LolaBee’s Harvest: The race for online groceries in the Bay Area

Posted on March 2, 2013 by

In spite of the death of Webvan in 2001, the world of online grocery delivery has been slowly creaking back to life. The explosion of CSAs in the late 00’s brought fresh produce to the doorsteps of thousands of Bay Area residents. Now, dozens of companies are popping up to combine the CSA model of weekly box delivery with a grocery store-like shopping experience and flexibility. We’re heading towards (or returning to) a world where Bay Area residents (and beyond) could realistically substitute grocery shopping with online delivery. The outstanding questions: Which startups will win share in this burgeoning market? Who is positioned to offer the complete solution?

LolaBee’s Harvest

LolaBees-logo_0My favorite contender is LolaBee’s Harvest. Founder Lauren Bass completed her MBA at Kellogg in 2010, but entered business school knowing she wanted to start a food business. She came up with the idea for LolaBee’s at Kellogg and wrote the business plan during the two year program. After graduating, she moved to San Francisco to build her business.

Says Lauren,

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Founder Lauren Bass

“I grew up on a horse farm and have always loved animals. My concern for animal welfare drove me to research and educate myself about the food system. I read Omnivore’s Dilemma and realized I wanted to be part of the movement to improve the food system. I saw the growth and potential in the CSA model but I also saw the challenges that consumers were facing in fitting CSAs into their regular lifestyles. I knew that most farmers didn’t have the resources to customize their CSA programs to fit more naturally into people’s lives. Our goal here at LolaBee’s is to bring the CSA model to a larger audience and make it fit seamlessly into customers’ daily food rituals.”

LolaBee’s Harvest is an online farmers market and food delivery service. It sources local organic produce, local organic dairy, pastured meats, poultry and eggs, sustainable seafood, and cheeses, snacks, baby food, and prepared foods from Bay Area artisans. Customers create a free account and place customized orders weekly for home delivery on Thursdays in an insulated, reusable tote which keeps food fresh for over 15 hours. If a customer doesn’t have time to put in their order, they receive the LolaBee’s Harvest Box, a best-of-season collection of half fruits and half veggies.

What makes LolaBee’s stand out is Lauren and her team’s dedication to exceptional customer service, backed by the Happy Customer Promise. LolaBee’s does not have just customers, it has diehard brand advocates. Peruse the yelp page and you see “I can’t stop telling anyone who will listen how amazing Lolabee’s is,” and “I can go on and on about how wonderful this company is, but it’s best if you check it out for yourselves.” Literally, read out the reviews. The scope and depth of the praise is seriously impressive. Lauren is running an high-functioning business.

And she’s doing it with a small team. She officially launched the business alone in November 2011, and quickly enlisted her mom to help her. Entrepreneurship runs in

Lauren's mom, Debbie Bass, at the LolaBee's table at the 2nd annual Childhood Obesity Bay Area conference

Lauren’s mom, Debbie Bass, at the LolaBee’s table at the 2nd annual Childhood Obesity Bay Area conference

Lauren’s family. Both her parents owned their own businesses and Lauren grew up helping her mom, Debbie Bass, with one of the family businesses: Maypine Farm, a horse farm and education center.

Lauren explains her reasoning behind involving her mom, “having worked for my mom’s business growing up and for 6 years after college, we learned to work together really well. There’s no one I would trust more than my mom to help me make LolaBee’s a success. I’m so fortunate to have the support of my parents and their decades of experience and priceless advice to guide me through the tough journey of starting a business from scratch and growing it one farmer, one apple and one delivery at a time.”

In addition to Lauren and her mom, Operations Manager Kelvin Chao joined the team in August of 2012 and plays a crucial role in managing supplier relationships, customer communications, fulfillment, and warehouse operations. Says Kelvin on his role, “with every delivery, we set the highest bar for flavor and freshness and help small farmers reach more people. By taking the customer service and fulfillment off the farmers’ hands, we enable them to focus on the work they love: growing the food.”

