Kirsten Tobey, co-founder of Revolution Foods, scaled the company from one Oakland school to 2 million meals a week. She built a separate team to launch Family Fresh, dinner kits for low-income families, using existing supply chains and culinary centers. The kits are oven-ready in 30 minutes and designed to be cheap and recyclable.
Chapters
Hi everybody. I love that opening song. That was great. Well, thank you for having me here. I'm Kirsten Tobey, co-founder of Revolution Foods. One of the things that we really thought about when we first started was, and kind of what drove us to start the company, was, you know, the fact that every kid in this country deserves to have access to high-quality healthy food no matter where they grow up, no matter their zip code, no matter where they come from, no matter where they go to school. So my business partner, Kristin— seems obvious, right? That access to healthy food is a fundamental human right. So my business partner Kristin and I started 12 years now. We met 14 years ago here right up the street at UC Berkeley in business school. And we kind of came together around this idea that, you know, we could create a new model for how kids have access to food. And kids and families, really. We've always kind of focused on where are the greatest needs in our communities. And, you know, when we were looking at this when we were in business school, we saw, you know, all of the statistics about the obesity epidemic is on the rise. Type 2 diabetes is impacting, at this point in inner city communities, it's impacting 1 in 2 kids, which is a shocking statistic. And, you know, we have kids at this point in history slated to live a shorter lifespan than their parents, which is the first time ever, and that shouldn't happen. It's all because of preventable nutrition-related diseases and food-related diseases. So we started Revolution Foods to make what we call kid-inspired, chef-crafted food accessible to all. I won't spend a ton of time talking about the sort of the origin story, but because they asked me today to kind of focus on a lesson that I could teach you guys. So I do have a little lesson that I'll kind of dig into, which is one of our newest initiatives that we're working on and kind of how we're approaching that. But we started here in Oakland. Actually, right down the street was our first school, a charter school called Lighthouse Community Charter School, a wonderful school. They just graduated their first class of kids who have eaten Revolution Foods now for 12 years. And they're now going to college, which is exciting. So they've— it's been exciting to kind of grow with partners like that who have, you know, charter schools who have been growing alongside of us. We've started here in Oakland, but we very quickly expanded to new geographies. We expanded to Southern California, to Texas, to New Orleans, to Denver, to D.C., to New Jersey, New York, and most recently Boston. So we're now serving about 2 million meals a week, and in this next school year, it will be even more than that, including breakfast, lunch, after-school meals, after-school supper, after-school snacks. In the summertime, we serve summer meals to kids who come to either city-sponsored or other community-sponsored programs. We work with Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, and other places. Basically anywhere where kids are spending time, we offer meals to them. And we built the company with a real focus on making sure the meals are accessible. So accessibility has been one of the, one of the really driving factors of how we've grown, how we've, you know, really built the whole model. And accessibility to us means that kids need to be able to have our food or have access to our food, and families need to have access to our food regardless of their income level. So we built the— our whole platform is built around the USDA-sponsored National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, other federally subsidized programs. Programs, and about 80% of the kids who eat our meals each day qualify for free lunch at school. So that means they're coming from families that are living at, you know, 130% of the poverty line or below, and that's been, you know, really fundamental to how we've started and how we've continued to grow, and how we've been very focused in terms of our mission and our vision. So family fresh— fresh family dinners is what I'm here to talk to you about. You might think, oh, Revolution Foods, that's a school lunch company. Well, school lunch is how we started and is, you know, probably three-quarters of our current business. We also do breakfast, as I mentioned, and we are really focused on, you know, making sure that kids and families have access to good nutrition and nutrition education. So one of the things that as we've grown and as we've been serving more and more communities, we've had teachers and principals and parents in the schools that we work with say, you know, it's great that you're feeding my kid breakfast and lunch and sometimes a snack or a meal after school, but I'm still struggling to get dinner on the table. And dinner is a real challenge. And, you know, as busy working parents, you know, many of us who are, you know, running the company are also struggling to get a healthy dinner on the table. It's kind of like getting a healthy dinner on the table sort of knows no boundaries in terms of socioeconomic status and all that sort of thing. So we really, so we saw dinner as a way to both increase the impact that we are having in our communities and to solve a real problem that is, that's kind of within our realm of core competency. But the way that we've approached this, I think, is an interesting, an interesting kind of path, and that's what I'm here to kind of walk you through. So one of the things we wanted to make sure to not do was to sort of pivot and say, okay, now let's focus on something new and let's get a whole team and invest a lot of money. We've really tried to build, you know, kind of a small kind of innovation-focused kind of skunkworks approach to what we're doing here, but to do it in a really thoughtful way and to be very clear and methodical about the process. So the insight, you know, that we had was, you know, we have this opportunity. We have these, you know, several hundred thousand families that are reliant on our program that we have a daily touch with because we're serving their kids in schools. We have, you know, at this point, we have several hundred refrigerated trucks on the road every day. We have culinary centers where we're making and preparing and delivering fresh meal— fresh meals on a daily basis. We have this incredible kind of infrastructure and capacity, and we said, well, how can we leverage that to bring a dinner solution to families? So we kind of launched an innovation process. And the very first thing that we did was to talk to the end user. So this is, you know, when you're starting something new, whether you're starting