Full Stack Food

Ryan Shadrick Wilson wears a lot of hats as a leader in food innovation - advisor, investor, advocate, and strategist are just a few…but even those don’t do justice to conveying the influence Shadrick-Wilson, the founder and CEO of Boardwalk Collective, has had on the industry. Simply put, Shadrick Wilson has probably influenced many of the food brands you know and love. She started out her career as a lawyer focused on civil rights…but after getting assigned to working on cases in the food industry instead, Shadrick Wilson realized food can be a vehicle for social change. Her path led to a stint with First Lady Michelle Obama's office, and she ultimately found herself building a community - a tribe - if you will, of founders, financiers, big food execs, and celebrities….and galvanized them around the power of food and innovation.

Food has long been associated with health and healing. So it’s kind of remarkable that food isn’t typically a part of medical treatment for chronic diseases like diabetes. Josh Hix wants to change that. He’s the founder of Season. It’s a platform which allows health providers to give patients meal plans and recipes and even connects them to grocery delivery sites to help treat chronic diseases with wholesome foods. Interestingly enough, it was Hix’s previous company, Plated, a meal-kit startup that was acquired by Albertsons in 2017 - that made him consider launching a company centered around food as a vehicle for health benefits. But the story of how he ended up as a veteran founder starts much earlier - during a childhood marked by a lot of moving and a lot of math…

A twenty pound sweet potato may not sound like a life-changing piece of produce, but it was for Ben Chesler. He, along with Ben Simon, launched Imperfect Foods, which takes ugly, misshapen, or weird looking fruits and veggies that would go to waste - and delivers them to your home. Over the last several years, Imperfect Foods has built a sophisticated logistics network. Recently, rival Misfits Market announced it is acquiring Imperfect Foods. While the news came out after we taped our interview, we did learn that the seeds of the company were planted in Ben long before he set eyes on that sweet potato.

On the face of it, the problem James Rogers was trying to solve for as a grad student is pretty simple: how can you get produce to last longer? Once the materials science PhD student started digging, he found out that nature already solves the problem…fruits and vegetables already have a natural protective coating to shield them from the elements and the effects of aging. Rogers has taken that principle and used it to come out with a natural coating that extends the shelf life of produce, all in the name of reducing food waste in the global supply chain. He named his Santa Barbara-based company Apeel, which today is worth more than 2 billion dollars. Apeel's retail partners include Costco and Kroger and its investors include Katy Perry and the one-and-only Oprah Winfrey. In this episode, Rogers explains why it took him years to develop his product, how he convinced skeptical grocers to buy it, and what it was like to pitch Oprah.

These days, there are so many ways food entrepreneurs are making plant-based meat. There are using methods like fermentation, or culturing meat cells, or simply using a plant-based source like pea protein or mushrooms to make vegan meat. And in this space that’s bubbling over with innovation, the work Dan Riegler is doing is truly novel. Riegler is the cofounder of Karana, a startup which turns jackfruit into plant-based pork. His vision came about after living in Asia - where jackfruit is popular- and seeking to find a more sustainable and equitable alternative to industrial farming. Before he was a founder, Riegler was a traveler and a musician - not exactly the typical prototype of a food tech founder. But growing up in a nomadic and musical family which didn’t have traditional expectations for Riegler is exactly what he says allowed him to think outside the lines.

Did you know that black pepper can boost your metabolic health? That's just one nugget that Brightseed, a startup that studies the compounds in plants, has uncovered. But there's so much more to learn, according to Brightseed's co-founder, Sofia Elizondo. Brightseed targets what Elizondo calls the "dark matter of plants," or the healing compounds in plants that we haven't known about until now. Using data produced by microscopes powerful enough to detect those compounds on a molecular level, Brightseed's artificial intelligence technology combs through that data to reveal medicinal and healing properties of plants, thereby shedding light on the "dark matter." Sofia explains how Brightseed's discoveries may someday turn your pantry into a medicine cabinet.

Farmer's Business Network is one of the seminal disruptors in agriculture. Founded in 2014 by Charles Baron and Amol Deshpande, FBN's crowdsourced platform has challenged Big Ag companies - conglomerates which sell inputs like seed, fertilizer, and chemicals to farmers - by shedding light on price disparities and lack of transparency in the industry. Today, FBN is valued at more than $4 billion, and backed by Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and ADM, among others. Charles Baron tells us how the seeds of FBN were planted the first time he visited a farm, when he was in his 20's.

Amogha Srirangarajan is the founder of Carbon Origins, which develops robots to deliver food on college campuses, and hires human gamers to operate them.

You may never have heard the name PURIS Foods, but there's a good chance you've tasted their products. The "legacy disruptor" launched more than three and a half decades ago when its founder, Jerry Lorenzen, spearheaded what he called the coming "plant protein revolution," long before companies like Impossible Foods were household names. Today, PURIS counts Beyond Meat and some of your favorite plant-based milks as its clients. Jerry's two kids, Tyler Lorenzen and Nicole Atchison, have taken over CEO duties. The pair of siblings is steering the company into the next chapter of plant-based foods, picking up where their father, now considered a visionary for predicting a "plant protein revolution" left off.

When you hear about Lindsey Hoell’s life journey, there’s almost a Forrest Gump-like quality to it. Lindsey is the founder of Dispatch Goods, which aims to make the oceans cleaner by getting restaurants - and their customers - to switch to reusable packaging. Lindsey is sharp, opinionated, inquisitive, and action-oriented…and throughout her life, her varied interests have landed her in extraordinary circumstances – from helping to save lives as a cardiac nurse to riding the waves as an avid surfer. Her current passion - trying change the world by ridding the oceans of plastics and pollutants.