Discover how one of Boston’s most exciting food startups launched in 2016
There are a lot of exciting companies that work out of the CIC — the coworking space our agency calls home — and being around them every day made us curious: What were these companies doing to spur such impressive growth?
In our last post, we looked at the growth strategies of an investment and M&A advisory firm. In part 2 of this series, we’re switching gears and jumping into the Boston food industry to learn how a new food-focused coworking space is growing its membership.
This is part 2 of 5 of our CIC Growth Series, featuring Lauren Abda, founder of Branchfood. Check out part 1, part 3, part 4, and part 5 of the series.
Give us the elevator pitch for Branchfood.
Branchfood is the largest community of food innovators in New England. We work to support that community in a number of ways. First, we’re a workspace for food entrepreneurs and we’ve been collaborating with the CIC for about a year now to provide a space for growing food companies.
We are also an events organization. We run many events that highlight the work of food innovators and entrepreneurs based in Boston or who want to expand to Boston. Our events range from panels to day-long conferences on parts of the food industry that are disruptive or innovative. There are also workshops and office hours to help food businesses launch in a more educated and informed way.
What did you do in 2016 to drive growth?
Events were a huge way to grow our community. Events are tough, time intensive, and take a lot of energy to plan and promote, but ticketed events help us make money while attracting people who are truly and actively interested in the unique experiences Branchfood has to offer.
We’re focused specifically on food, but we have a very diverse community — everything companies creating new food products, to tech companies creating new POS platforms, to food delivery services, and agricultural tech. We generate a lot of word of mouth through the events we host.
Increasing our membership is tough — coworking is pervasive today, and there are plenty of options for companies looking for space. Our differentiator is industry-focused coworking. With us, food startups get access to food industry-specific resources to accelerate business growth. We’re always creating partnerships to help Branchfood members get into large retailers or meet potential partners.
What will you do in 2017 to continue growing?
2016 was our first year. In 2017, we’ll continue to host events to educate other verticals about the food sector. As an industry, food is growing fast. We want to start offering consulting for verticals outside of the food sector that still have some overlap — legal services, tech, etc. — that want to start working with food businesses.
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Want to learn how other CIC members are growing their businesses? Check out the rest of our CIC Growth Series here:
- Part 1: Emily Leinbach, Head of Marketing at Progress Partners
- Part 3: Richard Fries, Executive Director at MassBike
- Part 4: Haowei Zhang, CEO and cofounder at Waylens
- Part 5: Shayna Wilczynski, Senior Marketing Specialist at BookingBug
Ideometry is a full-service marketing agency located in Boston helping awesome companies and organizations amplify their growth strategies.
