The Next Brand, Episode #7

One of the largest issues with our food system today is the lack of accounting for negative externalities. Big Food creates products that make people sick, and externalize that cost onto the US healthcare system (and thus the US taxpayer). Big Food harms the environment, and makes the government + populace pay for it. Big Food lobbies to influence ... See more

This math changes when you have a more decentralized food system. When farmers are growing food in the same community to which they sell, there’s a tighter feedback loop between farmer, consumer, environment and health. Some things work well at scale: others don’t. At this point, I’m fairly convinced the modern-day food system is completely broken ... See more

However, there’s another side to this. The pickup and delivery apps (Instacart and the like) are likely to outperform as they capture the high-margin consumer brand marketing dollars, but without the physical retail infrastructure. Building your own distribution via DTC marketing and relationships also gets more important, with Facebook and Shopify... See more