255 | How to Grow a National Impact Business with Kirsten Saenz Toby
Our guest this week on the pod is Kirsten Saenz Toby. Kirsten is the Co-founder and Chief Impact Officer of Revolution Foods, a social enterprise dedicated to citywide wellness by making healthy food accessible to all.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
How to Grow a National Impact Business: Interview with Kirsten Saenz Toby, Co-Founder of Revolution Foods
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Kirsten Saenz Toby
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive in with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience, and is already transforming many times. Before I introduce our guests and our topic today, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to the show on, do a rating and review. It helps tremendously. Thanks so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Kirsten Saenz Toby, and our topic is How to Grow a National Impact Business. Kirsten is the co-founder and chief impact Officer of Revolution Foods, a social enterprise dedicated to city wide wellness by making healthy food accessible tall. Kirsten Welcome to the show. Thank you, Paul. It's great to be here. I've been following your work for a long time. And I actually listened to you on another pod and your PR person reached out I was so excited to introduce our community to the incredible work you're doing this is such an honor to have you here. Thank you, I've been listening to your pod as well. So it's, it's really an honor. So here's them were called to wear printers. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that helps resource yourself for this really important, but as we're going to talk about today, not always easy work.
Kirsten Saenz Toby 01:37
Yeah, well, I mean, for me, I think my I would not be able to do what I do every day, if it weren't for running. I am an avid running and I know you're a trail runner, also, I run on trails that are close to my house. And and you know, I can't say I do it every single day. But I do it as many times a week as my, as my schedule allows. And I certainly set up sort of make room in my schedule for at least one long run on the weekends and, and getting out, you know, a couple mornings during the week. And when I can't get out on a run in the morning, I do another form of exercise on a you know, indoor bike or whatever it might be, just to kind of clear my mind and, and break a sweat before I start my day when the pandemic hit, people started in the trail running community talked about running the crazy out now, I don't know, probably better ways we could phrase that. But oh my gosh, did it keep me and a whole bunch of other folks here in Albuquerque where I live, it was like we it was just, it became even more important. Like there was just so much going on in the world with uncertainty and things changing. Like every day, we didn't know what was going on. And it was like to have that sweat and have a physical practice, it became even more important. So I just share that to say I hear you so loud and clearly so loud. And clearly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't even say that. When I'm on my runs. As often, you know, it's I agree with you, it's about getting the crazy out sometimes, but it's also sometimes when the best ideas sort of gel in my head. You know, I will reflect on something related to work or related to my family or whatever it is, and I will often I mean, it's I carry my phone with me when I run not because I want to check it, but actually I sometimes will stop and write something down because I'm like, Oh my gosh, I just thought of something in a whole different way that I you know, it's almost like it jiggles the brain around enough to you know, read organize your thoughts in a new way. So it's, it's powerful in a lot of ways.
Paul Zelizer 03:39
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. So, Revolution Foods is like 16 years old, we're going to talk about all the great work that you've been doing and how you got there. But if somebody was trying to understand who is this Kiersten person and like, how did she get to like food as the place that you planted your flag for so many years now? What would they need to know about you to help understand what you're doing now?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 04:07
Well, I mean, my so my interest in food started at a pretty young age. And it really sort of started as a as a sort of a global interest in the food system. When I was in middle school, I think I heard I heard Francis Moore LaVey speak about, you know, just sort of the the global industrial food system and I had, you know, never thought of it in that way that there's that there, there really is sort of a global need for our, our world to think about how we're going to feed ourselves now and into the future. And then over over time, that sort of trends transformed into an interest in nutrition and, and food production more locally in the you know, within the US and within the state of California where I'm from and so, you know, I would say in my early sort of teens and 20s I just I thought a lot about food That's sort of like an important global issue. And then when I ended up in business school, in the early 2000s, I, you know, the other side of the of, you know, what we do at Revolution Foods has to do with education and education. And that was something that's sort of always been in my blood by my parents were both educators. You know, I grew up with sort of thinking that education was sort of the only, you know, to grow up with parents who are doctors, you sort of think about medicine as the as the first thing that you think about as a career path. So for me, I thought about education as the as sort of the place that I would likely work, just given my family being so heavily involved in education. And so when I ended up in business school, I was a little bit like a fish out of water, because I was sort of from the nonprofit sector, and I had this interest in nutrition, and education, which is not what most people come into business school with. But I met my co founder, Kristen, there in business school, and she was thinking about food and access and food security. And, and, you know, in particular kind of low income schools as a, as a, as a real sort of point of need in our, in our community. And so both of us coming together with very, you know, complementary and aligned kind of ideas and passions around wanting to help find a solution for, for kids in particularly in underserved communities to have better access to high quality, healthy food, that that brought us together during those couple of years of our MBA program. And we ended up spending most of our time for those couple of years, outside of class, you know, and inside of class, really like researching the different elements of what became the business plan for Revolution Foods.
