How to Feed a Revolution
Revolution Foods is changing school menus one chicken breast at a
time
We open our newspapers every day and see the articles about food
and our children. We may have
even read some of the mind-numbing statistics
and maybe checked the sodium level the next
time we bought potato chips. If we really cared
to dig deeper, we could discover that (according to the Centers for Disease
Control) nine million children are substantially overweight and that the number
is expected to grow to 11 million over the next five years if current trends are
not reversed.
Even starker: Children growing up today could
become the first generation in
American history to live shorter lives than
their parents.
Did that get your attention? The reasons for this startling
statement range from eating too much, eating
too many of the wrong things, and not exercising enough. The cost of this is not
just measured in lives. The cost of this health
epidemic in dollars is staggering. In 2000, obesity cost the nation $117 billion
in direct and indirect health care costs. For every additional 20 pounds that an
individual is overweight, his/her medical bills
increase by approximately $500 per year.
Not surprisingly, this epidemic disproportionately affects
low-income communities, and the obvious
question is what is being done about it? In recent years, the obesity risk to
students has finally been declared a national epidemic. But this doesn't change
what is happening every day in our schools' cafeterias. The current federal
lunch subsidy for a student who qualifies for free and reduced lunch is $2.32.
This typically buys a public school lunch of a slice of re-heated frozen pizza,
a bag of potato chips, a small box of raisins and a carton of chocolate milk.
Such a diet is most definitely not the answer.
As it turned out,
the answer was on the other side of the globe. After four years of working in
high yieldand leverage finance, Kristin Groos Richmond wanted to do
something she was passionate about. One night
she had a glass of wine with her boarding school roommate who was involved with
the Princeton in Africa program.
Kristin expressed her desire to move abroad and work in education. At the
time she was 25 years old. She wound up leaving
New
York and moving to
Nairobi. There, she co-founded the
first school in East Africa for learning disabilities,
Kenya Community Center for Learning in
Nairobi. Students with ADD, autism
and Down's Syndrome benefited from Kristin's
desire and passion. She already knew numbers and finance from Citigroup; in
Kenya she
learned operations and how to raise money. Her lesson was simple: "As long as
you can raise money, you can do anything you want."
After two years of a long distance relationship with her now
husband, she moved back to the states to raise money and work for RISE
(Resources for Indispensable
Schools and Educators). It is a small
San Francisco based nonprofit started by a fifth grade school teacher from East
Palo Alto, Tem Keller, to recruit and retain outstanding teachers to work in
low-income schools. They now have locations in
Los Angeles and
Chicago. It was there that Kristin
met school leaders and developed relationships
to build the network she is serving now. RISE gave her a jump start because she
cultivated those relationships and built trust.
Then one day she had her lightbulb
moment. As part of her job she spent many days
having meals with the kids at their schools.
After eating one too many processed, fried, junk food
meals with children in their lunch rooms, she grew "horrified
of what we are feeding kids." That disgust - along with being a
self-proclaimed
"foodie" - caused her to suddenly
see a solution in perfect clarity. Here she was in the San Francisco Bay Area,
surrounded by all the natural food markets and the fresh, great, local produce.
Why should all this wonderful food not be in the school cafeterias? She called
up her friend Kirsten Tobey, whom she had met
at Haas
Business
School at UC Berkeley.
"Come on, we've got to be able to put this
together" is all she had to say.
Tobey became her 50/50 business
partner. They wrote the business plan for their company in a new product
development class at graduate school. The
course was taught by Will Rosenzweig, CEO of Brand New Brands and the founder of
The Republic of Tea, Venture Strategy Partners, Odwalla and Hambrecht Vineyards
& Wineries. In 2006, the two women launched
Revolution Foods. Rosenzweig agreed to join their board of
directors.
They could not have launched it at a crazier
time in their lives. In May of 2006 Kristin had
a baby boy, Watts, three days before graduating business
school. She and Kirsten were negotiating a term sheet with a venture capital
firm in her hospital post partum room. Then Kirsten got married the next month.
Two months later they closed their $1 million funding, mainly from friends,
family, and an angel investor from UC Berkley. Also joining in was JPMorgan's
Bay Area Equity Fund, which invests in companies it perceives will stimulate
economic development in low-to moderate-
income communities and deliver healthy
financial returns. Five days later, they moved into their sub-leased
office/kitchen space with a catering company who is busy in afternoons and
evenings, and in August hired their eight staff, including a dietician, prep
chef and delivery driver all of whom are provided health benefits and are paid
above the local living wage standards. Revolution Foods started lunch service
one week later.
Revolutions start very early. Every morning at 4:00am, kitchen staff reports to a shared, certified-green
facility in Emeryville
where they begin making a difference
in the daily lives of 1,500 children from nine schools - primarily in
Oakland
-serving students
kindergarten through 12th
grade. And they are using their interaction with the children to teach
healthy lifestyles in fun ways - and by extension - begin
educating their parents too. After all, the revolution is incomplete when
Revolution feeds the kids at school and then they eat dinner at the local fast
food restaurant.
The reaction from the schools was
immediate. Almost without exception, students
and their families, teachers and principles in
low-income communities were highly dissatisfied
with the quality of food and food service in their schools. Revolution Foods
transformed their school food service by
providing healthy food, nutrition education, and operational support for the
schools. Their goal is to dramatically improve the food and food service
experience by providing the combination of quality food, nutrition education,
and operational support to schools at a price that fits the
requirements of the National School Lunch
Program. Their intended impact in communities is to reduce the prevalence of
childhood obesity, to improve overall health among children and to enhance the
educational experience for all students.
A key ingredient is their partnership with Whole Foods. "They had
actually been in the process of trying to develop a school lunch program
themselves through their stores and had realized that as a retail operation,
they didn't want to be developing this whole other side business," Tobey said.
"They said, 'If you guys want to do this, we will partner with you and provide
support because we think it is the right thing to do'."
Revolution Foods also benefits
environmental sustainability. Tobey's
background is in environmental conservation,
which is why Revolution Foods composts, recycles, provides energy efficient
insulated food storage units to school
customers, uses recycled materials and soy
based inks in their nutritional education materials. With national
momentum around curbing the obesity epidemic at
an all-time high, Revolution Foods is taking
action at a time when schools and communities
are eager for a sustainable solution to the health crisis.
Heads up, young 'uns: Revolution Foods aims at nothing less than
reversing obesity trends and serving you all natural, hormone-free barbecued
chicken breast served over couscous with
steamed broccoli, and washed down with
hormone-free, low-fat milk. If we are all lucky, those kids will never recognize
a Cheeto again. This Revolution may not be televised, but it sure tastes
good.
