child-nutrition
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PlantBaby
PlantBaby is a Hawaii-born, San Francisco-linked plant-based nutrition company founded by husband-and-wife team Alex and Lauren Abelin. Its flagship brand, Kiki Milk, is billed as the first organic, clean-label plant milk designed specifically for children - built from whole-food ingredients like oats, sprouted pumpkin and hemp seeds, and Aquamin marine calcium, with no gums, seed oils, refined sugars, or synthetic additives. Formulated with a pediatrician and nutritionist and triple-toxin tested for mold, heavy metals, and pesticides, PlantBaby sells direct-to-consumer and through retailers including Sprouts, Wegmans, Erewhon, Amazon, and Thrive Market. The company has raised roughly $7 million and reached a $20 million valuation on a mission to nourish, inform, and empower the next generation while backing regenerative agriculture.
Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit is the largest Black-owned K-12 school food management company in the United States. Founded in 2005 by former Wall Street trader and MIT graduate Rhys Powell, the company runs full-service cafeteria programs that cook made-from-scratch, culturally relevant meals for students in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania - treating good, diverse food for children as an act of social justice.
Rhys Powell
Rhys Powell is the founder and CEO of Red Rabbit, the country's premier Black-owned K-12 school food management company. A Bahamas-raised MIT computer-science graduate who traded equities on Wall Street, he walked away from finance in 2005 to fix what kids eat at school. Red Rabbit now serves roughly 40,000 chef-prepared, culturally relevant, made-from-scratch meals a day to about 20,000 students across some 150 schools in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania - treating the cafeteria as a tool for nutrition, dignity and social justice.
The Yay Company
The Yay Company (operating as Yay Lunch) is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based digital school-food marketplace that connects parents, K-12 schools, and local caterers to deliver healthier, kid-approved meals. Founded in 2018, it handles menus, ordering, payments, quality assurance, and delivery logistics, and has expanded beyond lunch into breakfast, snacks, and grab-and-go marketplaces across multiple U.S. metro markets.