Most Innovative Companies 2015: A Q&A With Revolution Foods
Join Fast Company editor Jillian Goodman for a live Q&A with Revolution Foods founders Kirsten Saenz Tobey and Kristin Groos Richmond at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 18.
Kirsten Saenz Tobey (left) and Kristin Groos Richmond
Photo by: John Francis Peters
Revolution Foods was recently named #39 on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list “for selling good, cheap food to children who need it most.”
Every day, Revolution Foods provides 300,000 of what it calls "real food" meals to schoolchildren in 25 cities, for only $3 apiece. And what’s more is that kids actually like it.
Join Fast Company associate editor Jillian Goodman for a live Q&A with Revolution Foods founders Kirsten Saenz Tobey and Kristin Groos Richmond at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 18.
And get your questions in now by using the "make a comment" box below!
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Hello everyone! We're going to get started in just a few minutes with Revolution Foods co-founder Kristin Groos Richmond. Here's a link to our story about Revolution Foods from our annual Most Innovative Companies issue:
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Kristin's co-founder Kirsten Saenz Tobey will be joining us a little later.
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Okay! So Kristin, where did the idea for Revolution Foods come from?
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Kirsten and I (co founders) had a vision to dramatically increase access to healthy, affordable, delicious meals for ALL kids in our nation. We had both come from education and saw firsthand the impact that eating healthy meals had on students/youth from a success standpoint. In and out of the classroom! As moms, we live and breathe this every day now with our own children. So three core beliefs brought us together to build what is now Revolution Foods: nutrition as a lever to set kids up for success, commitment to access for ALL families and the belief that we could use good business to solve this problem for our communities.
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Can you expand a little bit on your professional background? How did your experience in education inform the way you guys went about building the company?
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I started my career in finance and transitioned to education in my late 20s. In education, I was able to focus on building an effective school model for under served kids and families. As part of this experience, I taught classes and saw a huge difference in attention, focus, behavior and ultimately academic success...
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...In the students who had access to healthy meals vs students who were in need of these meals. Kirsten was a classroom teacher throughout her career prior to starting Revolution Foods and her experience mirrored mine in terms of the importance of this issue.
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(Here are some happy and focused Revolution Foods customers!)
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So many studies have shown the impact good nutrition has on students' academic performance. Did your experience on the inside of public education help you navigate the bureaucracy when you went looking for your first partner schools?
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Our experience in education has helped us build Revolution Foods because we are focused on a few key things: listening to what our students and families want in terms of quality and design of food (including cultural relevance for different communities), focusing on designing to affordability as a key tenant of our offering (understanding how fragile school budgets are and all of our meals cost at or below federal reimbursement levels) and being SUPER solutions oriented in our approach with our school partners. So many schools and leaders are committed to improving access for their students and we want to be the partner to help them get there! This drives our design and business each day.
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I imagine that flavor and deliciousness has a lot to do with what students want! Here's a question from one of our readers:
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What's been the biggest obstacle to overcome in terms of changing people's thoughts regarding healthy eating?
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(While Kristin's writing, here's a link to a video about the way Revolution Foods touches kids' lives: www.youtube.com)by Jillian via YouTube 3/18/2015 5:30:16 PM
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1. For both our grocery and school meals, we've had to make sure that students and families believe that we can deliver healthy, affordable AND delicious meals. We want to make sure that families and schools are confident that our meals will fuel healthy minds and bodies because they are kid loved as well as good for kids. We achieve this through our kid design approach in every single meal we create. We use student and parent insight and feedback constantly to design. As moms, we also know how key this trust building is!
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2. Affordability: we've had to design our entire business to support quality meals and affordability to achieve access for the families we serve. 80% of our students in schools we serve qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch and rely on school meals each day as their primary source of nutrition. From supply chain and operational design to focus on achieving scale, this has been key to overcoming obstacles. This holds true for our grocery line as well.
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Kids who are in reduced or free lunch programs often come from low-income neighborhoods. Because these areas are most prone to food deserts and a lack of access to nutritious foods, what can be done to ensure the healthy eating habits that Revolution Foods is promoting is extended beyond school and at home?
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Revolution Foods school meals are prepared fresh daily out of one of seven culinary centers nationwide.
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This problem of lack of access to high quality, healthy, affordable food in our communities is precisely why we chose to begin providing offerings outside of the school space as we evolved Revolution Foods. For example, our ready to eat Jet Packs had a successful pilot launch in Walmart Florida in January and were the first offering of our kind on the shelves. We will continue innovating our family offerings both in and out of the school space to tackle this problem. We also work diligently with our school partners to support in student and family engagement activities focused on building lifelong healthy eaters.
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Revolution Foods turkey & cheddar "Jet Pack" available in grocery stores
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I know that Revolution Foods has created a lot of jobs in the communities you serve, as well. Could you talk a little bit about that?
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Job creation is a part of Revolution Foods that Kir and I are so proud of. For us, two things drive everything we do: serving our communities with excellence and building an outstanding team. We have been hiring local team members since Day 1 from the communities we serve and we've created close to 1,500 new jobs to date! We are not just passionate about job creation, but even more so about career creation. Teammates like Luis (who you'll see pictured in a moment) built this company alongside us and have been promoted from critical entry level jobs such as dishwasher to running large teams and becoming outstanding leaders and managers. We believe hiring from, and developing careers in, our local communities contributes to excellent meal quality, outstanding retention and a strong company overall. We have been named for 2 years running "the second fastest growing inner city job creator in the US" by Harvard's Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. We are so proud of our job creation model and so grateful and committed to our team development.
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That's all we have time for today. Thanks so much everyone for joining us!
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Thanks for joining! You can tweet @RevolutionFoods with any questions we didn't have time to get to. And please make sure to check out our post on Revolution Foods as part of this year's Most Innovative Companies list!