a new business, whether you're starting, you know, a new— creating a new product within your existing business, talking to your consumer is probably the most important thing that you can do. And don't just do this once. You got to keep doing it. You got to keep going back to them, figuring out if it— if what you're if what you're creating is working for them. Maintaining an open mind. So don't go in— we didn't go into this thinking, OK, we know exactly what this solution looks like, and we know how we're going to deliver it, and we know what the menu is going to be. And we really kind of let the process unfold as we worked with our consumers. And we tested a lot of different things before we kind of honed in on here's what the product needs to look like, here's what the solution needs to look like. And I'll say, we're still on this journey. We're not kind of done. And I'll kind of tell you where we are today with it. Listen, prototype, learning, and prototype again. So, you know, try to be— when we first started this, which was about a year ago, we started doing the kind of consumer work and talking to parents and teachers and kids and families. And we went into people's kitchens and cooked with them. We looked at, you know, what are people eating? What solutions are currently out there? What's the price point that a family, like a middle-income family, has to spend on a dinner? And I can tell you it's not the same price point that you might be targeted with your, you know, the postcards you're getting from meal kit companies about like only $12 per serving. It's a lot less than that what families actually have to— who are, you know, families who are struggling to make ends meet have to spend on a dinner. And then we built our kind of innovation team, and this is a really important, you know, the way that we've built this team is important because we've, you know, done innovation before and I think done it incorrectly, but the way that we've that we've done it in this case is we have kind of taken people who are real experts within our business. So we have a team of 1,500 people across the country, and many of those people are, you know, 99% of those people are focused on delivering on our core business. And I should probably emphasize as a part of this that continuing to deliver on our core business and grow our core business, which continues to grow, we continue to add new schools and new cities, that we didn't want to distract that 99% of our team in building this innovation team. But what we did is we found a few people within the company who knew a lot about either our supply chain, our menu development process, our school partnerships, our marketing channels. And we brought them together and said, let's make this a team of people that will kind of come into this innovation space and work on this project. But while still, you know, doing your day job as a part of the core business. And as we kind of built the product, the proposition, we started, you know, realizing where we needed more dedicated people to come in and take on specific parts of the process. But really being thoughtful about how to craft the team, not kind of walling off a bunch of people in a separate room and saying, you know, go create something completely different. But instead, you know, I was trying to think of what's the right metaphor. A lot of entrepreneurs talk about, you know, you're building the plane while you fly it, or you're building the ship while you sail it. Well, I think the best metaphor for this is that we're building this train, and I know it's kind of old school because nobody takes trains anymore, but I think the metaphor works. Because we're building this train, and as we've grown the business, you know, the train continues going in the direction that we're going. We're continuing to, like, run the core business to our goal. But what we're doing now is we're building a new car that's going to be on the back of the train, and that's eventually going to, you know, be able to be, you know, we're going to build more of those those cars, but you want the car to be connected to the rest of the train, and you want people to be able to come and go and to bring what works on that current train and bring it into the new car and develop it, but also spend time thinking about how can we do something different. So that kind of idea of pulling a cross-functional team across, you know, from the existing business, but having them focus on this new area is an important piece. So being careful not to build that dedicated team too fast. I think, you know, bringing people who are kind of industry experts from other places and saying, okay, we're going to build this new thing, so go off and build it is going to take you in the wrong direction. Building on your core assets is the way to really kind of learn from what's going on in the current business and bring it into the new business. And then as the process unfolds, always being clear on what you know, what you don't know, and what you're testing for. So we've done a lot of testing and learning over the last 9 to 12 months in this space. And we're always very careful to say, okay, well, we just did this test. We learned this, this, and this. But there's still a lot of things that we don't know. So we've tested, you know, is it going to work better if families can order this dinner platform ahead of time, or do they want to— do they want to buy it on impulse? So we've tested both, you know, both kind of environments. We've tested with a smart fridge in a school site so that, you know, parents can actually come and pick up a meal when they pick up their kids from school. We've tested a smart fridge in a more of a workplace site because maybe parents want to bring a dinner a dinner meal home from their workplace. But always being careful to know what you're testing and what you're learning. And when you've learned it, then you can start to really kind of invest and double down on that learning. Product development. So we have— as we embarked on this process, we went into— we talked to a lot of consumers, as I mentioned. We went into people's kitchens. We tested a lot of different ideas. And we looked at all the different— I mean, the meal kit industry right now is exploding. There's so many different ideas out there. But what we heard from the consumers that we talked to is that, you know, as busy working parents, people don't have time to be, you know, learning how to cook and spending 45 minutes of prep time while they're trying to, you know, juggle family, juggle all the other competing priorities of their time, and then cooking the dinner for another 45 minutes, and then having a, you know, sink full of dirty dishes. We talked to people who, you know, have looked at the— or have tried the current meal kits, and they're so tired of all the garbage and the trash that comes every time you get a box delivered to your doorstep. And then we talked about like what's the price point that people