Paul Zelizer 06:49
Wow, I have not thought of Francis Moore, the pays name in a really long time. And I've never told the story on the pod before. But in high school, I was much more an athlete, and that was where my time went. But as college, I started to have sort of a social impact awakening, and I became the treasurer of our college World Hunger Task Force. Right. And, and I remember reading all of her work diet for a small planet and other things. And gosh, just you brought me back when, when an impactful time that was that I haven't thought about in a while. And I'll put a link in the show notes. But just what an incredible body of work that kind of standing on the shoulders of a particular giant here impacted both of our journeys here. Yeah. So you went to business school, and he said, foods, this is the place, this is the lever I'm going to pull on and there's lots of great reasons to be thinking about changing our current food system. I think that's fair to say. So as you were, let's go back a little while, when you were thinking about launching Revolution Foods, like what were some of the top of mind, things that you wanted to address back then. And then we'll talk about, you know, 16 years, things have evolved. So what was top of mind 16 years ago, as you were getting started?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 08:18
Well, so for us, I think top of mind was we saw and we actually spent a lot of time, in those early days, we spent a lot of time visiting schools in our local community, we were at UC Berkeley, so we were, we would, you know, drive over to Oakland, and even to schools in Berkeley, and we would visit with the food service directors of schools, we'd visit with principals, we would sit in cafeterias and sit with kids and, and talk to them about, you know, kind of what was going on in their, in their cafeteria, and then their food world? And that, I think, what was what was striking to us were a couple of things. You know, number one, that there that food was not necessarily top of mind for a lot of school leaders at the time, you know, there was a particularly school leaders who were working in really challenged schools were you know, that they were under resourced. First, the kids were coming from underserved communities, their major gaps in literacy, and, you know, math achievement, and all, you know, the, the sort of all of the, all of the incredibly important things that that school leaders were focused on around educating kids, you know, food wasn't necessarily first second or third on their list. They were thinking about teacher performance and teacher quality and, you know, curriculum and, and all the things that a school leader should think about. But they saw food as an important part of the kids lives that they were serving. And, and so when we came in and said, Hey, we want to focus on food, the the message that we heard from several school leaders, and this was in particular in the early days, we were talking to a lot of charter school, a lot of charter school leaders and you know, they the these charter school education reform sort of leaders said to us, it would be amazing if somebody were focusing as much on food as we are focused on curriculum and education and closing the achievement gap. And so that kind of to us became our marching orders was, you know, like, let's take this, let's take the burden of thinking about food off of these school leaders, plates and help to make foods sort of an asset and something that they can provide to their kids along with all the other wonderful educational services that they're providing to these kids and families. And so it started out for us as really focused on creating a solution for these charter schools who were, you know, doing incredible work in terms of educating kids, but who, you know, really saw the saw the impact that food insecurity had on these kids lives, you know, they've now it's, it's called sort of social determinants of health, that these social determinants of health were impacting kids ability to learn, and access to high quality food was one of those social determinants. Now, at the same time, I should say that, you know, that the National School Lunch Program has, you know, been funded by the USDA and funded by the federal government since, you know, just after World War Two, so it's, you know, the National School Lunch Program has been providing funding for food for low income kids for a long time, you know, more than almost a century now. But the that funding, you know, the way that the funding has been sort of implemented by many school districts, historically has been, you know, to sort of purchase the lowest cost, which often equals the lowest quality food that that was available to them at the time. And so, you know, where we sort of saw this access gap for, you know, for kids in terms of not having access to high quality food, it really was an access gap for the school institutions themselves, that there just wasn't a system set up to enable charter schools, as we were focused on it, that in those early days, to enable charter schools to access any kind of high quality food because they didn't have the ability to produce it themselves, many big school districts, you know, we were, we were there and studying for our MBA in Berkeley. Well, Alice Waters was transforming the Berkeley public school, you know, school district food program. So school districts were actually thinking about this kind of ahead of some of the more forward thinking school districts were thinking about food ahead of their time, but we saw charter schools as kind of being left out of that whole equation, and, you know, really didn't have a solution for for providing a high quality, nutritious meal for their kids, despite the fact that they had access to funding to pay for the food
