Scaling Food Businesses – Funding activity Nov Dec 2012 to date #digitalfoodfunding
Posted: December 17, 2012 Filed under: Funding, Startups | Tags: food businesses Leave a comment »Who: Burpple
What do they do: a mobile photo sharing service for food lovers
Where: Asia
How Much and When: Dec 2012, $500,000
Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.
Who: NatureBox
What do they do: the company distributes its own brand of nutritionist-approved health foods
Where: USA
How Much and When: Dec 2012, $2 million
Thanks to Techcrunch for that – full story here.
Who: HelloFresh (www.hellofresh.com)
What do they do: subscription service that sends users a recipe and the needed fresh ingredients
Where: USA & Europe
How Much and When: Dec 2012, $10 million
Thanks to Techcrunch for that – full story here.
Who: OrderAhead (www.orderaheadapp.com)
What do they do: OrderAhead gives you the ability to quickly order pickup from great local merchants.
Where: USA
How Much and When: Dec 2012, $200k
Thanks to Techcrunch for that – full story here.
Who: Foody (www.foody.vn)
What do they do: OpenTable-like service
Where: Asia
How Much and When: Nov 2012, undisclosed
Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.
Who: Farmigo (www.farmigo.com)
What do they do: Farmigo is dedicated to creating a healthy alternative food system
Where: USA
How Much and When: Nov 2012, $8 million
Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.
Who: Snapdish (snapdi.sh)
What do they do: Take quick photos of your dishes. Enjoy sharing them with your friends.
Where: Asia
How Much and When: Nov 2012, undisclosed
Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.
Who: Urban Remedy (snapdi.sh)
What do they do: this service focuses on bringing complete packages of juices, meals, and snacks into people’s homes.
Where: USA
How Much and When: Nov 2012, $1 million
Thanks to TheNextWeb for that – full story here.
If you know of any more funding rounds announced by digital/online/mobile food businesses in Nov/Dec 2012 leave a comment and I will update this.
thanks, Keith
Wild And Slow – Wicklow 10th & 11th November 2012
Posted: November 4, 2012 Filed under: Ethical Food, Events 1 Comment »One of the byeproducts of my time at TerraMadre last week was the pleasure of meeting Evan Doyle, proprietor of Brooklodge.
He is one of the Slow Food people helping to organise next weekends celebration of wild food which takes place in Macreddin village in Wicklow.
Looks like a great event for anyone who enjoys their food. The lineup of food stalls and tastings is complemented by a wide variety of workshops – all free to enter once you have paid the 5 euro daily charge to get in. You can download full workshop details here – WILDFOOD WORK SHOPS 2012 FINAL DETAILS.
Booking can be done via this form – WILDFOOD WORK SHOPS PRE-REG FORM2 2012
For me interesting ones would be:
Back to the Basics A workshop where Darina Allen, Ballymaloe, will focus in depth on the traditional methods of preserving as used by our grandparents for pickling, drying and potting that gave them tastes of summery fruit in jams well after the trees were bare, cured meats and fish in the darker months, and allowed them have vitamins and minerals while nature slept.
Blackberries and beyond. Ireland has 327,258 km of common Irish grass verges and hedgerows. In this workshop, Evan Doyle, Ed Hick and Biddy white Lennon will concentrate on what is available there for free, where to look for it, and when it is best harvested, using the Wild&Slow templates to bring participants through each season.
Much about Mushrooms. Guiding through six months of annual mushroom harvesting, Bill O’Dea, informs the workshop on the Top Ten Irish edible wild mushrooms, when to look for them and most importantly…where to find them.
This is a shot from the first Wild and Slow event in 2011
Keith
Divine Chocolate – @divinechocolate
Posted: September 30, 2012 Filed under: Ethical Food, Great brands and producers Leave a comment »What They Do
Chocolate bars. That’s it for the moment – a focused brand
Where They Do It
Ghana is the home of the Cocoa beans and the UK is the primary consumer market. However they also have a US, Netherlands and Scandanavian presence. Manufacturing is carried out in the EU although I could not see where on their site.
Who Are They
Unusually (and great to see) 45% of the ownership sits with the producer coop in Ghana. The MD of Divine is Sophi Tranchell.
The Ethical Bit?
As you saw above the producer co-op owns 45% of the shares in Divine and is strongly represented on the board. That Fair Trade ethos is the dominant ethical focus of the business and other elements such as organic are touched on but are not a core driver.
My Thoughts
Love this business and enjoy their products. Will this scale much beyond its turnover of £12M? Possibly not – the focused approach sees it do what it does really well and the goals of the business maybe achieved within the current operation.