What also becomes clear from the yelp reviews is that customers are 1) needing to go to the grocery store less often and 2) saving money. As a picky eater myself who frequents Whole Foods at least 3-4 times a week, I wouldn’t be disappointed to reduce my number of WF visits, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a more cost effective way for me to purchase food of the same quality or better: farmers market quality. One customer notes her family of three is saving ~$200 a month on groceries by using LolaBee’s and another has eliminated 1-2 weekly trips to Whole Foods. For a service like this to fully replace Whole Foods in my weekly routine, it would need to offer a selection of prepared foods. The LolaBee’s online store currently offers fresh pasta from Santa Cruz Pasta Factory, tamales and enchiladas from Mi Fiesta Catering, and couscous and hummus from Hummus Heaven. Lauren is eagerly looking for other local artisans to add to her offering.

Other players

Lauren is not alone in this market. Luke’s Local is a direct competitor, offering the mealbox: “a mix between a CSA, personal catering, and an artisan food shop,” along with the Cuesa Chef market box sourced from the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, and the office box with snacks, coffee, and produce. Their boxes are customizable and delivered to customers’ doorsteps.

Lauren’s other main competitors did not start as direct competitors. Both Farmigo and Good Eggs entered the local food delivery market as technology platforms and have since expanded to include online customized shopping and delivery.

Farmigo began as a company selling software systems to farms offering CSA programs. Their CSA management system tracks sign-ups, automates payments, manages logistics, manages customer communications, enables a web store for excess inventory, and provides a mobile platform. Lauren currently uses Farmigo’s platform for the online LolaBee’s store. Recently Farmigo introduced “Farmigo Communities:” community-specific online farmers markets with customized online ordering and workplace delivery.

Good Eggs also was founded as a technology company providing the online platform and delivery management tools for local food producers and artisans to serve customers directly. Good Eggs did not initially share plans to touch the products directly, just to enable small local companies to better serve and reach their customers. However Good Eggs announced a relaunch this Thursday now providing the entire Bay Area with online grocery shopping and home delivery.

Given the distribution costs in this space, it makes sense that these two players have moved from pure technologists to aggregators and distributors. Merely providing a platform for a local baker to deliver bread directly does not solve the problem facing local food systems. It’s costly for every local artisan to run its own delivery service. And a customer does not want to worry about numerous home deliveries throughout the week. The cost savings and customer value proposition lie in consolidating products and delivery.

What this means is that competition is heating up in Bay Area grocery delivery, and I’m excited to see how it will develop. If you’re interested in trying LolaBee’s, use the code EdibleStartups for $20 off. Currently LolaBee’s delivers in San Francisco and will expand to the East Bay in early April.

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Fundraising for Food Startups Panel

Posted on January 23, 2013 by

The Food Startups group kicked off the 2013 year with a packed house for its first event on Thursday, January 10th. I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Matt Wise and Andy Saebjoernsen as a Co-Organizer of the group, and that we have plans for some exciting events in 2013.

The crowd at January 10th fundraising panel

The crowd at January 10th fundraising panel
Photo credit: Tony XQ Chen

For those of you that couldn’t make it to this event, here are my highlights:

We had over 150 attendees, significantly more than we initially expected. Panelist Andy Donner articulated the spirit in the packed room at our venue, SoMa Central: “Look around this room. This is special. The amount of interest in this area is only growing.” The strong attendance validates the market need for our group and our mandate for organizing more frequent events on topics relevant to food startups.

The panel featured a range of investors with experience funding food startups:

Meredith Schwarz, Manager at General Mills Ventures

Meredith Schwarz, Manager at General Mills Ventures
Photo credit: Tony XQ Chen

I found all the panelists to be engaging, articulate, extremely well-informed, and entertaining. I was most excited to hear from Meredith, as the corporate perspective is underrepresented in the VC/angel-dominated funding conversation in the Bay Area. She described the long process she follows with potential acquisitions as courtship: the dating, becoming serious, moving in together and finally marriage, a la General Mills’ acquisitions Larabar and Food Should Taste Good. She talked about her proactive role in seeking out potential partners: literally scouring local Whole Foods and looking for addresses on the back of packaged snacks. She encourages companies to reach out to her, especially those in General Mills’ sweet spot: solid brands with a deep understanding of their target customer.

