Interview: How The Good Kitchen is helping innovative startups transform the future of food
The Good Kitchen is a startup accelerator that helps social businesses create commercial solutions to one of the world’s greatest challenges: building a food system that enables everyone, everywhere, to eat a diet that is good for them, good for humanity, and good for the planet.
Launched in 2016, the accelerator provides funding, business training and mentorship to early stage businesses. It’s the brainchild of the KellyDeli Foundation, a charity started by Kelly Choi and Jerome Castaing, co-founders of the KellyDeli company and Sushi Daily brand. Kelly herself experienced food poverty first-hand as a child in post-war South Korea, driving her determination to help a new generation of entrepreneurs revolutionise the food system.
On the day Purpose visits, The Good Kitchen is hosting a day-long bootcamp for innovative food startups, culminating in a pitching session in front of leading social investors. The hopefuls include food surplus solutions for Turkish supermarkets, tech solutions to empower Colombia’s smallholder farmers and a UK company determined to get insect-based feed into the food chain.
As the entrepreneurs practiced their pitches, Purpose sat down with Joe Gridley, head of the KellyDeli Foundation, to talk about how innovation can save the food industry.
Q. The existing food industry is dominated by a handful of large corporates. Can that system be reformed, or does it need to be radically disrupted?
We do think about this question a lot. Ultimately, however, we simply try to find and fund the best solution to the particular problem in question. That might mean that a solution developed by a startup gets embedded in larger organisation and changes things internally. Or it might mean using a social franchising model to spread the solution on a white-label basis.
A lot of innovation accelerators focus purely on business growth, but we take a slightly different approach. Obviously we make absolutely sure that the businesses we’re supporting are in good shape, but we also look at how we can maximise the overall social value and impact of the solution.
Q. The startups here today seem to focus on systems change, rather than launching new consumer brands. Is that a deliberate strategy for The Good Kitchen?
Yes, when we set up The Good Kitchen we thought we’d have more consumer-facing products, but actually there is no shortage of them already out there. They are important, but they don’t necessarily change things on a systemic level.
You have to take a tandem approach. Consumer-facing ethical products are really good at getting new ideas into people’s minds. But the less sexy bit is how you change things systemically, behind the scenes. That’s where we focus, because we have more of a network there and can add more value.
Q. What is the unique contribution that startups can make as problem-solvers within the food ecosystem?
Our experience is that once a food business gets above a certain size, the speed and agility you need to introduce and implement new ideas disappears. When that happens, it makes sense to work with startups to develop more ‘plug and play’ commercial solutions.
If big businesses start to think about ways to bring in outside ideas to make a difference, this will really move the needle. For example, Kelly’s Deli is one of the largest purchasers of farmed fish across Europe. Encouraging its suppliers to use insect protein instead of soymeal could create a big change, if a viable commercial insect protein product can be developed.
Governments and NGOs have an important role too, as they can create the necessary environment. In Turkey, for instance, there are major tax incentives for supermarkets to donate food surpluses. That’s opened the door for one of our startups to develop a commercial solution for efficient donations. Good regulatory environments create opportunities and incentives for entrepreneurs to develop sustainable business models.
Q. What are the challenges involved in solving food industry problems at scale?
A lot of people assume that digital tech can revolutionise food, just as it has in finance and other sectors. But food is very different. Change happens way more slowly, not only in terms of regulation, but also adoption of new ideas by farmers, industry and consumers.
For a start, you’re not just dealing with software: you’re dealing with hardware, land, farms and supply chains, all of which are intensively regulated. Three months in a loft in Berlin isn’t going to do it. You need to be looking at timelines of at least two or three years to develop something that’s going to make a real impact.
The food industry itself is pretty low margin, so it takes time to get a new innovation to the point where it’s big enough to be viable. Especially if your mission, like ours, is to create change at the base of the pyramid in way that will help all families, rather than, say, creating a new ethical hummus that costs £5.
And finally, it can simply take a while to change people’s minds about food. For example, people are funny about the idea of feeding insect protein to animals, let alone humans.
Q. What does success look like for Good Kitchen?
Our long-term goal is to give more people access to nutritious food that’s produced in a sustainable way. To do this, we want to create an ecosystem that supports and inspires entrepreneurs to build their food businesses in a way that supports this. So if in five years’ time the industry norm for new food businesses is no longer “pile them high and sell them cheap”, but to build them well so that they are good for people, then we would see that as a huge success.
Q. How will you measure your impact?
If the startups we are supporting now get the funding they need to scale their ideas and embed them in the supply chain, then we will be able to look at the tonnes of food waste they prevent, the emissions they cut, the sustainable jobs they create — we can aggregate all of that reporting.
Q. Who typically funds your startups?
It depends on the individual organisation. As a foundation, we typically attract impact investment funds. These funds are just as commercial as traditional funds, but can also offer aspects of non-financial support related to the social mission.
We also invest directly in startups where the proposition is perhaps too risky to attract traditional finance, but the scale of potential environmental and social reward is big enough to make it worth taking a risk to get them off the ground.
Q. Finally, how can people help you achieve your mission?
Well if you’re an early stage business that is tackling food security or food poverty problems through a viable, scalable business model, get in touch. We can help with cash investment, business training and mentoring.
Equally, if you are working in the food business and have the skills, expertise and network to help us make a difference, please do come forward. The best value we’ve been able to offer to our startups has been the introductions that we make.
Inspired? To learn more about how you can gain commercial advantage through purpose-led innovation, get in touch at graham@thehouse.co.uk or 01225 780000.