Paul Zelizer 12:36
and the meals. I think it's fair to say that, you know, leadership in the US, as you said, it's a government funded program. It wasn't that long ago that a prominent leader, who shall remain nameless was talking about will catch up as a vegetable. Right. And I would suggest to our listeners, that that was a very cost conscious, calculated political conversation, I might phrase it that way. Right. And one of the things that I heard you talking about in this other interview that I think would really be helpful to our listeners, is this whole idea of quality and cost, right like that. That was it. It's kind of like, catch up is a vegetable. But that was such a cost motivated, trying to frame it, trying to keep costs down. And that's, so often times when we think about food, and kids and communities that don't have access to quality foods, so often times cost is part of that conversation. So how are you thinking about quality and cost, then, and then a follow up? Question is, you've learned an incredible amount over these years. How are you thinking about quality and cost now?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 13:54
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we, when we first started, we, you know, I think coming from the the place where we were coming from, which was this, you know, business school environment where we were taking classes and innovation and design thinking and, you know, new ways, sort of not not taking, not taking the status quo for granted and thinking about new ways of doing things. We kind of set out when we, when we first came up with this idea, we set out to say, you know, let's let's not kind of take for granted anything that's that's been done before. And, you know, let's kind of start with a blank slate and learn from best practices that we can find, but, you know, but really sort of designed something from the ground up to see if we could, you know, disrupt the system to use maybe an overused term. And so, so we learned so the first thing we did was we learned, you know, we read the entire National School Lunch Program act, from top to bottom, we read all the regulations associated with it. We studied the sort of funding that was available because we knew that cost was such an important piece of the equation to figure out. But at the same time, we sort of learned from and looked at kind of the best practices in food quality. So we were at the, in our early days, we actually went to the local regional president of Whole Foods and Northern California, and we said, hey, what can you teach us about food quality and sourcing and supply chain? In, you know, as a, as a startup food business? And so we kind of took those two things, and we said, Well, how do we? How do we, you know, create something new, leveraging, you know, kind of the best of both of those, you know, potentially diametrically opposed things this like very, you know, regulatory driven, cost driven framework of the National School Lunch Program with the kind of aspirational, high quality food system that that whole foods represented at the time. And, and so we so we said, well, we have to set a, so what we learned from Whole Foods was that we had to set a baseline and we had to say, okay, there are certain ingredients that, you know, that we should not allow into our supply chain. And we have to kind of set that out as a as sort of a design parameter. And then we looked at the, at the National School Lunch Program, where we said, well, there's, there's a cost framework that we have to fit within, otherwise, our sort of vision of accessibility is, you know, it's kind of moot. And so we, and then we put the two together, and we said, Okay, we're gonna design within this cost framework, but we're gonna also design within the framework of a certain set of ingredient and nutrition standards. And it's kind of like you sometimes can cut come up with the best ideas when you actually put guardrails on your innovation process. And so, you know, with together with our, the chef that we hired, in those early days, you know, we we designed our meals, kind of from from a cost basis, but with a quality focus. And so, you know, from from that day, until today, we've always, you know, put those put those constraints on the design process, we don't sort of like, design our dream meal, and then say, how do we cost engineer this to fit within the National School Lunch Program, we actually designed to the parameters that are that are already there for affordability and the kind of regulatory requirements. And we and we, you know, put all of our creativity into that box, if that makes sense. So we constantly think about cost and cost is, you know, probably one of it, well, it is probably one of them, it's the most important factor, in many ways in our ability to continue to have our meals be accessible. But quality is kind of the reason why schools choose us. And so it's so it really is kind of a balance of those two and continues to this day to be you know, we're constantly balancing the two things, and it means that we have to prioritize some things over others. And that means, you know, we were not 100% Local and organically sourced from, you know, from backyard, backyard gardens, right, we we do have to find there are places where we need to find national suppliers of some of our ingredients, because we can get them at a better at a better cost so that we can continue to make our our meals accessible. There, you know, we certainly you know, are not, are not 100% organic, and we prioritize in many cases, we prioritize nutrition over something like an organic certification because we know that nutrition is sort of the cost of entry to being compliant with the the National School Lunch Program and delivering the impact that we want to have on students.
