How Pea Milk Is Shaking Up Silicon Valley — For Good
Yes, You Read That Right … Pea Milk
Ripple Foods, a dairy-free manufacturer start-up founded by Neil Renninger and Adam Lowry, recently completed a Series C funding round. This puts the company in the ranks of other innovation-minded benefit corporations that have raised more than $100 million in venture capital, including AltSchool (K-12 education) and Lemonade (insurance brokerage).
All of these projects, and the many other benefit corporations raising capital from venture investors, are focused on using that capital to scale businesses that will have outsized positive impacts on the world. Alternatives to milk have the potential to reduce the global warming to which cattle contribute, new educations models can address the inequality that threatens global stability, and new insurance models can help millions obtain needed financial tools.
Adam Lowry of Ripple Foods was one of three business leaders featured in a panel on “Leading Toward Growth” at the 2016 Best for the World Gathering at the University of California, Berkeley. Below are excerpts from the panel discussion.
On Product Design
Lowry: Within the non-dairy milk space, the reality is that the products … you’re sacrificing nutrition and the taste and experience of milk massively right now. We’re … creating a product that’s got eight times the protein of an almond milk, it’s much creamier and more delicious, and so focusing that on how do we bring that toward the mainstream?
Ripple Foods is very focused on how do we build scale behind this, because that’s what amplifies the impact, in fact, creates the ripple effect. Now you know where the Ripple brand name comes from, the effect we’re trying to have on business at large as well as at the individual level with our products.
On Better Products
Lowry: I look at things from a product lens … from a product standpoint. I think that the sustainable products world is kind of coming a little bit full circle back to what’s always been important with products, and that depends a little bit on category. If you’re in the food space, taste is absolutely number one. Price is always a factor, but there’s other things: nutrition and all of that.
Our businesses are trying to create more demand and desire for things that are just a lot better for the people that are eating those things, as well as the manner in which those things are made, and are a lot more sustainable than the alternative products. What is creating demand? … I think the sustainability of a product is just another aspect of its quality. That’s it. I don’t believe in sustainable marketing; I don’t believe in any of that stuff.
I think that you’ve got to make a product that’s better, and in 2016 one of the aspects of better has got to be the sustainability of those products. Most consumers, it’s somewhere down the list, on how important that is.
Ripple Foods, for example … it’s basically 10 times better on a carbon- and a water-basis than current almond milk or soy milk or dairy. It’s way better on those aspects. The way the brand’s positioned is dairy-free, as it should be, which is high in protein, lower in sugar and really delicious.
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