need to have this to truly be accessible to the communities that we are serving. And so we've really honed in on a product that is, that meets all of those, that kind of addresses all of those different needs. It's in a recyclable pan. We deliver it into a refrigerator at a central point of distribution, whether that's at a school, whether that's in a corporate, you know, an office location, whether that's in a community center. So you're picking it up out of a refrigerator, you're not getting it delivered with a bunch of, you know, insulation and ice packs. And then it's a— and because of those things and because we're building on our existing infrastructure and we already have this infrastructure in place of food production and delivery, we're able to deliver it at a price point that really works for the families that we are— that we are serving. And we've stayed very focused on making sure that that price point stays accessible. So, you know, really understanding who your consumer is when you're developing the product is incredibly important. Important spending time with them. I mean, even though I am a mom, I've got, you know, 3 kids, my husband and I try to figure out how we're going to make dinner every day, that doesn't mean that we understand every consumer that we're trying to work with. So actually going out and spending time in people's kitchens, testing out different, different kind of iterations of our product is— was incredibly enlightening to our entire team as we went through this. Really understanding, you know, I think we had a very good understanding of how we were going to get the meals meals to these points of distribution. We call it kind of that last mile. We have, you know, trucks that are already going into communities and into school sites. But how do we actually get people to walk that last 10 feet to go and get the meal? So we spent a lot of time, we're still spending a lot of time really testing different ways to get people to actually, you know, go to those last 10 feet to pick up the meal. And then the feedback and learning loop is ongoing. So every— we've— even though we feel like we've got the product honed, we've got, you know, this incredible kind of menu of items where You get a— you get your kind of dinner kit. Everything's already chopped for you. Everything is marinated. The sauces are made. Everything goes into these recyclable pans that you just put into your oven. Everything cooks at 425 for 30 minutes. It's very easy. We've taken a lot of that thinking and a lot of that work out of it, but you're still putting raw food into the oven and coming out with a fresh— freshly cooked meal. You're not microwaving something or just, you know, reheating something. So we've kind of developed that product to a certain extent, and we're getting great, incredible feedback on it. But we're all— we're still continuously learning. So somebody might say, oh, well, the green beans didn't cook all the way in the time that you said. So we went back and we tested the green bean cooking time again and we changed the directions. And, you know, we've made sure to keep the business very— this, this kind of innovation group incredibly nimble. We're not overinvesting in packaging. We're not overinvesting in, you know, in a lot of things that are going to be hard to kind of turn around if we need to pivot and do something differently, if we need to make a tweak or a change. So keeping that feedback and learning loop ongoing, even as we're kind of— even as we think certain things are honed and complete, you know, we're really continuing to be very nimble and agile kind of as we're developing. So the future, I think where we're going to take this is still to be determined. Our core business, as I said, is still growing. We're going to be serving, you know, even more schools and community sites next year, but now we're gonna have this other layer of what we can offer to our schools and community sites. So we're not just gonna be able to bring healthy breakfast and lunch and after-school meals to students, but we're gonna have this offering for families that will be available through the schools that we serve. We're starting here still, as I said, we're still kind of in the learning loop, and we're just doing this right now in the Bay Area. We haven't expanded this out to the other parts of the country that we're working in, But as soon as we have some of those key questions kind of answered, we'll be rolling it out to other parts of the country. And I think there's, you know, we're still continuing to kind of build and learn the platform and the program as we go. But I think just for some key takeaways and where you can learn from this and maybe as you're, if you're starting a business or you're, you know, trying to pivot your current business into a a different direction. I'll try to offer a couple of takeaways. So one is this— there's this tension between you want to isolate the new and isolate the innovation so that it doesn't distract from that 99% of the rest of your business. You want to make sure that you've got, you know, a solid kind of team and resources dedicated to the core business. So you want to isolate it. But at the same time, you want to kind of not separate it so much that you start kind of moving away from where your core competencies are. And that's that analogy of the train. You know, if you're building a train and that's your business, and you're trying to build an airplane on the side, that's going to be totally different from what your core business is. So, you know, if we were— as we were looking at this, we said, well, we already have fresh food production. We already have refrigerated trucks on the road. We have this very unique access to this channel of, you know, schools and community centers. And everything we do comes back to are we leveraging those core assets? Are we leveraging those core assets? Or are we looking at building a whole different kind of company? And we keep coming back to, you know, leverage the core assets, make sure this is something that we know how to do, and we're just kind of tweaking it around the edges. So it's that tension between isolating your innovation and keeping it from being distracting, but truly leveraging what your core is and what you're truly good at. That. And at the end of the day, I think I can't stress this enough, especially in a food company, but product excellence has to be the number one focus of every single effort, every single day. And, you know, if somebody has a bad experience with a meal or a food item, it's really hard to get them back. And I think this is probably the case with just about any— with just about any product. So no matter if you're on day one of your business or day, you know, 10,064, making sure you're starting and finishing your day focused on your product, on the quality of your product, and how your product is kind of meeting your end users' needs is the most important place you can spend your time. Thank you.