Paul Zelizer 18:36
A lovely segue said Kirsten, about design from a cost basis with the quality focus. And what really just like a light bulb went off, the way you language is so crisp, that so often times impact entrepreneurs, we can get into either ors, right? We're either going to provide we're going to provide that great quality, and we're really going to go out on that limb. But then we really struggle with the cost or our more traditional food system really pays attention to costs but isn't paying isn't doing a great job thinking about quality and you found a way. I think what I hear you saying he found a way to say we're going to attend to both of these. And it's not an either or we're going to try to bring attention to both of these and move the needle such that we're aware of the cost realities that school systems operate in. So we can bring as much quality and make quality food accessible in a system where it's oftentimes not in some of the students and families that we want to help. We're going to find a way to do both. Is that fair to say?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 19:44
Yes, absolutely. And, and what we have found is that you know, as we have grown that schools have also become and school systems have become more sophisticated in the way that they think about their school meal program. And, also and, you know, now, we'll see schools that will say, you know, in the earlier days, we would always, we would often see schools that would, you know, put out a request for proposals for a new, you know, food program. And they would essentially say, you know, here's a, here's a request for proposals submit to us your price per meal, and will choose based on whoever has the lowest cost, the lowest priced bitter in the process, what we now see schools doing is that they will say, you know, as a school, we have certain values and or as a school system, a school district, whatever, whatever kind of entity it might be, we have certain values when it comes to food and nutrition and food quality, we actually want to we want, you know, we only want to see proposals of folks, companies, providers who can meet certain criteria, when it comes to quality, we only want you know, we want fresh fruit and vegetables served with every meal, or we want to make sure that there's no high fructose corn syrup in the meals that we offer to our kids, or, you know, we want a provider who's going to help us to meet the, you know, some of the standards set by the the good food purchasing program, which is a set of guidelines that exist, and then they'll say, you know, here are those, those are the kind of quality parameters that we are that we are setting out for our kids. Now provide us with the cost to meet those, those parameters, and then they'll you know, pick a provider based on, you know, that set of kind of quality standards, not just on who can provide the lowest cost meal.
Paul Zelizer 21:27
And my guests, part of that shift might be cultural, we understand the health implications of human beings not having good quality food better than maybe we did 20 years ago, let's say, my caste that companies like Revolution Foods have been able to demonstrate that it's possible in the context of a school lunch program focus to bring more equality than what there had been previously. And, and I just want to say thank you for that shift. Again, we know the difference it makes, we have so much more research more coming out all the time. And I think one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on the show is just Revolution Foods is demonstrated, you can get a reasonable, not necessarily the absolute cheapest, but within a reasonable budget for school lunch program provide a much higher quality meal, then had previously been thought possible. And I just want to say thank you for doing that work for a lot of years now.
Kirsten Saenz Toby 22:35
Oh, well, thank you. And I have to say that, you know, we haven't been the only ones doing this. They're No, no,
Paul Zelizer 22:40
no, but you've done a lot.
Kirsten Saenz Toby 22:44
But I do I do want to give credit to there have been some incredible school food service directors who have, you know, put this topic at the top of, you know, their districts agendas and made their districts kind of leaders in the space, as well. So it's, you know, it's, it's been interesting to kind of be in a field of of like minded folks who are working along kind of working on similar against similar goals. And, you know, it's, it's really, it's always really fun to kind of meet up with those folks and share best practices and learn from each other and say, Hey, have you talked to this supplier, that supplier and you know, kind of, because there are food service directors out there, you know, I think, when we were first starting the the sort of, you know, food service directors kind of got a bad rap. And you had like Jamie Oliver, you know, with his shows where he was sort of humiliating service directors and pointing at them as sort of the problem of the school lunch kind of situation. And, and, you know, our experience has been that you have a lot of really amazing hard working people who really want the best for their kids, and just oftentimes haven't had the sort of resources or the training or the, you know, are the kind of resources at their disposal to be able to, to pull together, you know, what they know, is really great for their kids. And so there have been some places where it's been done really well in other places where we see people working really hard to try to get there.