Our rockstar moderator, Wade Roush, Chief Correspondent and San Francisco Editor of Xconomy, asked each panelist to share the trend in the food startup world they find the most exciting. Here’s what they came up with:

  • Data: The potential of tapping the exponentially-growing amount of data out there about food: food consumption, food production, etc.
  • Supply chain: Andy reminded us that Amazon Fresh will probably disrupt the entire food distribution system in the US
  • Food safety: This will continue to be a hot topic as salmonella and other scares make headlines (did anyone else listen to the disturbing This American Life episode about misrepresented seafood?)
  • Collaborative consumption: There’s still room for changing the way we think about and share fixed assets

My favorite question of the evening was when Wade asked the panelists to each give a pithy piece of advice to food entrepreneurs. What they shared:

  • Ryan: Don’t worry about valuation; get money and then execute. It’s not worth dragging the funding process on and on to get a higher valuation.
  • Kevin: Be distinct, and relentlessly pursue your distinctive idea. Don’t sacrifice your edge in order to grow, or to appeal to a wider audience.
  • Meredith: Know your consumer, and focus on them. Prioritize depth of knowledge with your target consumer over broad market understanding.
  • Adam: Be fearless and build relationships early. Funding is courtship, as Meredith explained. Don’t be afraid to get in touch with investors early, and focus on relationship building in the long term versus nearer-term tactical goals.
  • Andy: Beware of your passion and the risk that it might interfere with objectivity. Food is an area in which emotions and passion can blind the actors. Try to maintain objectivity. Be honest and be aware of your own biases.

While I believe we presented a robust panel, I did receive feedback that we were missing a crucial funding angle. Most food startups will not reach the scale relevant for any of the panelists’ investment vehicles. Even CircleUp, Ryan’s crowdfunding website, does not look at companies with less than ~$500K-1M in revenue. Instead most startups depend on credit cards, small business loans, or, increasingly, peer funding via Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Abby Sturges, founder of Culture Kitchen raised her hand at the close of the event and asked how many in the audience were founders; a huge percentage raised their hands. Then she asked, how many had received funding. Maybe 3-5 still had their hands up. Her question to the panel was, “for those of us starting out, how can we get to $500K in revenue so we become relevant to you?” The answer was disappointing, I’m sure, to Abby who recently shut down Culture Kitchen after unsuccessful funding attempts (including an unfunded Kickstarter campaign). The answer: it still comes down to friends, family, and a whole lot of hustle.

Thanks to our panelists, our moderator, and our sponsors for helping us produce a great event! Sponsors:

Matt, Andy and I are in the process of planning our next events, a mix of panels/education-oriented events as well as a few more social/networking/food tasting events. If you have topics you’d like covered, or other ideas for events, please share in the comments below. Thanks!

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Call for food-related social entrepreneurs

Posted on November 30, 2012 by

See below for a request from a friend of mine at Wharton who’s looking for exciting Food & Nutrition social enterprises:

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This year, Wharton Social Venture Fund (WSVF) is participating in an exciting initiative sponsored by a new domestic impact investing fund that Brian Trelstad, former Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund, is launching in the coming months. As part of this initiative WSVF is working with other top MBA programs to find the most promising and innovative social enterprise startups in the country.  Companies selected through this process will be presented to an investment committee of leading impact investors, and the top company will be considered for a $50,000 investment as part of an existing fundraising round.

What are we looking for?

Eligible businesses should meet the following criteria:

  • US-based company with a clear social mission, serving a US-based customer market
  • Seed to early stage, seeking funding to grow
  • Has a clear plan to reach financial profitability
  • Provides a critical good or service in one or more of the following sectors:
    • Food and Nutrition
    • Health and Wellness
    • Education
    • Sustainability and Clean-Energy
    • Financial Services
  • Currently raising  $100,000 to 1 million in equity funding to further growth

What’s in it for the entrepreneurs?

