Jasmine Crowe, Founder and CEO, GOODR 
Interviewer: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

Impact Initiative 2022 - Feed More. Waste Less.

Conferences

okay, we'll answer the next session, feeding the hungry rates quite high on the ladder of social impact especially. So if you also combine it with minimizing food waste, our next guest does just that Gooder. Think of it as and this is quite a stretch, but think of it as a food delivery app, but in reverse, see if you can uh make that mental exercise. The founder of Good is here with us today, Jasmine Crowe Houston and she will explain how the firm leverages its new technologies such as Blockchain to make a dent in food waste and help the food insecure. Gooder does all this while generating rigorous metrics on environmental and sustainable impact. Please welcome to the stage, Jasmine Crowe Houston, the founder and Ceo of her and her own Lindsay Stansbury. Hi Jasmine, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me so great to have you here. So I was hoping you could just give us a little bit of background on your experiences and what better is. Yeah. So you know, I started Gooder in 2017, truly organic start for me. I had a pop up restaurant series called Sunday Soul A. T. L. That I started when I moved here in 2013. It's crazy to think I'll be in, I guess an official atlantan next year. They say you have to be here for a decade. So I moved here and I just saw hundreds of people experiencing homelessness. It was really kind of driven to do something. So I started to pop up restaurant where I would bring out tables and chairs and linens and you know, cook meals for 3 to 500 people and I was doing that for almost four years. And a video of one of my restaurants went viral and I woke up one morning to just millions of views. It's really kind of scary going her own at the time on on facebook and one of the reoccurring questions that people kept on asking me was who donated the food And the truth was nobody. I was couponing. I was price matching. I always found the reason, you know, walmart doesn't price match anymore because I was just trying like, get the best prices that I could and when I saw that question, I was like, I need to get this food donated. And so I googled what happens to extra food at the end of the night from businesses and like how to get donations, I'm just doing. And I fall into this really deep rabbit hole around food ways and was blown away with how much perfectly good food goes to waste in this country while so many people go hungry and I think that is how good or got started. That's amazing. So you recently raised $8 million dollars in a series a funding and I read before that you were just bootstrapping basically. I think I was surprised that maybe other people in the room would be surprised that an organization like yours would raise like a startup. I'm just curious what made you decide to go and do that? And what was that experience like? Well, as I was doing the research, one of the very glaring things that I noticed is that businesses already are paying waste companies to throw perfectly good food away every single year. And so the trash bill never goes away. Um you know, there's not a facilities or operations person in any enterprise corporation that says like we're gonna just keep onto our trash and it's really something that is a big spin. And so I, I thought I am a diversion company. You know, we are gonna help these businesses keep perfectly good food out of landfill and that's how we started. And so I am like we're a social enterprise were a waste diversion company. They're already paying to throw it away. I, my background was in non profits, you know, feeding people, I was doing this for a long time and I wanted to get to work and I felt like as a nonprofit, I would probably still right now just be proving the case and trying to get donations and trying to kind of make it happen. But there's a real business case. I was bringing a technology solution. I'm bringing metrics that are real that customers can use in their CSR and sustainability reports. So there was, it was very, just to me it was the business, there's a business opportunity here. That's amazing. I want to open it up for questions if anybody has any. Um how are you using technology to help run your business exactly like you know, what we do is we were all food waste now. So we started with edible food only in 2019, we became a certified B corporation and really said that we were gonna stand equally for people in for planet. And as we were taking edible food, we were really leaving a lot of non edible food behind and it was still ending up in landfill. So what we do is we inventory everything it is that a business sells, we have both an app as well as a portal. Um it's a very easy user experience. They click on the items that they have, they request to pick up, we deploy a driver and real time they get that food picked up right away and then delivered to the nearest nonprofit that nonprofit signs for. Almost like they would a ups or Fedex package and their signature automatically generates a donation letter and our technology tracks everything that's been donated um what's not edible, it also attracts what's gone to compost what's gone to animal feed if we've turned this waste into renewable energy or gas. So it tracks all of that for them and really rolls it up into these compelling repo showing them every pound of food kept out of landfill. What that means for C. 02 emissions and it helps them drive down the narrative that so many companies have set for themselves. There's very few hotels, you know, large businesses who haven't made a claim that we are going to be more sustainable, we're gonna be carbon neutral, we're gonna cut our food waste in half, and what we're doing is helping them do that, that's amazing. Uh you've got a lot of sustainable leaders in the room. I'm curious how um how are you working with SGS to, you know, to help them achieve their goals while also cheating your goals? Yeah, I mean it's it's been a really good time for us. I will tell you when I started this company in 2017, no one was talking about food waste or sustainability. I I remember going and meeting with a really large corporation here in Atlanta and trying to get them to just test test out and they were like, oh no we'll never do this. You know, you guys aren't a nonprofit But I don't see how this could work. And this year they like emailed