Edible Startups is a blog dedicated to sharing innovative ideas and ventures in the food industry. Founded in June, 2011 Edible Startups covers many angles of food entrepreneurship, from companies that make innovative food products to startus that are fundamentally changing the way we think about and interact with food.
About the authors
Michelle Paratore is the founder of Edible Startups and a management consultant in San Francisco. She’s completely obsessed with food: food startups, food sustainability, food justice, food politics… During her MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), Michelle began tracking startups in the food space but became frustrated by the lack of online resources dedicated to food entrepreneurship. She started Edible Startups to attempt to fill that void.
Austin Kiessig joined the Edible Startups team in the summer of 2013. He’s an entrepreneur working on multiple early stage food ventures in San Francisco. Austin and Michelle first melded minds at the Stanford GSB, but Austin has been geeking out on Big Questions in food for a decade. He has worked for a foreign policy think-tank, a European lobbying group, a strategy consulting firm, a water clean-tech startup, a micro-satellite startup, the GSB Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and multiple health food companies. He also co-founded and ran a non-profit for four years. (It was hard.)
Edible Startups 
I hope you’ll be looking into how we can get incubator kitchens – or A Kitchen – where food entrepreneurs can afford to enjoy resources to get their products to market. La Cocina, in SF is a great model. Or, is this not on your agenda?
Absolutely! I’m not exactly sure where incubator kitchens fall, but I think I’d put them in the “making food” bucket, and they are absolutely on my agenda. La Cocina is indeed great. Thanks!
Hey Michael,
Awesome blog, I appreciate how you don’t hold back with your opinions, and your attention to detail. I like the idea of an incubator kitchen, I have a dream along similar lines to create a sort of cafe/club which serves exceptionally healthy food and drink and is geared towards startups and supporting innovation in general. I’m sort of beginning to prototype this with the non-profit I work at Silicon Valley Innovation Institute, with catered events, so we’ll see where it goes.
We had a lot of good response from our last event about Live Foods, so we want to don another one about this topic soon. I will be sure to ping you.
~MR
Awesome. I love the idea!! Definitely keep in touch. Would love to do the “superfood for cheap” dinner we talked about.
Hi Michelle,
This is Akshay from India.
I shall be applying for Stanford GSB 2014 class. I am an entrepreneur.
Since I saw your post MBA goals also on entrepreneurship, I had certain queries I wanted to get clarifies, as to how GSB can help me on my goals of taking my Company Forward.
I would be very grateful if I could discuss the same with you at any point of Time.
My email id is akki.oceanic@gmail.com
I thank you in Advance.
Regards
Akshay.
Very interested in what you are doing but need to contact you directly via phone or traditional email. Carol Coren@aol.com
Hi There,
Love your blog! I’m looking forward to following your posts and getting the latest scoop on food entrepreneurialism (both for knowledge and inspiration!).
Cheers,
Vidya
Love the blog so far Michelle! It was so nice to meet you at the Childhood Obesity Conference. It’s exciting to see other people that are super-passionate about helping small food businesses get off the ground…trust me, we need all the help we can get. Good luck and I look forward to reading along.
Hey Michelle,
Love your blog, its really up our alley! We have been working with green and sustainable blogs that are interested in sharing the places they are talking about with their readers. Thought you may be interested in a case study we did on a green travel blog called “On The Green Road”…
http://wp.me/p1P0ek-7D
Clay
Hi Michelle,
I came across your blog in by link from “A Day In the Life of Stanford 2012”. (I applied to Stanford MBA 2014.) As I am also very interested in healthy food and starting a company I was wondering how your experience at Stanford has helped you move toward your goal of starting a food company or joining a company you believe in.
All the best,
Kristina
Hi! I am currently helping to plan the Buy With Heart Marketplace & Career Fair taking place at next week’s SEEED Summit (http://seeedus.com) at Brown. I am looking to fill a couple more spots at our marketplace next Friday (12:30-3:30 pm) and a friend mentioned that you had this venture and were a Brown alum. It seems like Edible Startups would be a PERFECT fit! Would you have any interest in having a table at the event? Please shoot me an email if you might be interested.
Thanks!
Laura
Hi Michelle,
I’d like to show you what our Toronto-based food start-up is cooking up. Can you please drop me a line so we can connect via email?
Hello Michelle,
Great blog. There aren’t too many people focused in this space. I would love to introduce to what we are doing at Caramelized. What iTunes is to music, Caramelized is to cooking. If you are interested, I could send you information or we could chat.