Companies that enter the WSVF screening and due diligence process will:

  • Potentially receive feedback on the business plan from WSVF members and our investment committee made up of Wharton professors and outside investment professionals
  • If advanced in the process, the opportunity to interact with and get feedback from Brian Trelstad, former Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund, and other professionals in the impact investing space
  • Become eligible to receive $50,000 in funding from the new domestic fund this April 2013

Next steps

Interested parties should complete a short questionnaire on our website ASAP at http://whartonsocialventurefund.org/get-involved/entrepreneurs/.

About Wharton Social Venture Fund: http://whartonsocialventurefund.org/about-us/inside-wsvf/

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Local Food Lab Fall Demo Night

Posted on November 26, 2012 by

On Wednesday, November 14th, I had the pleasure of attending Local Food Lab’s Fall 2012 Demo Night in Palo Alto. Founder Krysia Zajonc summarized Local Food lab concisely in her introduction of the event, explaining that Local Food Lab is an accelerator program for startups which “use business as a means of creating a food system that is more healthy, just, and sustainable.”

Overall, I was impressed by the up-leveling of the entire event, compared with Local Food Lab’s inaugural demo night in July, which I also attended. The atmosphere was more formal and the presenters more polished. Besides kicking off the presenters, Krysia shared with the audience some of the exciting expansion ideas Local Food Lab is pursuing: a program in New York, an investment vehicle for mentors to have an equity stake the next cohort, more structured engagement with the alumni community, and one-off topical courses for food entrepreneurs. I love how broadly Krysia is thinking about the role Local Food Lab can play in the food startup world and I’m excited to witness the organization develop.

Anea Botton pitches Valley Girls Foodstuffs

For me, the highlight of the night was Anea Botton, with Valley Girl Foodstuffs. Anea was an effective presenter with an inspiring story. Seeking to combat the dual challenges of 1) Latino teenage gang membership in Sonoma County and 2) food waste, Anea built a business which hires at-risk teen girls to produce jams, dried and pickled fruits and veggies, and other foodstuffs. Three of her employees, Ester, Julie, and Maria, were present and introduced themselves and helped with sampling of the products (which were tasty; I bought a lemon jelly as a gift for my mother-in-law for hosting Thanksgiving).

 

To address her second mission, Anea sources “less-than-perfect produce” which is not suitable for sale (e.g., day-old bananas from Whole Foods or irregularly shaped fruits which don’t fit markets’ supplier criteria). This strategy aligns with her business goals by giving her a cost advantage while also allowing her to combat food waste.

Most of all, I loved Anea’s attitude about her business. When asked about competitors she replied frankly, “we’re better than them because they don’t have our story,” but she also stressed that the products should stand on their own even without the story. She’s “vehemently against being a non-profit” as she wants to teach her employees to build a business and make money, not to take money. An awesome example of social enterprise.

My other favorites were:

  • Sasha Narayan pitches Seeducate

    Sasha Narayan, Seeducate: seeking to combat “Nature Deficient Disorder,” Sasha is creating an after-school camp for kids in the Bay Area on a working farm (think: an outside-of-school version of Edible Schoolyard). I love the approach, see the market need, and believe a program like hers can have a huge impact on children. However scaling her model and, subsequently, her impact will be a challenge.

     

     

     

  • Victor Vulovic pitches LifeBites

    Victor Vulovic, LifeBites: after graduating with a finance degree, founder Victor spent time in rural South Africa and became inspired by a recipe he encountered there. Forgoing attractive finance jobs, Victor decided to start a company selling the adapted recipe via a product he calls LifeBites. The product is a chocolate-covered peanut butter-based mixture that can be positioned as an energy bite or an indulgent snack. The bites were tasty although they have some fierce competition from Justin’s (dark chocolate peanut butter cups are hard to beat), Clif, and about a thousand other companies making natural and/or organic snacks and treats. Despite the challenge, I’m excited about Victor because of his story and his passion for what he’s doing.