our general inbox, you know, there was like the gravel ng several years ago and it just shows you that there's like this tie that's changing. So we're working with large hotel change, like IHG hotel groups who has said, you know their journey to tomorrow promise is that they want to have no food waste by 2035 and so we've rolled out with them across all of their own locations and we're doing that. We also are rolling out nationwide. I'm with Dunkin donuts. Uh, so tons of donuts go to waste. We saw actually a Tiktok video um they had an employee throwing away all these donuts, We sent that to them. They came and met with us from boston and the rest is history. And so now we're rolling that out. So those are just some of the ideas of how we're working on the sustainability side, um, as it relates to social, we work with really great corporations. So everybody from the NBA to the Atlanta hawks to State Farm. And we are help tell them we think how we solve and address food insecurity in this country. We believe that there's a big difference between access to food and access to meals. And the traditional model is usually like I give you £10 of onions, I've given you 10 meals and we look at that is very counter active. And so when we produce our pop up grocery stores, um we are introducing the first mobile grocery store to the state of Georgia in january. We also have freestanding grocery stores that are free that sit inside of title one middle schools and high schools and elementary schools as well as inside of low income senior housing. And we're basically making this food available for free with our partners, uh, covering us that sponsorship costs and it's just been a real innovative way to guarantee people 7 to 10 days of food every time we touch them. That's amazing. That's the best job ever. It sounds like it. Any questions from the audience. Yes. She's coming with a microphone. Hi, I'm Gina J. Diva had a V. S. G. At Guardian life. So, so glad your organization exists because I think we've been talking about this for many, many years for smaller companies. I think sometimes there's this like risk hat that gets put on, right? So when it, even when it comes to food waste, so what are some of the, what are some of the pushback that you've heard from? Maybe some of the smaller companies and how have you overcome that? Yeah, I mean, even the larger and smaller companies, I think liability was always a big fear early on. And that was another reason why I set this up as a business. So what we look at this as a business to business transaction, um, just like a waste company provides a waist spin Gooder provides all good or branded packaging materials. So when we work with a customer, they package any food into our materials, the nonprofit's never know exactly where that food is coming from. We also have a very extensive vetting process with all of our non profit. So they have to sign a hold harmless agreement. They can't hold good or any of our partners liable. Um, they can't barter the food, They can't make someone work in exchange for resell it. So we have a pretty extensive policy there and then we also ensure it, I think that's the biggest thing. So we have a really large liability insurance policy that covers all of the food that we move. Um, and so that's really how we set out to do that. So we really wanted to take that factor away from them. And so we do have a waiver of segregation as well in our insurance policy which essentially says what's good or takes on the food. We own it. And so we make the assertion of like this food isn't good enough to be donated. It needs to be composted. That's our liability. And so that's how we operate. I'm curious how big is your team these days now full time? We're at about 40. Um we're headquartered here in Atlanta and then we have like part time contractors all over the country, you know, drivers. So yeah, you're not just in Atlanta these days. You have outlets that post, Yeah, we're about 34 cities. Atlanta. Denver Dallas are probably our top three markets, but the tri state area is starting to become a really big new york, New Jersey. So Adelphia and then even Delaware, so those are kind of some big expansion efforts in California and are there areas that you're not yet that you would like to be. Yeah, I mean we want to be everywhere. I think we're not really. Um I would say like in the Northwest, you know, I think that that's another goal for me like Seattle Portland, there's a lot of need there and then you know really like the midwest, like we're in Detroit, we're in Chicago, but but that's pretty much it. Like there's still a desire, I'm wanting to work backwards. I think it's good or I want to be able to say for good er you know, we've reduced hunger 15% in american is just feeding this many people and and so I'm looking at the states that have the most hunger and with that sometimes the states that have the most hunger don't have the most ways. And so we've seen that, you know because they don't have them, they're not really big enterprises there, there's not a lot of organizations. So you think Mississippi west Virginia Kentucky, lots of hunger in these in these markets, not a lot of big corporations that are based their headquarter their operating and so we don't see as much waste but there's still waste everywhere. You could think from the smallest restaurant to the college corporate campus. I mean it's just everywhere in between. There's food waste. Yeah, interesting. Any other questions I just want to make sure. Hi, I'm Susan. Excuse me? Susan Mcpherson Mcpherson strategies. I absolutely love what you're doing and you know, as we've talked with other speakers, you have a room full of influencers, important powerful people, how can we all the outflow? Thank you, I appreciate that. You know, really just letting people know that good or exist. I mean we have all seen food waste and so there's, there's not anything you go to the gala, you see 20 tables that are empty and there's all this salad's already on there. Like just telling people about us is a big opportunity letting people know that we have solved the biggest problem in it, which is the logistics. We look at hunger not as being an issue of scarcity if we are way £80 billion 42 million people will go to bed hungry, wake up tomorrow and not knowing when and where their next meal is coming from. And so we are really just trying to make more inroads with companies who against Susan have