By Brian Honigman
Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey have a lofty mission: they want to change the way America eats. To do this, they founded Revolution Foods, a company that encourages healthy eating habits by providing nutritious, kid-inspired meals to schools, stores, and -- most importantly -- families.
Since 2006, Revolution Foods has served over 90 million healthy, affordable meals to schools across the United States. They've hired more than a 1,000 employees to help deliver over one million meals to schools every week. They've already put a dent in the retail food marketplace. And they're just getting warmed up.
Humble Beginnings
Richmond and Tobey both began their careers as educators. Later, when the two met in business school, they discovered a shared passion for addressing the social issues plaguing low-income communities. Tobey was acutely aware that these communities suffered from a lack of access to healthy, high quality food, both in schools and in neighborhood retailers.
Soon, the pair began exploring ways to turn their passion into a business that was both scalable and beneficial to communities in need. Providing food to schools, Richmond discovered, is a $16 billion market with one very large opportunity for growth: healthy food that children actually like. She and Tobey then created a business plan that emphasized healthy food designed, tested, and consumed by children.
Revolution Foods co-founders Kirsten Saenz Tobey (left) and Kristin Groos Richmond have built a business that delivers over a million healthy meals to students across the U.S. (Photo courtesy of Revolution Foods)
What may sound like a simple concept would prove to be a groundbreaking innovation. By gathering feedback directly from the kids who would be eating their products, Richmond and Tobey created healthy, appetizing meals that appeal to kids' notoriously picky palates.
Revolution Foods' commitment to innovation isn't limited to the food they create. Richmond and Tobey have also re-imagined the school food distribution process. By working with a variety of food producers, they've replaced the familiar freezers full of ancient entrées with food with no hfcs or artificial colors, flavors or preservatives all of which is delivered at scale.
Learning from Lunch
The issue of poor childhood nutrition has been caused in part by a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers in certain parts of the country known as food deserts. These areas are often riddled with convenience stores offering lots of highly processed, sugary, and fatty foods and few fresh fruits and vegetables.
These food deserts have contributed to widespread childhood obesity, a condition that has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years in the U.S.Young people who are obese are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems, such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem, which can lower their chances for academic success.
Revolution Foods is addressing this issue head-on by offering healthier meal options (breakfast, lunch, snack and supper) in schools and stores across the country. The company currently serves one million healthy meals in schools every week as part of an ongoing mission to expose students to the benefits of healthier eating and have a retail line called Meal Kits, available at grocery stores across the US.
With this approach to a very competitive market, Revolution Foods twice became the second-fastest-growing inner-city company in both 2012 and 2013, according to a report from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.
Change Starts at Home
Improving school meals is only part of the equation. Over the past seven years, students and parents alike have voiced concerns about finding the same kind of healthy, high quality food outside of school, Tobey said.
"We saw kids going home having eaten great food at school, but their parents don't always have access to similar kinds of quality food," she said. "We wanted to bridge that gap both at school and at home."
Like their original school meal initiative, this ambitious plan again pitted Richmond and Tobey against an already crowded category. Lunchables -- owned by Kraft Food Group -- has been in the business of prepackaged lunches since 1988 and is one of Revolution Foods' main competitors in the retail market. Its sales account for an overwhelming 76 percent of this $1.35 billion product category.
Finding a foothold in this market wouldn't be easy. But true to form, Richmond and Tobey had a plan. Revolution Foods began offering meal kits in grocery stores across the country as an alternative to less healthy options. They come in four varieties: ready-to-eat pizza, turkey and cheddar, ham and cheddar and peanut butter and jelly – all alongside a 100% fruit stripe.
And by pricing their meal kits in line with their competitors and making them available at popular grocery retailers throughout the country, the company has ensured that these products are accessible and affordable to those who needed them most.
By improving the way America's children eat, both in school and at home, Revolution Foods hopes to affect positive change on society as a whole. And while their work began as a ripple in an ocean of unhealthy food choices, little by little, one meal at a time, that ripple might just become a wave.
Brian Honigman is a freelance writer, marketing consultant and speaker whose work has appeared on Mashable, Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post and elsewhere.