Their website is full of relevant content and really informative – check out the timeline here for example. So many ethical food businesses forget to be open and complete about their operations – not through maliciousness but by not understanding the importance of communications to a brand.
Links To More
Interview with MD – www.smarta.com/advice/general/sophi-tranchell-divine-chocolate
/ keith
UPDATE 4th November – Sophi Tranchell is one of the key speakers at a Social Enterprise Conference in Bristol on 10th November 2012 – details here.
Lyfe Kitchen, Brussels Sprouts based Fast Food @LYFEKitchen
Posted: September 16, 2012 Filed under: Ethical Food, Great brands and producers | Tags: fastfood, organic, USA Leave a comment »What they do
Sustainable, socially responsible fast food.
Where they do it
LA is the location of their first branch. Top marks if you guessed that 
Who are they
The polar opposite of hippies. Mike Roberts and Sidwell are an ex McDonald’s COO and an investment banker who sat down one day and decided to build an ethical fast food business which would scale.
The management team is chokka full of management capability and VP’s. If anyone can scale this crew can.
The ethical bit?
On the suppliers side this is from their website:
- Look to serve organic foods whenever commercially viable
- Monitor how quickly product arrives at LYFE Kitchen to guarantee freshness and flavor
- Maintain that all meats must be antibiotic and hormone free
- Ensure that all meats and chicken are Global Animal Partnership approved
My thoughts
It is always hard to compare a business like this with Rapunzel for example. The latter is clearly driven by personal ethics whereas Lyfe could be a positioning exercise chasing a market opportunity. However this Wired article does point to ethical leanings during Mike Roberts time in McDonalds so maybe.
One way or another if there have to be fast food chains then this one is nicely positioned to make the supply chain a lot more ethical than the norm.
Links to more
https://twitter.com/LYFEKitchen
https://www.facebook.com/LYFEKitchen
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_lyfekitchens/all/
/ keith
Scaling and mainsteaming – the ethical dilemas
Posted: September 9, 2012 Filed under: Ethical Food | Tags: investment, organic, USA 1 Comment »Everyone with an interest or passion for a particular ethic around food (be it organic, fairtrade, vegetarian, whatever) is challenged with the issues that are almost inevitable when a niche business or sector gets bigger and then edges on mainstream.
One of those issues is the purchase of large and profitable independent food businesses by larger and more profitable entities with little or no core ethics.
This is more than a theoretical consideration as this study by Philip H. Howard on the US organic food sector shows.
This is a still from an 18 second animation which shows left to right the gradual absorbing of the key independent players in the sector into larger entities over 12 years 1995 to 2007.
Have a look at more detail here. For me a business absorbed into a larger company with no ethical core drops from my shopping list (Green & Black being a good example, I have no interest in supporting Kraft Foods)
/ keith
Rapunzel Naturkost
Posted: September 9, 2012 Filed under: Ethical Food, Great brands and producers | Tags: fairtrade, germany, organic, vegetarian 1 Comment »What they do
They manufacture a wide range (over 400) organic, vegetarian and fairtraded food products. They also have a food ingredients division in Germany and offer an own label manufacturing service.
Where they do it
Just over half of their products are manufactured in Germany where they also have the widest distribution. Outside of Germany there are 30 countries worldwide where their products are available.
Who are they
Set up by Joseph Wilhelm and Jennifer Vermeulen in 1974 they now employ over 300 people.
The ethical bit?
Clearly defined ethics are deeply routed in the business. They operate their own organic certification scheme (Hand in Hand) together with producer partners in many countries.
They have a clear and fascinating mission statement and goals covering the environment, staff and independence from banks and other financial institutions.
My thoughts
With a turnover of > €100M this business has successfully scaled while maintaining a rigorous set of criteria which guide its operations. The passion and personal ethics of 2 individuals has lead to a powerhouse of organic food production and I am in awe of that.
This is not a sexy brand and they do not “do” social media that I can see. It is a solid and reputable brand.
I am familiar with a number of their products which make their way onto the Irish market and I am going to look out for more now!
Links to more
http://www.rapunzel.de/uk/index.html
One World Award (Joseph is on the jury)
/ keith
Appetisers – 2nd Sept 2012
Posted: September 2, 2012 Filed under: Ethical Food, Media Watch Leave a comment »NYT’s article and comments on investing into organic farms and farmers
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/a-banker-bets-on-organic-farming/
The growth in various food niches
http://www.blog.cbdmarketing.com/2012/07/ethical-sourcing-a-blossoming-trend-in-food/
Carbon Neutral Chocolate sails into the UK
/ Keith