Paul Zelizer 24:08
Absolutely. You made a comment as we have grown dot, dot dot, and our whole episode title is how to grow a national impact. So let's do this. I want to take a break and hear from our sponsor. But when we come back, I want to hear where revolution food is now, how many employees scale you're working at? I think our audience will be really excited. And also, how did you get there and what can other impact entrepreneurs learn from your journey and what kind of wisdom you have. Before we do that a quick word from our sponsor. I'm excited to announce that we have a new sponsor for the pot, Saybrook University. Saybrook University prepares students to challenge conventional thinking in business social structures, mental and physical health and more. They have innovative online and hybrid programs to help students become part of a global community. They offer certificate, Master and doctoral programs, and they're guided by renowned faculty with years of experience in their respective fields. Saybrook is committed to helping students achieve their full potential, and their sacred community is deeply rooted in this humanistic tradition. CEPR graduates are transforming healthcare, providing organizational leadership, developing sustainable practices, and caring for populations and be open to business and non business majors like, say bricks. 100% online Master of Business Administration Program is designed for students who are passionate about conducting business operations guided by the principles of sustainable social impact. Their hybrid online Doctor of Business Administration Program is designed for experienced professionals who are interested in exploring and applying the most recent research and theories regarding organizational and social systems change. You can learn more@saybrook.edu There's a link in the show notes. And thank you to Saybrook University for sponsoring this pot. So Kiersten in the second part of the show, we like to joke about putting on our entrepreneur glasses. So if you 16 years later, you put on your entrepreneur glasses, and no, it's not been a linear journey. But like right here, right now, if you took a snapshot of what Revolution Foods looks like, now give our audience some sense of what would you see?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 26:40
Yeah, so we are currently operating out of we have six culinary centers around the country where we're producing and delivering high quality fresh meals daily to School programs within the geographic area around each. So we have two in California, northern and southern California, one in Colorado, and three on the East Coast in Boston, New Jersey, and DC. Each of those is serving kind of a couple of our radius around around the culinary center. And we have about 1000 employees across all of those, you know, spread across those as well as our home office here in Oakland, California. And we produce and deliver anywhere between 1,000,001 point 5 million meals every week, out of those out of those culinary centers, and we delivered to around probably 800 school sites across those, those different regions.
Paul Zelizer 27:42
A million a million half meals a week. I hear you correctly. That's correct. Yeah. And and number of different seats, six different centers, right. So you, you really have grown quite a bit from when you started with a couple of charter schools there in the greater Northern California area. So what have you personally learned and also your leadership team like to go from like you and your business partner, and maybe a chef, or you know, a couple other people to 1000 employees, multiple states, a million to a million and a half meals per week? Like what would you say, as a founder? What did you need to learn to pay attention to to go from a relatively small local business to one that's national at scale?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 28:34
Yeah, well, so we, I would say, when we first started, and we actually had national scale, kind of as a part of our vision, we wanted to when we even when we started our first little pilot program, where we were, you know, delivering meals to one charter school, out of the out of, you know, insulated containers that we were transporting in the back of my Honda Civic, we, we knew that what we wanted to do was to create a scalable model. And, you know, it took us a bit of time to figure out exactly what that model would look like, but, but we but looking at, you know, as we talked about earlier, the the sort of cost per meal and making sure that the economics at a unit level worked was, was really important. And then, you know, for securing the funding to scale a business like ours was was another really critical component. And then I would say the, the, the third thing was, you know, has been building the right team at the right time, around around the around us and then And then fourth, just really having alignment around the vision and the strategy of how we're going to how we're going to grow. So, you know, I think just to speak to each of those a bit. So funding and fundraising, you know, has has been a is for I think any business, a critical component for a business that's, you know, capital intensive like ours, because we are, you know, building large commercial kitchens. There's a lot of equipment involved there. Are trucks that we need to deliver the food, there's large team that needs to produce the food, you know, fundraising and finding funders who are aligned with our mission, and our vision has been a really important and critical piece of the growth equation. We've had, you know, just the, I think, really good fortune of having investors from the early days and, you know, all the way into our current day, who believe really strongly in the mission of what we're trying to do. And they they see, you know, the, the alignment of the mission and the business, kind of the business strategy. And they see that the mission actually drives the growth of the business. So, you know, I think people sometimes will, will say, Well, don't investors kind of want you to, as you as we were saying earlier, sort of drive cost down and, and, you know, kind of compromise quality for cost. Our investors and board members over the years have have all had a real, I think, nuanced and, and passionate understanding of the fact that, you know, schools and our school partners, they only want to work with us if we are true to our mission. And so there's a, there's a real, a very tight alignment between our mission, you know, staying