  • Dana Schnittman, Brunched in the Face: Seeing a market gap for brunch food in the Bay Area food truck scene, Dana is launching a brunch-themed food truck. While the idea itself isn’t the most creative or innovative, I love the name, the cheeky menu, and her attitude. Given the food truck craze doesn’t seem to be dying down anytime soon, I see no reason she won’t knock it out of the park.

And a quick bit about the other presenters below. Lots of marketplaces and lots of focus on the unmet wants and needs of restless millenials.

  • Vijay Rajendran, Hungry Globetrotter: a monthly subscription box for hard-to-find international ingredients, snacks, and recipes. Struck me as very similar to Culture Kitchen.
  • Eric Knudtson, Chef Surfing: an online marketplace to connect local chefs with customers for catered events, private dinners, cooking classes, etc. Reminded me of Kitchit. What’s interesting about Chef Surfing is their current focus on the Latin American market (they’re a Startup Chile graduate). They have ~1000 chefs signed up and now need to build the corresponding customer traffic.
  • Andrea Blum, My American Pantry (MAP): an online marketplace for artisan American foods with the intention of celebrating the “American terroir.”  It’s a crowded space but maybe less so than in the past as Foodzie has discontinued some of its core activities and Gilt cuts back investment on Gilt Taste. Wondering what MAP will do to avoid the fate that befell these two.
  • Devin McIntire, Real Good Food: an online platform for sharing and trading homemade food in a local community. Cool idea in theory (“I’ll trade you this big pot of soup for those pies you make”) but I have a hard time imagining the logistics working out.
  • Joseph Crenshaw, Traditional Family Foods: Frustrated with the unhealthy lunch options for his son, Joseph is creating “lunch pal,” an organic, healthy, seasonal, and portable packaged lunch for kids. Sounds great but I’m hungry for more details on the contents of the lunches and their price point.

Thanks Krysia and the rest of the Local Food Lab team for putting on another inspiring and exciting event.

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Demo night for small batch Bay Area food producers

Posted on October 30, 2012 by

Matt Wise and his food startups meetup team executed another successful event last Thursday night along with the help of Buyer’s Best Friend. They brought together a great group of small batch food producers along with attendees doing all sorts of interesting things in the food world. My highlights from the evening:

Every time I interact with Pat Galvin, founder of Vignette Wine Country Soda, I like him and his company more. I first encountered him at the last food startups meetup in June and since then I’ve started to see market needs for his product all over the place.

  • Pat Galvin from Vignette pours samples for guests at the Buyer’s Best Friend Wholesale & Mercantile store

    Example: Teens Turning Green is a non-profit of which I sit on the board. We’re hosting a celebration at the end of the month for the culmination of Project Green Challenge. There will be many high school and college student participants attending. We wanted to serve wine but felt that would be inappropriate with all the under-21-year-olds. Vignette immediately popped into my mind as a festive age-appropriate wine alternative: the updated Martinelli’s sparkling cider. Lucky for us, Pat has graciously volunteered to donate Vignette for the event and support Teens Turning Green.

I tasted some delicious stuff and had a chance to meet the founders of these businesses:

  • Moksha Beer: Indian-style micro-brews. I’m loving this growing trend of entrepreneurs bringing Indian-inspired products to US consumers. See also:
    • Fojol brothers: some friends of mine serve Indian food in a food truck in DC with a whimsical make-believe backstory about their native land of Merlindia
    • Bandar foods: Indian-flavored hot sauce. The mango product has a very unique taste, and packs quite a punch.
    • Mohinders: not food related at all but my husband is building a company which will sell handmade Indian-inspired leather footwear in the US, if you’re interested sign up to be informed of its launch at www.mohinders.com
  • Madecasse: one of my favorite chocolate bars out there. The sea salt bar is pretty hard to beat. Our $15 admission ticket to the event came with $10 of store credit at the venue: the Buyer’s Best Friend Wholesale and Mercantile store (on Haight St at Cole). My $10 went straight to Madecasse.
  • GreenLife Smoothies: these guys were handing out green smoothie samplers, super fresh and tasty.