set these goals like that's the thing you're saying you're going to cut food waste in half by 2025 and you haven't gotten started, we are a real solution. We also are an MBE in a W B E certified business. Um, so those people that are also trying to hit those diversity supplier diversity marks, we really are like a one stop solution for a really big problem. So just referrals, you know, letting people know about us, um, reaching out to us if there's opportunities that we can work big and small, you know, we're available. We work with small one day festival that say, we want to say there's no food waste at this festival, at this conference all the way up to college campuses, like Emory University who we do all of their waste on their entire campus. We're helping Emery drive down to zero waste. And so they'll be the first college in the nation that has nothing that goes to waste. And when we do their animal bedding, their recycling, we will manage all of that for them. That's amazing. Um, what are some of the biggest challenges? You know, funding was definitely a big challenge. I think we all know we're in this serious like market correction phase. And so there were, I think when I went out to fundraise in 2021 I remember one of my investors, like you guys are doing so great. You know, the market so easy right now, you're gonna raise in two weeks and we didn't raise in two weeks. It really took us like almost nine months. So it was really, you know, the tough piece of that just where the market is right now. Um, I do think we're star starting to see a lot more customer adoption and customers coming to us. Uh, so that's a positive. Um, but you know, we, we needed to grow the team. We needed to do a lot of the fundraising was a challenge. I think getting customers to also give new innovations opportunities, especially because hunger to be honest with you has always been solved like with the food banks, it's always been like, we're gonna take a big check, our whole corporation is gonna come and we're gonna take a picture, we're gonna pack boxes and you know, we're fighting hunger and that's not how it needs to continue to be like if we want new solutions, we've got to try new ways and, and so I think getting past the old guard is a big opportunity. Do you find corporations don't want those photo opportunities? I find corporations are resistant to just change sometimes when you're checking the box, it's like, what's the point of changing it? So I think that's sometimes where some corporations, but, but I'm inspired because there are new, like sustainability leaders that are coming in and saying like I want to do different, this, this needs to be done differently and that's inspiring. Um, so I'm excited about the new people coming in and kind of shaking the table a little bit. Yeah, I think most of us have been in those situations, but the photo opportunities kind of wondering really accomplishing anything. Any other questions from the audience. Okay. Just making sure I didn't miss anyone. So what's next global domination? I would hope. Yeah. Um, we're opening a lot more of our free grocery stores. So you'll see, we are opening, I think two or three next week here in the Atlanta area. Fulton County as well as Cobb County schools. Um We're opening in Memphis Tennessee which is going to be really exciting for us. Tennessee is actually one of the top 10 hungry states. So it's exciting to see us to that our mobile grocery store which is really going to address global. I'm sorry rural hunger which is a big opportunity. Um A lot of people don't know that about 28% of this country lives in a food desert, meaning that they are more than 10 minutes away from being able to access fresh and healthy food. So they end up shopping at places like dollar tree, dollar general, the local guy gas station. And so we are bringing food directly to people again on the logistics space. You're gonna see a lot of the big rollouts that I've talked about. The Dunkin donuts, the I. H. G. Hotel groups bristol Myers Squibb So just seeing a lot of new companies that we're working with that are coming on board to say let's end this thing and you know let's do it. So we're really excited about that. That's amazing. I have to ask do you still cook used to cook for 300 people? Are you still hosting those kind of dinner? I'm not doing those dinners. I mean I cook for thanksgiving. I think my biggest problem is like trying to cook small because I'm so used to cooking for, like, a lot of people, so it's just me, my husband and my daughter and I just was like, I made way too much food, but how many pies? I made? Two different, That was a lot, Yes, but I froze everything, of course, so nothing will ever go to waste, and we'll just kind of go back in and revisit you find yourself bringing those um you know, the public facing a good er no food waste into your own home. Oh yeah, we compost and we're like, yeah, if you ever go to Gooders Office, like you're gonna be really for like, there's no trash cans in the office, like no one has a trash can by their desk, it's very much like nothing goes to waste in this office, and my team, I have like this really great team who's all about sustainability, like, we're a really young team, so lots of like, recent graduates from Georgia Tech and, you know, Spelman Morehouse, and people come in and they're really brought into this vision and we don't want it, I mean we're really like, we really walk it, like we're talking and so we offer free composting to all of our team members, so we can they can bring their compost from their house in, we compost it for them um Yeah, so if you ever come, you know, don't bring your track, I love because we're hearing it, yeah, bring that compost in, so yeah. Um it's good. I mean, I feel really, I feel good about where we're going, great about where we been for certain and I'm happy about where we are right now and I just think we still are really at the beginning of a long journey ahead to disrupt two big industries. Um, and that's waste and you know, the food, the food industry, like how it's traditionally been solved and we are, we're just excited about it. So please, you know those of you that are here, um, myself and Kristen ward from our team here at google. We're here today during lunch. So see us if there's ways that we can work together, um, we would love and be honored to partner. Amazing. Thank you so much. And this has been really interesting and inspiring.