true to our mission and our values, and our ability to grow into new, you know, new schools, new geographies, new cities, etc. So that's the funding piece, I would say, the team, you know, building, the team, and the right team at the right time, I think I said is, has been instrumental because, you know, in our early days, when we were, you know, just a few people working in a very small, small kitchen, we weren't able to attract sort of, you know, big executives for food companies to come and join our team, nor could we afford to pay them at that at the level that they would be expected that they would be expecting. So, you know, finding the right the right folks with kind of the combination of the connection to the mission, but also, you know, a skill set that could help us to get from the stage that we were, that we were at, to the sort of whatever that next stage of growth has been, you know, getting the right team, you know, folks who know, more than we do about whatever that functional area is, that we're hiring them into, has been huge. And, you know, I would say it's sort of structuring the team around the around the vision of national growth, you know, when we were when we were in the stage of kind of launching a new culinary center in a new geography, you know, every year or two, we had to find a team of folks who wanted to get out there and travel. And, you know, we hired people who had started, you know, who had built new restaurants and that sort of thing. And that sort of mindset around, you know, launching a launching a new culinary center was very similar to opening a new restaurant or opening a new grocery store. So, you know, finding people who had those kinds of backgrounds and skill sets were critically important, because those weren't skills that we had, or experiences that we had ourselves. And then I would say, just, you know, alignment around the vision, and the strategy has been important, because, you know, there are there are people, you know, not every job is the right fit for every person. Right. And so, we've always been very clear, and, you know, especially through, you know, some of the most intense periods of growth, that, you know, growth is a part of our strategy and has historically been, you know, we've we've been focused on making an impact at a national scale. And so finding people who want to be a part of that journey, and, you know, people who are, you know, who connect to that, and to the challenges associated with that, that we're not always going to know, the answers to every question and, you know, finding people that kind of have that, you know, the entrepreneurial spirit to join and to help create something new, that that is aligned with that vision, and, and to kind of help us to march along that strategic path. You know, having having clarity around what that what that vision and what the strategy and how the mission was going to kind of fuel us along has been, you know, a, I would say an instrumental part of being able to sort of attract the right teams at the right time along the way.
Paul Zelizer 34:14
You said our mission drives the growth of our business. I love that. And one of the things I was thinking about as you were sharing that is how easy it is to get caught up into the day to day you were talking about it in context of pricing, it would be easy. If you were less connected to your vision or mission, I can imagine there'll be certain school districts that could get very price conscious, even to the point that it would just not be a fit anymore, right? We'd love to work with you. But like, here's our number and you're like, I can't do that number. Right. And I imagine there's some, you know, at times there might be some tension because certainly here in the US, we don't always give our are school districts all the funding that I wish we would? I can imagine that there's been times where there's been some friction between what the mission is and what some of the opportunities you were exploring, people might have hoped you would come into. Is that fair to say that sometimes there's been some tension there?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 35:20
You know, they're I guess they're probably has, we've also been clear that, you know, our program may not be for everyone, you know, there there are, I think there, yeah. How can you
Paul Zelizer 35:31
help our impact founders get that say that again? And what would you say to somebody who is struggling with that, like, they're newer and is like, Oh, I really want to, like, grow and help more people. But if I were to do so it, like, literally wouldn't be sustainable? Like, how can we help our listeners taken what you just said there?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 35:52
So I think one of the ways that we think about it, and we certainly haven't always gotten this, right, so, but one of the ways that we think about it, and communicate with our team, too, is, you know, we say no margin, no margin, no mission. And, you know, what we mean by that is, in order for us to be to be able to continue to deliver on our mission, we actually have to, you know, have a sustainable economic model. And so, you know, while we might want to, and, you know, we didn't structure ourselves as a nonprofit, for that reason. And we said, we, you know, we believe that there is a real viable business model here, that's a for profit business model that delivers on a social mission. And so it's, you know, and not everybody, not everybody wants to be on that bus, right. So some people want to go out and work for a nonprofit and, you know, deliver an impact at scale, that's funded by philanthropy. And that's, you know, one approach, but, you know, our approach has been, you know, we, we need to have a model that's economically sustainable, and that's profitable. And that will attract investors to, you know, invest in the business, so that we can grow, and we can scale and we can continue to deliver an impact. And so, you know, that, you know, in some places, that does have to be a filter, or, you know, we can't afford to serve customers who can't afford to pay the price that the, the meals cost, right. And so that's so you know, that that's a bit of a two way street, because we need to manage our costs to be as accessible as possible. But if there are, you know, places that don't, that don't prioritize, or don't place the same value on some of the quality standards that we adhere to, or, you know, whatever it might be, you know, we might, we can't serve everybody. Yeah.
