CINCINNATI, May 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kroger Co.
(NYSE: KR) Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation ("Foundation") today
announced the second cohort of its Innovation Fund ("Fund"). From a
pool of more than 145 applicants, the Fund selected 10 startups to
receive a total of $2.5 million in
funding to launch innovative new consumer products made with
surplus food or food byproducts and technologies to advance the
upcycled food industry.
"Enabling early-stage innovation is critical to our mission to
create more resilient communities that are free of hunger and
waste," said Denise Osterhues,
president of The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation.
"The Innovation Fund is designed to support game-changing ideas for
building a more efficient and sustainable future food system for
people and our planet. The pandemic and its continued impacts are a
constant reminder that our country cannot afford to waste surplus
food any longer."
The Foundation – in collaboration with Village Capital, the
largest supporter of impact-driven, seed-stage startups in the
world; and the Fund's Advisory Committee – carefully reviewed and
selected 10 startups to be part of the second cohort.
Each of the 10 startups selected will receive $100,000 in upfront seed grant funding, totaling
an initial $1 million investment. As
part of the Fund's development program, the startups will
participate in a virtual workshop focused on investment readiness,
technical skill development and networking with a community of
investors and mentors in and around the food system. The innovators
will have exclusive access to the Foundation and Village Capital's
leaders and partners, as well as the option to apply for follow-on
funding.
After achieving program specific milestones, cohort members will
each be eligible for an additional $100,000 grant from the Fund to support their
growth. At the end of the six-month milestone development period,
two startups will be selected by their cohort peers for an
opportunity to receive an additional $250,000 in funding.
The strength of this cohort lies in its diversity. The
Foundation and Village Capital are relentlessly focused on
supporting founders with lived experience in the problems they're
solving. 80% of startups in the program have a female founder or
co-founder, 60% have a Black, Asian, and/or Latinx founder and 60%
are headquartered outside of California, Massachusetts and New York.
The second cohort features:
- Agua Bonita (Hanford, California) makes a ready-to-drink
aguas frescas from upcycled produce and served in culturally
inspired and recyclable cans.
- Grain4Grain (San Antonio,
Texas) uses patent pending technology to upcycle brewers
spent grain into a low-carb, high-protein and high-fiber flour.
- Husky Beverages (West Palm Beach,
Florida) is an innovative brand featuring the healthy
superfruit of coffee, debuting in early 2021 with a sparkling tea
made from the "husk" of organic, upcycled coffee fruit.
- Journey Foods (Austin, Texas)
is a portfolio intelligence company that solves food science and
supply chain inefficiencies with software to help companies direct
more surplus food to those who need it.
- Matriark Foods (Nyack, New
York) upcycles farm surplus and fresh-cut remnants into
healthy affordable products for institutional foodservice,
diverting food from landfills while feeding communities the healthy
food they deserve.
- NETZRO (Minneapolis,
Minnesota) is a food tech platform for recovering industrial
byproducts at scale that would otherwise be wasted into new
upcycled ingredients.
- reBLEND (Denver, Colorado) is
a line of frozen smoothie pops packed with fruits + veggies +
superfoods and a bold mission to tackle food waste by re-harvesting
produce that would typically be discarded.
- Renewal Mill (Oakland,
California) upcycles byproducts from food manufacturing into
superfood ingredients and premium, plant-based pantry staples.
- Take Two (Portland, Oregon) is
a plant-based food company that creates second chances by using
Rejuvenated Barley™, upcycled spent grain from beer production, to
craft our products, including a line of nutritious barley
milks.
- The Spare Food Co. (New York, New
York) is an upcycled food tech platform that creates foods
and drinks using overlooked and unused ingredients sourced from
growers and food processors.
"We are incredibly impressed by this new group of creative
thinkers and innovators tackling the upcycled food frontier," said
Sunny Reelhorn Parr, executive
director of The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation.
"The Foundation is excited to collaborate with Village Capital to
support the second cohort of innovators who are elevating food to
its highest use and disrupting the linear supply chain. At scale,
each of these solutions have the potential to create systems-level
change, improve inefficiencies and prevent food waste."
The Foundation welcomed its first Innovation Fund cohort in
2019, awarding a total of $1 million
to accelerate programs and solutions developed by startups Food
Forest, Imperfect Foods, mobius, Replate, Ripe Revival, Seal the
Seasons and Winnow.
"Recent data shows that an annual investment of $14 billion over the next ten years can reduce
food waste by 45 million tons each year," said Kelly Bryan, manager of sustainability practice
at Village Capital. "We are providing funding and wraparound
development and mentorship opportunities to provide these
entrepreneurs and future food industry leaders the very best start
possible for their businesses."
To learn more about The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste
Foundation, visit here.
About The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste
Foundation
The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste
Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity founded in 2018. The
Foundation was formed to support initiatives that create
communities free of hunger and waste.
About Kroger:
At The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), we are
dedicated to our Purpose: To Feed the Human Spirit®. We are nearly
half a million associates who serve over 11 million customers daily
through a seamless digital shopping experience and 2,761 retail
food stores under a variety of banner names, serving America
through food inspiration and uplift, and creating
#ZeroHungerZeroWaste communities by 2025. To learn more about us,
visit our newsroom and investor relations site.
About Village Capital:
Village Capital helps
entrepreneurs bring big ideas from vision to scale. Our mission is
to reinvent the system to back the entrepreneurs of the future. Our
vision is a future where business creates equity and long-term
prosperity. Since 2009, we have supported more than 1,000
early-stage entrepreneurs through our investment readiness
programs. Our affiliated fund, VilCap Investments, has invested in
more than 110 program graduates.
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SOURCE The Kroger Co.