Investing in our Food System Through an Equity and Social Justice Lens
By: Aner Ben-Ami
Tags: Food Sovereignty, Impact Investing, Food Justice, Social Impact, Social Impact Investing

At Candide Group, we support families, foundations, athletes and influencers who want their money working for justice. The investments we support in turn seek to promote social justice and equity, and help re-define who wins and who loses in our economy. We do this across sectors and geographies, knowing many issues are deeply intersectional. And no issue is more intersectional than food.

When it comes to investing in companies that are working to fix our food systems, it took us quite a while to find exactly what we were looking for. By and large, much of the innovation and entrepreneurship in the food space was primarily focused on launching a new generation of better-for-us and better-for-the-planet food products. These were often natural, organic, healthy, non-GMO versions of the calorie-, sugar- and corn syrup-filled products that line the shelves of grocery stores across the US.

The blindspot we often found with these products was that by focusing just on better and cleaner ingredients, enterprises were often creating solutions for more affluent communities and failing to create more inclusive ones. We also found that these businesses were generally less likely to focus on re-imagining how food workers and how growers participate in our food systems. In short — they focused very narrowly on consumer health as a privilege, without addressing the collective harm often caused in the process of creating healthy food for just a few.

I’m excited to say that, judging by our recent investment activity, this blindspot is now being challenged in a major way. Over the last year, we have invested on behalf of our clients in companies that are shining examples of how our food industry can be redesigned to create wealth for historically disadvantaged (and often POC) workers/suppliers, as well as to serve healthy and nutritious food to lower income (often POC) communities. We’re excited to tell you about them:

Firebrand Artisans

Firebrand is a mission-based bakery that makes the finest wood fired breads and pastries, which it distributes wholesale through grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, cafes and more. Firebrand increasingly employs community members who are formerly incarcerated and/or homeless, creating a visionary and intentional organization that will include those employees in true governance and shared value creation.

Matt Kreutz started this Bay Area-cherished business back in 2008 (ironically, in the midst of the last economic depression!), and over the years, has attracted a marquee list of customers including Whole Foods, Four Seasons, Google, Blue Bottle Coffee and Ritz Carlton. Firebrand operates out of a small location in Oakland and is bursting at the seams as it tries to serve the long waitlist of customers it has. Later this year, Firebrand is launching its first packaged, sliced bread products, a business line that is expected to very meaningfully increase its sales volumes. Firebrand is now moving into a large new production facility in Alameda, CA in order to scale and meet the growing demand for its products.

Firebrand needed some growth capital to support this growth. In talking to Matt, it became clear that the investment would have to be unconventional in a couple of meaningful ways:

It would have to enable Firebrand to pursue its mission indefinitely, without the need or expectation that the company would have to be sold. It would have to ensure that workers meaningfully participate in the financial and social value created by the business.

At Candide, we believe that the ability to build businesses that don’t need to be ‘sold’ and that meaningfully share value with workers is absolutely core to building a more just and equitable society. And thanks to the flexibility of clients like the Libra Foundation, we are able to work outside of the box of conventional Private Equity or Venture Capital terms, and co-create structures that enable this. We worked with trusted partners from ICA Fund Good Jobs (our co-lead investors) and Purpose (an organization promoting the concept of steward-owned businesses that are ‘not for sale’) and came up with an investment structure where:

Investors get their payout through a profit-share model, so that there is no expectation for a sale of the business. Workers participate alongside investors in these profit distributions (and once investors receive their initial ‘preferred return’, the vast majority of profits will go to workers). The largest shareholder will be a Perpetual Purpose Trust, which will protect and ensure the company’s independence and mission focus. The trust will be overseen by a board made up of Matt, employees, and community leaders.

We are thrilled to see Firebrand grow to become a nationally recognized brand, and become a model for shared governance and broad-based economic participation.