Paul Zelizer 37:40
Thank you so much for sharing that Kiersten listeners, I can't emphasize enough as a founder, as somebody who wants to leverage the power of business for good. If you can't pay your bills, or you're biting your fingernails about how you're going to put food in your own refrigerator to feed your family. Over and over and over again, you're going to wear out, you're gonna not do your best work, you're gonna have less impact. And this isn't about go like, get a private jet plane. That's not who listen to this podcast. It's about what? How can you relate to pricing in such a way that it's sustainable? And you can do this work, Kiersten and team, it's 16 years now. And you know, more excitement. I want to ask you next, Kiersten, where are you going, but listen to the sustainability and how they've really been clear about that. From early on. I would say this is one of the biggest reasons for failure in the impact space is where we get fuzzy, we get unclear about the connection between our own sustainability to serve the communities we want to serve, and making a reasonable degree of profits at the end of the day. The people who work for the company can have a good quality of life without a lot of stress about a roof over the head and food in the refrigerator. So we can go on to help more people the next day. So thank you for that Kiersten. So my sense of you all is your very vision and you know, impact oriented. So here you are 1000 employees, these six different culinary centers, but I don't get the sense that you're the kind of folks are just going to put your feet up on the coffee table and say, Okay, now we're done. Like what comes next for a Revolution Foods?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 39:27
Yeah, it's a great question. So we mean, we are in a bit of a inflection point as I think many people are kind of post coming out of COVID. And, you know, COVID was a very strange time for us as it was for everybody in their own way. But, you know, with schools shut down, we completely had to change the way that we operated and delivered meals to, to our partners and but what that also did was helped us to think a bit differently about you know, about, you know, innovation and I'm working in different ways with other kinds of community programs outside of schools, including, you know, food insecure seniors and food insecure adults. And, and, you know, also just thinking about how do we access, you know, how do we provide food insecure kids with access to high quality foods, you know, outside of the school day, because the interesting thing was during the pandemic that USDA actually provided more flexibility, obviously, for many reasons to, to schools and school programs to deliver meals to kids in their homes, and to, you know, to actually not require kids to be on campus at school to receive their meals. So we're so I think, as we look forward, we're looking, you know, both at making sure, as we come out of this, you know, this challenging time for the country and the world, through the pandemic, we're making sure that the company is healthy and sustainable and profitable as, as we just talked about. So we do have a focus on on making sure that we are kind of covering covering the costs of what it takes to, to operate. So that's, that's just sort of a an internal kind of organizational health focus that we have. But But following that, you know, once as the organization is, you know, as we make sure that we're healthy, we are, you know, really doubling down on, you know, I would say our core of making sure that our K through 12 school meal programs are, are, you know, are available in as many different ways as, as we can possibly make them available. So, you know, that's both kind of leveraging some of the, some of what we learned through COVID, which is, you know, trying to make sure that there are ways that kids can access our meals outside of schools. But also, and I think, you know, really importantly, making sure that our meals can be accessible to school districts who may not want to take on our whole meal program, but they want to, you know, purchase just a few products from us. So we call that kind of a foodservice, you know foodservice style of, of packaging our products, and making them accessible to schools that, you know, that have their own their own programs in place already. And then, you know, what we're looking at, as I mentioned, kind of community and senior food insecurity and adult food insecurity and looking at what kinds of because, you know, our sort of core competency really is around kind of figuring out how to how to tap into different kind of government funded programs to provide meals to underserved or low income folks, you know, we're looking at where those programs applied to adults and seniors and how we might be able to, to, you know, use our operating capabilities to make our meals accessible through into deaf folks in not just in the school channel, but, but in the adult community. Sure,
Paul Zelizer 42:55
and like, sounds like pre COVID The vast majority, if not all of your income, your revenue is coming from K through 12 schools, and then with this pivot, like, what would you say now? Like, do you have any sense of how much proportionately of your food now would go to food insecure seniors or adults as opposed to K through 12 population.
Kirsten Saenz Toby 43:17
So, I mean, currently, we're actually back to very close to 100% Well, it's been probably 85 to 90% of our, of our meals are going to K through 12 schools. During COVID It was actually 50% and 50% of our meals, were going to, to food insecure adults and seniors really through kind of emergency funded, you know, food security programs that that kind of, you know, happened during COVID. And then that funding, you know, went away or got redirected at the end of COVID as schools started opening up again. So we've kind of refocused our attention on the on the schools channel, but we sort of see that there still are, you know, these food insecure adults out there who are struggling and you know, may not have full visibility to what programs they have access to like Medicare and Medicaid actually in many states can be those dollars can be used for to buy food. And so states and health providers and folks in the health care system are trying to you know, work through and this is a sort of an emergent an emerging area but work through you know, how to how to use those funding dollars to use food as kind of a preventive medicine for you know, folks with heart disease or diabetes or, or other things that you know, other conditions that really can be very, you know, treatable through good nutrition and not just through medicine.
