable pricing and nationwide delivery.

This consumer shift is critically important given the systemic ecological and environmental effects of industrialized agriculture. Recent studies by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization have shown that we only have 60 harvests left, as industrialized farming practices are destroying our topsoil at an accelerated rate. Plus, healthy topsoil is one of our greatest carbon sequestration tools to reverse climate change. A complete shift to organic farming could capture 100 percent of all carbon currently emitted globally, as reported by Rodale Institute. Amazon’s acquisition will brings billions of dollars into the organic food movement and in turn strengthens organic supply chains.

Further, these rapid macro changes in the market represent an existential threat for any retailer and CPG company that isn’t making direct to consumer investments in line with organic trends. The challenge for entrenched players is that it’s very hard to be nimble enough to meet consumers where they are, and is likely to be painful multi-billion dollar re-run of Blockbuster vs. Netflix. Ultimately, we think these trends are good for consumers and the planet, and businesses that know how to leverage highly fragmented media channels to authentically speak directly to consumers will be massively rewarded in the 21st century. There are only a couple retailers in the country like Amazon and Thrive Market that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into these competencies and this new development is a serious wakeup call to any retailer or CPG that underestimates the massive shift in consumer behavior.

Read Food+Tech Connect’s full coverage of the Whole Foods acquisition here. 

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Gunnar Lovelace is a serial entrepreneur in nonprofits, technology, fashion and real estate. Most recently he is the founder and Co-CEO of Thrive Market, an online wholesale buying club on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for every American family. Thrive Market currently offers the 4,000 most popular natural and organic products in the world at 25-50% off retail, shipped anywhere in the U.S. for free. For every paid member on the site, the company also sponsors a free membership for a low-income family. Previously he co-founded Love Heals – a conscious jewelry company that has funded the planting of over 1,500,000 trees and sponsored of over 50,000 malnourished children. Prior to Love Heals, Gunnar started two technology companies in Los Angeles in software education and natural language processing, both of which were sold. In addition to his for-profit companies, Gunnar has started two non-profits in education and environmental training.

The post Why Thrive Market Sees Amazon as an Ally appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.