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.

The supplement industry is ridden with cheap, synthetic chemicals. Ora Organic was founded in 2015 to rebuild trust in the category by creating nutritional supplements made from organic, plant-based and sustainable food ingredients. But building trust is difficult, so Ora relied on a number of digital and marketing tactics to gain consumer trust.

The direct-to-consumer supplement startup first gained notoriety in 2017 when it appeared on Shark Tank and turned down a $375,000 investment in front of millions of viewers. CTO and Head of Growth Sebastian Bryers set up lead capture devices on its website, allowing the company to obtain more than 15,000 emails and thousands of subscribers in a month. Through the show, the company was able to earn the attention of investors and gained an overwhelming response from people looking for premium, organic supplements.

While Ora Organics found its first customers through personal networks, Bryers relied on his background in data analysis to help grow the brand. He performed sentiment analysis on top blogs to understand the key questions people were asking, which provided data for the company to create relevant content. This data-driven approach to content allowed the brand to build trust with its audience. Now, the collection of data is automated and used to optimize its advertising as well as ensure the right audiences receive its content.

Sebastian Bryers joined us at our Rethinking CPG Meetup this past August to share insight on the company’s e-commerce strategy and plans for retail. You can see videos of other presenters at our Food+Tech Meetups here.

The post Ora Organic’s Data-Driven Growth Strategy appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Tyson Innovation Lab developed and launched its first brand,¡YAPPAH!, in just 6 months — which is unheard of when it comes to big brands. ¡YAPPAH! is a mission-driven snack made from upcycled proteins, rescued vegetables and spent brewer grains. The product signals a new approach for Tyson, as it aims to address sustainability challenges in order to disrupt itself internally.

Brand Manager Santi Proano joined us at our Rethinking CPG Meetup this past August to share insight on Tyson Innovation Lab’s product development process and greatest challenges operating as a startup within a large packaged goods company.

For ¡YAPPAH!, the first step to rethinking CPG was unlearning. Rather than playing by traditional industry standards, the innovation team embraced ideas from marketing and brought the product to market within six months. Instead of launching nationally, ¡YAPPAH! started small by crowdfunding and entering a select few markets.

The innovation lab operated under a single leader across function, allowing for quick alignment and decision making. Tyson also ensured that leadership for direction was available at the highest levels. The team applied the five-day design sprint typically used by technology companies for developing software, modifying the process for a food CPG company to rapidly create its product and brand. In order to tackle food waste internally, the innovation team opted to speak to a spectrum of people who did and didn’t care about food waste, rather than relying on brainstorms and focus groups. By doing so, it learned that tackling food waste was about rescuing forgotten ingredients, and chefs were key to applying a lens to ingredients that would otherwise being disposed of.

You can see videos of other presenters at our Food+Tech Meetups here.

The post How Tyson Launched ¡YAPPAH! in 6 Months appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Plant-based yogurt startup Lavva is way more than meets the eye. With just seven whole food ingredients and no stabilizers, the probiotic- and prebiotic-rich formula have set it apart from other non-dairy yogurts on the market. But simple is often way more difficult.

Each of its ingredients have required reinventing and rethinking supply chains– from timing plantain growth to ensure its prebiotic qualities to partnering with a co-manufacturer to produce its organic and sugar-free fruit purees. The company invested in creating an entirely new supply chain for pili nuts, a wild nut grown in tropical volcanic soil,  by establishing a 200-farmer cooperative in the Philippines. In addition to its East Coast co-packer, Lavva has built its own dedicated facility on the West Coast built with its formulas in mind. It is currently developing the first exclusively non-dairy co-packer in the United States.

Executive chairman Victor E. Friedberg joined us at our Rethinking CPG Meetup this past August to speak about the company’s business strategies and burgeoning projects in the co-manufacturing space.

You can see videos of other presenters at our Food+Tech Meetups here.

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Dirty Lemon is a direct-to-consumer beverage brand that sells its products exclusively via text message. Founded  in 2015, the brand has created a “conversational commerce” platform, or a text message based e-commerce platform that allows the brand to speak directly with its customers – at scale. The platform allows allows Dirty Lemon to bypass distribution inefficiencies and improve the customer experience.

Since its launch, the company has built a distribution and logistics infrastructure around the U.S. that allows for same day or next day deliveries in all 50 states. By doing so, it is matching or providing faster service than Amazon Prime. While 98 percent of the company’s sales take place over SMS, it has begun selling on Amazon.

In addition to owning its distribution channel, Dirty Lemon’s conversational commerce platform enables the brand to own its customer relationships. It collects data on its consumers’ consumption behavior, which it is using to inform the development of new brands and products.

In May 2018, Dirty Lemon acquired Poncho, aweather app and chatbot, to strengthen its development team and further improve its commerce interface. The launch of the company’s +CBD beverage became its first venture into the cannabis space. Recently, it opened a cashierless brick-and-mortar called Drug Store in New York, where customers pay for their drinks via text.

Co-founder and CEO Zak Normandin joined us at our Rethinking CPG Meetup this past August to speak about his technology, business strategies and launch of the company’s recent venture into the CBD space.

You can see videos of other presenters at our Food+Tech Meetups here.

