food-justice
(7)
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.
Everytable
Everytable is a Los Angeles-based, mission-driven food company that makes fresh, nutritious meals affordable and accessible to everyone. Built around a central commissary kitchen and small-footprint stores, subscriptions, delivery and refrigerated SmartFridges, the company prices meals by neighborhood - keeping food affordable in communities often treated as food deserts. Founded in 2016 by former Wall Street trader Sam Polk and ex-private-equity executive David Foster, Everytable is a public benefit corporation pioneering a Social Equity Franchise Program to build generational wealth for entrepreneurs of color.
Soupergirl
Soupergirl is a Washington, DC-area food company making fresh, plant-based, certified-kosher soups, gazpachos, and salsas. Founded in 2008 by former stand-up comedian Sara Polon and her mother Marilyn, the mother-daughter business grew from a local home-delivery operation into a brand sold in 800+ retail locations including Costco, Whole Foods, Kroger, and Amazon Fresh. Soupergirl pairs radically simple, responsibly sourced recipes with an outspoken commitment to sustainability and farmworker rights - it was the first consumer packaged goods brand certified under the Fair Food Program.
Sam Polk
Sam Polk is the co-founder and CEO of Everytable, a Los Angeles social enterprise that sells fresh, scratch-made meals priced to what a neighborhood can afford. A former hedge fund trader who walked away from a multimillion-dollar Wall Street career, he chronicled that exit in the 2016 memoir 'For the Love of Money' and has since built Everytable into a food-justice company that has raised more than $100 million and distributed millions of affordable meals through grab-and-go stores, SmartFridges, and direct-to-consumer delivery.
Sara Polon
Sara Polon is the co-founder and CEO of Soupergirl, the Washington, DC plant-based soup company she launched in 2008 with her mother Marilyn (a.k.a. Soupermom). A former stand-up comedian who once led tours through the Middle East, she turned a reading of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma into a mission to fix a broken food system one bowl at a time. Soupergirl survived a no-deal turn on Shark Tank, raised a $2M Series A from sustainability investors, became the first brand to earn Fair Food Program certification, went plastic-neutral, and now sells in hundreds of retailers including Whole Foods, Costco and Kroger.
Fedele Bauccio
Fedele Bauccio is co-founder and CEO of Bon Appetit Management Company, the Redwood City onsite restaurant operator that runs more than 1,000 cafes for universities, corporations and museums in 33 states. He built the business in 1987 on a then-heretical pitch - hire trained chefs to cook from scratch for cafeteria diners - and turned it into the contract food industry's most outspoken laboratory for local sourcing, animal welfare and farmworker rights.