Cheers,
John
Hi, I like the blog- are you still active with it?
Thanks! I am, and shooting for a post about once a month. I’m a bit late but hope to keep it going.
Are you still at the GSB? (I am ’03)
Just graduated this June, sadly!
Hello Michelle,
The Disruptive Investor (www.thedisruptiveinvestor.com) just published a profile on seven functional food companies. These companies are pursuing:
Cultured Meat
Fax Chicken
Temperature Stabilized Coffee
Robotic Food Production
Edible Packaging
Dissolvable Fruit Labels
Omega-3
Best regards.
David Wanetick
dwanetick@incrementaladvantage.com
Hi! My name is Rebecca and I am moving to the Bay Area shortly. I have experience academically in entrepreneurship, international agriculture development, sustainable farming etc. I also have hands on experience farming, processing harvest into value added products, social media, and marketing. I would love if I could connect with you and pick your brain. Feel free to email me . Looking forward to it
Best,
Rebecca
Hi Michelle!
I see I am one of a long list of people who is inspired by your great work! I have a background in holistic nutrition and am interested in Local Food Supply chain, helping farmers for co-ops to aggregate their produce into meaningful quantities that could be sold through large retailers, I’ll be in the Bay Area the week of April 9 and would love to pick your brain. I realize you are VERY busy, would appreciate even a brief phone convo! Thanks!
Hi Michelle,
Great blog! Wondered if your followers might be interested in the Local Food Challenge from Bucky Box? http://challenge.buckybox.com/bucky-box/ It’s all about encouraging more local food businesses. There’s also crowdfunding support if you need help funding your start-up costs: http://buckybox.pressdoc.com/42063-software-startup-and-global-crowdfunding-platform-join-forces-to-kickstart-the-local-food-movement.
Let me know if you’d like to connect or want more info! – nora@startsomegood.com
Best,
Nora
Hi Michelle,
I’ve got a food startup for you: UncreativeChef.com. Users browse a library of meals, find something that looks good and click on “buy”, then all of the ingredients are shipped right to their doorstep and the recipe is emailed to their inbox. For busy parents who have a hard time planning the family dinner every night, and are short on time to prepare, UncreativeChef helps simplify things.
Shoot me an email. I’d love to tell you more about it and see if there is a way that UncreativeChef chan be of service to you and your audience. Thanks!
Hi i am kavin, its my first time to commenting anyplace, when i read this paragraph i thought i could also make comment due to this sensible paragraph.
I would love to speak with you further, about the whole foods movement. I own a whole foods cafe in bozeman Montana, called Vera Fare. Please feel free to email with your contact information. I hope to hear from you soon!
Hi,
I live in the NYC area and am interested in the same kind of connection here on the east coast. Would you be able to point me in the right direction?
Thanks,
Everything Epsy
http://www.everythingepsy.com
briana@epsyssweetshop.com
Sure, I’d check out the events organized by food and tech connect : http://www.foodtechconnect.com/events/
Would you be interested in meeting Sustainable Microfarms CEO/Founder? He will be presenting at Food IT!
Јe suis entièrement еn équation avec vous
Jе vais terminer dee lire tout cela dans laa journée
Hey Michelle,
Thanks for running this great blog!
Please check out the startup TalkToChef (http://TalkToChef.com) – the first micro-consulting platform to connect home cooks and foodies to the professional chefs available to answer culinary questions via video chat on your mobile device. There’re already hundreds of chefs ready to share their expertise and answer anything from how to use ingredients you have on hand to make a meal, to how you can fix a meal that was messed up.
Let me know if you want more info. I’d be happy to connect!
Best,
Julia
Delighted to have discovered your blog. I have moved from cheffing to retrain as a food scientist and technologist, worked in manufacturing and am now consulting. Incubator kitchens, consulting to health services and championing regional food councils are on the “To Do” list this year here in Western Australia.
I am trying to make time to trawl through your archvies.
Cheers
Susanna Morley
Hello Michelle,
Not sure which way is the best way to contact you. I was trying to find your email and number on this website, but have no idea about where it is! My name is Erin, and would love to invite you to our exclusive media event in San Francisco! We haven’t sent out the invitation yet, but would love to have your email contact and we can chat a little bit about our upcoming project!
Thank you!
Erin
Michelle and Austin, are you aware of any entrepreneur incubators for food social enterprises in the Bay Area? I’m looking for a group now. Elizabeth