I also got a chance to catch up with a few food entrepreneur friends. Check out their growing businesses:

More food startups meetup events are in the works. Stay tuned on the group’s events page: http://www.meetup.com/FoodStartups/

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Wild Kitchen dinner with ForageSF

Posted on October 13, 2012 by

I first heard and wrote about the Forage Kitchen in June when I saw founder Iso Rabins speak at a food startups panel. To summarize briefly, Iso envisions Forage Kitchen as “a hub for the SF Bay Area food community” including an incubator, a co-working space, a rental kitchen, a microbrewery, a meat curing facility, a café and retail space, a rooftop garden, and more.

The setting for Thursday’s dinner

Iso used Kickstarter to kick-off the funding for the kitchen and successfully raised $156,000 which he’ll supplement with future funding rounds. I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign and in exchange received two tickets to a special Wild Kitchen dinner this past Thursday night. It was the first of Iso’s dinners I’ve attended and it was pretty special. It was held in an unmarked building on Mission at 8th. The menu featured local ingredients foraged by Iso and his team: he gathered the sea beans himself in Western Marin. His friend and volunteer had picked all the nasturtium and eucalyptus leaves herself. I was amazed they managed to pull off such a delicious, local, sustainable dinner for so many people at once. If you want to be in the loop on future Wild Kitchen dinners sign up for their mailing list here.

Highlights from the night were the porcini bisque, the chanterelle and lobster mushroom stuffing, and the eucalyptus popsicles, along with interesting conversation with the new friend sitting around us.

Iso will be hosting a brainstorming event soon to get ideas from the community for the layout and design of the kitchen. I’ll post the info on my events tab once I have. Stay tuned.

The evening’s menu

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Local Food Lab pitch night: supporting sustainable food startups

Posted on July 23, 2012 by

This past Friday I attended an impressive event on the Stanford Campus: the pitch night for the inaugural class of Local Food Lab: a new incubator, co-working space, and educational program targeting aspiring sustainable food entrepreneurs. The event, despite being the first of its kind, was expertly executed by Krysia Zajonc and Mateo Aguilar, Local Food Lab’s cofounders. Eight entrepreneurs pitched in front of a diverse group of business owners (e.g., Jenny Huston of Farm to Table Food Services), investors (including Will Rosenzweig from Physic Ventures), and community leaders (e..g, my friend Laura O’Donohue from Slow Food San Francisco). The pitches were followed by a delicious spread of snacks, drinks, and dinner.

During the event, I was pondering how I might recap it on this blog. Edible Startups’s tagline is, “bites of innovation in the food world,” but I have to say none of the eight businesses pitched struck me as incredibly innovative or game-changing. They weren’t food+tech startups, and they weren’t supposed to be. They were traditional food businesses: neighborhood markets, consumer products, and community farms, with an emphasis on sustainability. However what IS innovative is Krysia and Mateo’s approach to making an impact on our country’s food system. Krysia and Mateo themselves are food entrepreneurs who tried to start a local food business years ago but were frustrated by the lack of mentorship, capital, and resources available to food startups, especially when compared to the resources tech entrepreneurs enjoy. This frustration inspired them to start Local Food Lab to fill this niche. I see Local Food Lab’s strategy as a machine gun approach or, more appropriately, a seed scattering approach: incubate as large a number of sustainable food startups as possible and engender change in the system from the roots up. Following that strategy, Local Food Lab will host a second cohort of entrepreneurs in the fall (application here, due September 5th) and will continue to grow from there. When I spoke with a few of the entrepreneurs after the pitches they confirmed the value of Local Food Lab in providing them with community, connections, and accountability.

Although to say that none of the eight startups excited or inspired me would be incorrect. I’ll highlight three founders whose pitches got me fired up in one way or another.

