Silicon Valley food startup wants to feed the world
‘The future of food’ is nutritious, inexpensive and environmentally friendly
When Bill Gates called flashy food startup Hampton Creek the “future of food,” he was presumably referring to products like the company’s much-hyped vegan mayo. The mayo, the company argues, shows it’s possible to produce plant-based foods Americans love at prices they can afford, without relying on the egg, meat and dairy products that take such a toll on the environment.
But Hampton Creek, recently renamed JUST, has far grander ambitions than turning the U.S. food market on its head. This month it’s going public with a product it describes as its solution to addressing West African malnutrition.
The product, a fortified cassava porridge dubbed “Power Gari,” is cheap to produce, popular with consumers and tailored to the exact dietary needs of the market where it’s sold, the company says. JUST believes its product will increase Africans’ intake of critical vitamins and minerals by including them in a product that tastes good and is sold at retail in slick branded bags, unlike the fortified foods currently offered by development organizations.
In limited trials in Liberia, where JUST has been quietly developing Power Gari for the past two years, the porridge has earned the approval of local schools and nonprofits, which say it delivers good nutrition and is popular with kids.
But the company’s claims have also raised eyebrows among development experts, who say that other, larger food companies have attempted almost identical projects, without success. Many questioned the originality of JUST’s approach and expressed doubt that an American tech firm could succeed where so many others failed.
It’s a debate that has haunted JUST from its launch, when the company first began promising that Silicon Valley techniques could shake the foundations of an outmoded food system. Critics continue to question whether JUST has actually launched any revolutionary products — or simply marketed itself better than the competition.
None of this has dissuaded the company’s founder, Joshua Tetrick, who predicts Power Gari will be on sale in 15 African countries within two years.
“I want to make Liberia a big success — success defined by solving the micronutrition problem there and making sure kids have dignity in what they eat,” he said. “But we certainly didn’t start this just for Liberia ... This needs to be a model that we get right and we take everywhere.”
Power Gari itself isn’t much to look at: a faintly sour, starchy mush the colour and consistency of soft polenta. The porridge is made from cassava, red palm oil, sugar, salt, a soy protein concentrate and a vitamin/mineral mix, most of which are sourced in Liberia.
More importantly, from a nutrition standpoint, Power Gari contains high concentrations of vitamins A, D, C, B6 and B12, plus iron, zinc and 12 grams of protein.
Those are valuable assets in a country where roughly one-third of children under 5 are stunted and almost two-thirds have anemia, according to USAID. The local diet is heavy on rice, cooking oils, and dried meat and fish. Generally speaking, fortified foods have become a common way for governments and nonprofits to address deficiencies.
“If fortified foods are not available, helping them get into the market affordably is a valuable role for the private sector,” said Challiss McDonough, a senior spokesperson for the World Food Program.
JUST may seem like an odd private firm for the job. Since Tetrick and a childhood friend founded the company in 2011, it has become known for its plant-based mayos, dressings and cookie doughs, which are sold at retail and widely used in food service.
The company has attracted $310 million in investments from some of Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firms, including Khosla Ventures and the Founders Fund. It has also been plagued by several well-publicized scandals and a string of internal intrigues, the latest of which culminated in the entire board’s resignation, minus Tetrick, last summer.
But Tetrick and his colleagues have dismissed their skeptics for failing to understand the company’s full potential. And that potential includes changing the diets of billions in the developing world, said Tetrick, for whom the Liberia project is personal.
Before founding JUST, the 37-year-old entrepreneur worked in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa and spent a brief stint employed by Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The experience convinced him that socially minded, for-profit businesses could change the lives of poor consumers by developing specialized products for them, potentially having even a larger impact than dedicated development organizations.
“Folks who live on under $2 a day shouldn’t be looked at as victims or people who just deserve our worst food or our charity,” Tetrick said. “Because when we shift the lens a little bit and we actually look at them as empowered consumers ... you can end up doing things that are a lot more powerful than just a typical nonprofit.”