StartThis Idea #5: A Buy One, Give One Complete Meal Company
Soylent + TOMS shoes = opportunity?
A company that sells direct-to-consumer complete meal products, and donates an equal amount of product to hunger-related causes.
Categories: Consumer brands, Food, Social Enterprise
Skills needed: Marketing, e-commerce, logistics (for drop-shipping or direct manufacturing)
Offer: I will provide $5,000 in funding and my assistance raising angel/seed money for someone serious about starting this. Email me anytime to chat about this - derek@higherme.com - and please share if you know someone who might want to take this on!
The Background & The Pitch
There’s a massive opportunity for a social enterprise in a rapidly growing category right now…
Meal replacements and complete nutrition products have seen a surge of innovation in recent years. It’s now a $16+ billion market expected to grow at 6.5% a year. Companies like Soylent, Huel, and ViteRamen are riding this wave, and disrupting a category which had previously stagnated on the shelves with decade-old products like Ensure and Boost.
These new products offer powders, pre-mixed drinks, or just-add-water foods that are targeted towards busy young professionals, gamers, and health buffs alike. They offer a complete spectrum of nutrients to meet 100% of your needs, based on the latest nutrition science. They’ve brought exciting new flavours and mediums - like ramen or grain dishes - which have made them more approachable. Most importantly, they’ve figured out how to make direct-to-consumer brands that don’t have to fight it out for shelf space. It’s a new era for these products.
And this is where the opportunity comes in.
The USDA estimates that 13.7 million households were fighting food insecurity and hunger in the US in 2019. Add to that another 4.4 million households in Canada. And this problem certainly hasn’t gotten better in 2020…
Soup kitchens, food banks and shelters struggle to meet demand every year. Even when they can provide enough meals for people in need, costs and availability make it virtually impossible to consistently provide nutritionally balanced meals.
On the other hand, complete nutrition products are shelf stable, low cost, and in most cases, you can actually live off of only these products indefinitely.
Put this altogether with a buy one, give one model, and you can create a powerhouse feel-good, do-good brand with the potential to make a meaningful dent in hunger problems across the country and globe.
A product that is in high demand and can help sustainably solve world hunger at the same time? Prepare to be knighted. Or at least feel really good about coming to work every day.
Strategy Notes
You might be thinking that this would be very hard to get started. Not too many people have the capital to go buy a food manufacturing plant, R&D a product, and bring it to market. But not to worry, you don’t have to do all of this upfront.
While you’ll still need some startup capital, you should be able to find a private label or contract manufacturer to develop and make the product for you. A quick search of “contract protein powder manufacturer” yields several promising results.
Start with one product. Personally, I think there might be wider appeal with a real-food based product. Huel just launched a new “Hot & Savory” line which is a rice and quinoa based product that you just add boiling water to - that seems like it’s more accessible to a broad audience. That said, a powdered product is absolutely viable to start as well. Just keep it simple and try to capture as wide of an audience as you can without having to have too many product variations.
As well, you’ll have to really understand the economics of the product and find the best ones for a Buy One, Give One model. Consumers will likely pay a premium for this kind of mission-oriented product, but that won’t help you if it only has a thin profit margin.
Your advantage here is scale. You’ll be ordering or producing twice the amount of product. You can hit minimum order levels, take advantage of bulk buying power for raw goods, and hold more power with suppliers/manufacturers overall.
You’ll have to build a really strong brand to be successful. Soylent and Huel have clearly invested a lot in this, and have built communities around their brands as well. TOMS is now synonymous with the Buy One, Give One model they pioneered. There’s a high risk of imitation, and a powerful brand is the best way to ensure long-term success.
Launch big. If you start this on a just a small, local level, someone else will move in fast. This kind of product should kill it on Kickstarter. Vitaramen raised $250k in pre-orders with their first product, and it didn’t have the compelling social mission. Hire a PR firm and go gangbusters on that front. Don’t cap pre-orders - being overwhelmed by demand and having a huge backlog can help further the hype. Have community pages on your website from launch, so that other people can rally together and become your product ambassadors. Start to lineup social influencers - you might even get some who will promote your product for free because of the compelling mission.
Move fast, or someone else is going to capitalize on this.
Data & Research
Huel’s recent success with a $100 million revenue run rate, and $9M of sales in January 2020 alone.
USDA’s report on Food Security and Hunger in 2019.
Meal Replacement Market size and growth projections
Name Ideas
You could probably pick just about anything for this, as long as the name is memorable, stands out, and isn’t limiting. But just for fun: EFG - EatForGood.com (domain available), FYFW (Feed yourself, Feed the World), Forward Nutrition, Me.al (domain looks dormant), Feed.Life, Feed.Kitchen… also lots of .orgs available.
Thoughts to add? Leave a comment!