Paul Zelizer 44:44
Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food so you're stepping into that world and that's that's so good to hear. So, Kiersten when we get towards the end of an episode, which unfortunately we're getting to that point, I like to help people think about a call to action if I'm a listener, and I am like, this makes a lot of sense. And I want more information. When I asked you about this, you gave two suggestions. One is tell people about Revolution Foods. And I want to hear like, Where would I go? If I'm a listener who wants to know more. And the second one you said is, please talk to your local representatives about how important it is to get quality food, especially into schools. But in some of these other systems you're talking about and you had some resources for our listeners for that as well. Can you tell us about both of those?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 45:32
Sure. So so first of all, if you're interested in learning more about Revolution Foods, our website revolution foods.com is the place to start and there's a contact form in there to reach out if you want to get more information. And then I would say just on the on the more sort of global level, it's it's just so important that our elected officials understand how important school meals are to folks in our communities. You know, so there are, I would say, reach out to your, your local elected officials to tell them that you care about school meals, and about the quality of food in school meals, Share Our Strength, and No Kid Hungry have a great set of resources on you know, form letters that you can write to your you can present it to your congressional representatives, there are often you know, sort of active things going on that we're asking Congress for and that, that advocates are asking Congress for right now, there's just a real need to extend some of the pandemic era waivers for schools and to make some of those programs permanent. And so there's so No Kid Hungry is is you know, advocating for, and provides tools to advocate to your congressional and Senate representatives to to extend those, that waiver authority, which is really important, depending on the state you're in, there are also states that are that are kind of on the forefront of implementing universal meal programs. So California and Maine are the only two states currently that in the last year that that said, we're going to make school meals free for everyone. And you know, some people might say, oh, that's, you know, your Why do you need to provide free meals for rich kids, I think that the the important thing in a universal free meal program is that it completely eliminates the stigma. For kids who aren't picking up a lunch at school, it doesn't, it means that, you know, the kids who are being able lunch aren't necessarily the kids who can't afford it, but it's, but it's, you know, available to everyone. So states, like Colorado are kind of in the debating process of putting in place a universal Meals Program. And, you know, we just, we think that that's a fantastic idea for and, you know, we would love for the federal government to put in place for the universal meals program across the board. But you know, right now, it looks like it's happening on a state by state basis. And we'll
Paul Zelizer 47:49
put a link to both the Revolution Foods website, and the No Kid Hungry site. So listeners, you can just look in the show notes, and you'll see those there. So here's the and I would love to hang out with you all day, I love what you're doing. Thank you again, for this super important work. And I know you're really busy as our listeners, as we start to wind down. If there was something you were hoping we were going to talk about on this topic that we haven't yet touched on, or there's some additional wisdom you want to leave our impact founders with as we start to say, Goodbye. What would that be?
Kirsten Saenz Toby 48:26
Well, I just think, I mean, one of the things that I didn't really talk about was just sort of the magnitude of the food insecurity problem in our country. So, you know, there are 42 million Americans, which is one and eight who are food insecure. And think that that includes 13 million kids, so one in six kids is food insecure. So, you know, I just I think it's important for us all to recognize, you know, just on this, in this specific topic area, that food insecurity is in front of every single one of us, you know, there probably are people in our own lives who are experiencing food insecurity. And so it's a, it's just a pervasive challenge in our country. And I and I think the more awareness we have around it, the more kind of empathy we can have in in, you know, supporting all the different solutions to addressing it. So I think that's and then from a just more general kind of entrepreneurial perspective, I think, you know, for folks who are out there working on working on new ideas or building their companies to scale. I just think, you know, as you said in the beginning, this sort of the element of of self care and you know, making sure that kind of personal sustainability is connected to your company's sustainability as well as your, you know, sort of financial sustainability that all of those things are so interconnected and, and not to lose sight of any one of those as you're building and scaling enterprise.
Paul Zelizer 49:53
Here's the thank you so much for being on the show today and for all your years doing this incredibly important work.
Kirsten Saenz Toby 49:59
Thank you, Paul. It's great to talk to you.
Paul Zelizer 50:03
So that's all the time we have for today's show. Before we go, I just want to remind you, we love, love, love listener suggested topics and guests. Matter of fact, I just recorded one yesterday from some listener had suggested and it was an incredible interview. So if you have an idea, please go to our website, or what are printers.com Go to our contact page, you'll see the three simple guidelines, what we're looking for, we try to be really clear. If you look at that and say, Yes, this fit, please send your ideas on it. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intents. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're