This one is personal for me. For all of us.
Not just a significant opportunity but the most broken, most important layer of our lives that is ripe for change.
I can think of little that will have a greater impact on our health, on our crippled health system, on our economy, on the way we live than rethinking the supply chain that is behind what we eat and drink.
This is a tough one to crack assuredly.
It’s not a tech platform solution, though tech will be part of it.
Not simply a cultural change, though that plays a major part.
We are short on education and research, heavy on governmental controls. On the production side this is a contaminated industrial system laboring under FDA rules and regulations that are cumbersome, expensive and compromised.
On the retail side, the number of outlets themselves with brand integrity has shrunk to a few.
They are by the financial rigors of the retail distribution model, driving back through the chain, all the way to the farmers, a razor thin business that by its very essence challenges innovation through the grinding challenges of keeping margin above the line.
This we all know.
There are many good people and companies, large and small within the system, acting with heartfelt intent trying to solve this problem. But the system itself, by its very financial structures makes it hard to serve a common end.
It is damn hard to make and get to market products that are healthy at a profit.
So how does this happen? How do we do this?
There are four questions worth exploring.
Is local the answer?
If you are affluent enough to live in NY, shop the green markets, frequent the huge variety of healthy, delicious, accountable restaurants and buy in outlets like Whole Foods, you can indeed eat and live healthy and support a local ecosystem.
Dense vertical centers of population, markets as distribution points for the artisans selling without storage or retail costs, does support back to the farm pieces of the puzzle in a microcosm.
If you can strip away the need to process for longer shelf life, distribution and retail systems that add crippling cost, it works.
This is a greenhouse experiment of course.
But I believe that unless you can find a way to break the stranglehold of global brand domination that impact how things are made and how much they cost based on the systems needs, we won’t evolve this system.
Where does technology play in to this?
The food industry from the producer side is a big brand play. No networks effects, just straightforward brand and distribution.
Tech is focused on logistics. On very cool and well-intentioned programs like Wholes Foods demanding accountability by the boat for fished goods.
But for the most part, technology today plays into the current system of making food remain unspoiled longer to work at retail in ever larger geographical area.
Got to wonder whether with innovation in a local paradigm this can change.
In a thread recently, the idea of using advances in indoor climate technology developed for the marijuana industry, buying old defunct stores and applying hydroponics to solve the local food chain surfaced as a possible answer.
Crazy?
I’m not so sure.
Does it have to be in store to work?
Direct to consumer for our daily food needs hasn’t found a behavioral connection.
We buy lots online. There are a number of delivery grocery services but for food, nothing beats shopping in the store with touch and taste and smell.
Many make the loop to their Green Market then back through Whole Foods. That’s food shopping to me and I personally like the touch and feel of it. Farmers in the market, broad array of staples in the stores.
Can this be changed or augmented online?
It has certainly for clothing through innovation in manufacturing, just great e-commerce and customer service as the core sales channel.
They said it couldn’t be done for jeans and underwear.
Can it be done for green beans, pickles and Kale?
How do we support innovation in the food business?
This is about funding outside the traditional model of VCs betting on a home run.
Is the only game the big win? For food, for a local solution I think we need a small business, artisan point of view.
We need an Etsy effect as well for perishable goods.
On one level this is working, though not widespread enough. Companies like Whole Foods, distributors as well do support local brands.
There is a built-in gotcha here.
Where is the capital for this when the endgame is not acquisition by a large brand?
It’s today serviced not by the banks well and not by the tech funding cycles.
This piece, I think, is where the nearest-term change can make the greatest impact.
This post is literally food for thought.
This is a collective challenge for all of us.
Artisans. Capital lenders. Tech and scientific entrepreneurs. Distribution and retail innovators big and small to give this attention, resources and priority.
It is timely and benefits all.
It may be as my friend Jeff Carter says, the only idea that everyone in this country can agree on that is good for all.
I am hopeful that he is right as we, collectively as a community of consumers and producers, are the only way to make this happen.