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I Heart Keenwah is a company focused on heirloom quinoa. The company exclusively sources Bolivian Royal Quinoa for all of its products, grown by smallholder farmers that employ sustainable agricultural practices. Its commitment to Fair Trade Certification ensures that its farmers make a living wage. Its co-founder and president Ravi Jolly joined us at our Fail Friday this past June to share his stories of failure and lessons learned.

Ravi established I Heart Keenwah with the idea of using a brand to make quinoa part of people’s everyday. The company soon found itself embarking on an ambitious path. Its first product was a superfood-loaded quinoa cluster, which caught on to the ancient grain craze and gave the company enough momentum to raise money for expansion into conventional retail. Ravi quickly realized that what translated well in the health food space didn’t have the same sort of appeal in conventional. As one of the early players in the health food movement, the company also saw itself facing a new host of competition against other snacks.

In that moment, Ravi realized the need for a return to the company’s core mission and made the decision to pivot I Heart Keenwah into a platform brand, rather than a snack brand. This allowed the company to simplify its products and produce more mass-friendly formats. His biggest takeaway as an entrepreneur was to be open to the reality that the first path or format that he embarked on wasn’t the end-all, be-all.

Check out more Fail Friday videos here.

Huge thanks to our Fail Friday partners Force Brands and Kickstarter.

The post I Heart Keenwah CEO Ravi Jolly on Why Simpler Is Better For Mass Appeal appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Inspired by 1960s Los Angeles, west~bourne is an accidentally vegetarian, all-day café with a social mission. A portion of every purchase made at its SoHo location benefits the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Foundation to fund hospitality training for youth in its community through its neighboring nonprofit, The Door, where the restaurant hires from to build its team. Its founder Camilla Marcus joined us at our Fail Friday this past June to share her stories of failure and lessons learned.

Camilla was formerly the Director of Business Development for Union Square Hospitality Group and worked in real estate investing for Colony Capital and CIM Group. With her background in business development, law and investing, Camilla initially felt confident going into her first independent venture as a restauranteur. She scouted her first location right away, and quickly learned of the legal barriers that would carry on with her through her search for a home for west~bourne.

The process ended up taking a year, and with two failed locations and painful legal costs behind her, Camilla learned her biggest lesson as an entrepreneur: Failure is the point when you have to decide — is this really what I want to do? Getting over that hurdle is what continues to push you forward.

Check out more Fail Friday videos here.

Huge thanks to our Fail Friday partners Force Brands and Kickstarter.

The post West~bourne’s Camilla Marcus on Failure to Launch appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

PetPlate is a direct-to-consumer human grade pet food company that delivers ready-to-eat, nutritious pet food designed by veterinarians and made by chefs. In May 2018, it closed a $4 million seed round led by Dane Creek Capital to scale operations and meet demand. CEO Renaldo Webb joined us at our Fail Friday this past June to share his stories of failure and lessons learned.

Renaldo founded PetPlate because he wanted to be able to feed his real food. After making hundreds of batches of home-cooked food for his dog Winston and his pup pals, Renaldo launched PetPlate as a nationwide subscription service in early 2017, following an appearance on the hit TV show Shark Tank.

Renaldo’s Fail Friday story begins as he’s scaling the company after raising pre-seed funding through Shark Tank. He and his investors decided it was time to expand the company’s manufacturing from a local commercial kitchen to working with a co-packer.

He honed in on three major failures and lessons learned:

1. Not having the right specs for PetPlate’s co-packer was a huge challenge. Ultimately this really comes down to learning what works at a small scale and what the startup’s customers loved, so as not marry them with a process that can’t deliver the experience its customers want.
2. PetPlate tried doing too much at once in the process of scaling bench-top formulations to something it could commercialize.
3. PetPlate moved too fast, especially when it came to finding its co-packer. He learned it’s important to take time to find the right co-packer and to cultivate a good relationship with them. Ultimately, PetPlate was able to find the right co-packer that met its needs and allow them to focus on what was important to the company’s mission: the quality of ingredients.

You can see videos of other presenters at our Fail Friday here.

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Hu Kitchen is an NYC-based eatery and brand that offers paleo- and vegan-friendly food with a focus on fresh, organic and unprocessed ingredients. In May 2018, the company closed a $10 million round led by Sonoma Brands  to commercialize more of its products. CEO Rita Hudetz joined us at our Fail Friday this past June to share her stories of failure and lessons learned.

Rita joined Hu Kitchen as Chief Commercial Officer of Hu Products in 2016 to drive expansion of its retail product line. Since 2016, she has become CEO and has expanded Hu’s products business nationally, launched its e-commerce platform and increased sales by 5x.

Previous to joining Hu Kitchen, Rita worked for PepsiCo’s nutrition business, where she was met with the unrealistic expectation of growth and margins of a healthy food product to look like a soda or chips. She quickly learned the necessity of establishing realistic expectations and goals with stakeholders.

When she went to the startup world, she saw companies facing the same pressure for growth, pushing them to strive for unachievable business cases and profit margins.

Her biggest lesson is to fall in love with the company’s ugly numbers and its most conservative base case – i.e. when an account doesn’t come through or velocities aren’t as high as expected. It’s better to ensure your company is feasible even when it’s your most conservative numbers. In other words, “It’s better to stock out than code out. It’s better to have the demand and pull for your product and miss a few sales and grow a little bit slower, than have that situation where you’ve produced so much and you were so optimistic that your case falls apart on the other side.”

Huge thanks to our Fail Friday partners Force Brands and Kickstarter.

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