Kristin Schmelz

  • Kristin Schmelz, The Farm: Kristin pitched a neighborhood market selling locally-made and organic products in the rapidly-gentrifying and foodie-friendly Dogpatch neighborhood of SF. Again, not super innovative or novel but she did identify a market that has a real need for its own mini-ferry building-esque space. What impressed me about Kristin’s pitch was her poise and expertise: she’s done the research and knows her stuff. She came across as very fund-able. And she’s willing to do the work to continue to learn her market. She’s just secured a position for herself at Bi-Rite Market in the Mission District neighborhood market acclaimed for having insanely high sales per square foot. She’ll leverage her hands-on experience in starting her own market across town. Can’t wait to see it come to life.

Brittany Davis

  • Brittany Davis, Ooh Mami Cured Meats: Brittany’s pitch is for a cured meat company pioneering a “California tradition” of cured meat to infiltrate the French and Italian-dominated market at a lower price point. Artisanal charcuterie and salumi ventures are popping up all over the Bay but most are following the French and Italian traditions (e.g., Boccalone and Fatted Calf Charcuterie). Brittany envisions a less pretentious and more accessible (read: cheaper) offering utilizing very California flavors e.g., Gilroy garlic, wild fennel, and bay laurel. I love the idea of starting a company that creates a movement and a celebration of a brand new local food tradition. She’ll start by selling her products directly to consumers at farmers’ markets and then begin selling to local restaurants.

Cynthia King

  • Cynthia King, Community Farms: Cynthia proved herself to be a master presenter and storyteller. She walked the audience through the evolution of her startup from a faith-based local farming program to a community food hub which coordinates a wide variety of local food projects in Oakland. What struck me about Cynthia’s pitch was the concept of using religion as a point of entry into the food movement. Despite focusing on an incredibly practical and down-to earth goal (i.e., creating a lasting source of healthy food for our communities), the food movement is often criticized as elitist and out-of-touch. Congregant-driven gardens and farms at places of worship create an immediate connection between community members and sustainable food practices. I might be late to the game on this but I love the idea of introducing sustainable food to people not-yet-bought-in via religious communities. Cynthia cited Urban Adamah, a Berkeley-based Jewish farming education program, as an inspiration. I think it and other projects like it hold a ton of potential for educating and engaging more people on food issues. Cynthia is currently thinking beyond a faith-based farming program to a local food hub which coordinates garden-based education, urban-farming, production of value-added products and more. There’s a ton of potential for what a local food hub can accomplish provided it can get momentum and buy-in from the community.

Besides these three, five other founders pitched their startups:

  • Rachael Mamane, Foodshed Stocks: a producer of sustainable and traceable stocks and demi-glace from regional farms (formerly Brooklyn Bouillon)
  • Chris Nesladek, Seedcraft Nutrition: a producer of hand-crafted vegetable snacks (he couldn’t share the details of his stealth ready-to-eat raw eggplant product but I’m dying to hear more)
  • Jenara Nerenberg, Kirata: a Nepali tea company sourcing directly from small farmers in Eastern Nepal
  • Sako Ohanian, LA Food Routes: a local food transportation and distribution service bringing farm fresh products to local food purveyors
  • Suzy Costello, ALA Market: a Cambridge, MA corner store focusing on local food

Other thoughts on the event: I mentioned it was expertly run. I was impressed by how Krysia kept the evening on schedule; not an easy feat with eight entrepreneurs pitching and audience members asking questions. She handled the execution of the event with grace. Krysia also had every audience member fill out feedback cards for each pitch with ratings of how well each presenter communicated the problem they’re trying to solve, proof of a market for their product, and their competitive advantage along with general comments and suggestions for improvement. The comment cards kept me completely engaged in each pitch. I’d love to see that activity again at similar events. Finally, the setting of the event was ideal. Local Food Labs is currently housed in Krysia’s mom’s home on the Stanford campus (she’s a professor). Dinner was served in her beautiful yard. The next Local Food Labs program will also be housed in her mother’s home but Krysia and Mateo are looking for another space to expand into after that.

Thanks Krysia and Mateo and entrepreneurs for an awesome Friday night!

Audience members at Local Food Lab’s pitch night in Palo Alto

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