How good business can make America’s cities healthier
Kirsten Saenz Tobey and Kristin Groos Richmond are Citi clients of mine and the co-founders of Revolution Foods, a company that is tackling the challenge of the more than 20 million Americans who lack access to healthy food. I sat down with them recently to talk about the growth of their business and the importance of building a team from within the cities they serve.
Q: So tell us, how did you two meet? What’s the story behind Revolution Foods?
Kristin Groos Richmond: We met on the first day of business school and within our first year we started crafting the business plan for Revolution Foods. Both of us had a passion for food and nutrition, so we saw what an opportunity there was, both from an impact standpoint and from a business-building standpoint.
Kirsten Saenz Tobey: We started seven-and-a-half years ago with very humble roots as most entrepreneurs do. Revolution Foods began with three schools, preparing about 500 meals a day out of a 500-square-foot kitchen in Oakland, California. We hand-produced every meal — we made our homemade turkey sandwiches, rolled our quesadillas, packed our fruit — and delivered each one to schools every day in one truck that we leased.
Q: I met you both as your business really began to expand, first to more schools and then to new product lines available at grocery stores. What has that been like?
Kirsten Saenz Tobey: From that original kitchen, we have now expanded to seven culinary centers around the country, and we are now serving over one million meals a week. It’s a tremendous undertaking and a very complex operational business. It’s also one that has allowed us to create more than 1,000 jobs in urban communities, which is one of the things that we treasure most about Revolution Foods.
Kristin Groos Richmond: We knew early on that we wanted to have a large-scale impact and to provide as many families in America as possible access to high-quality food. That came first in the form of expanding to new geographic areas: serving more schools and more families through our school meals program. But very quickly, we also realized that teachers, parents and students wanted to see our food on store shelves, so we recently launched our meal kits, which are now available in stores nationwide.
Q: Kirsten, you mentioned the pride you feel in creating jobs for your teammates. Tell us more about that.
Kirsten Saenz Tobey: When we do town halls with our team, we always say we’ve done almost every job in the company and really respect the folks who are working at Revolution Foods in cities across the country. It feels good to have grown up with the idea, to have created it step-by-step, and most importantly to have built an incredible team to help us scale. One of the things we’re most proud of is watching our teammates grow and turn jobs into careers.
Kristin Groos Richmond: People come in for an interview because they’re looking for a job, but then they join the company because they believe in what we’re doing. They stay because they have opportunities to grow and to contribute. It’s really the ability for someone to come in at an entry level and earn a sustainable income while gaining an ownership stake in the company, and then be managing a team within four to five years with hard work, solid coaching and great performance.
Q: So how does all of this investment you make in your team tie back to your goal of providing access to high quality food to the communities you serve?
Kristin Groos Richmond: Both of us are passionately focused on making sure that we recruit a world-class team in every community that we’re serving. That often includes the parents and even grandparents of the kids who are in our schools and increasingly also in the urban neighborhoods where our products are sold in stores.
Kirsten Saenz Tobey: When you hire directly from the communities you serve, you’re able to employ the most invested and passionate people about the food that they’re serving every day. We believe that we are having an impact on the health of the economies in America’s cities by creating good jobs for people that lead to great careers.
Q: So why do you think a bank like Citi has decided to work with a company like Revolution Foods?
Kirsten Saenz Tobey: There are incredible details involved in planning our culinary centers, buying and financing that equipment, making sure that we have the right setup operationally, the right ordering process with our schools and the support needed for our school relationships. There are also tremendous challenges and opportunities in expanding to a new business model and product line and entering distribution relationships with national retailers. It was clear from the start that Citi wanted to help us to accomplish our vision – through more than just financing but also support and guidance – and that our vision is one that is very aligned with Citi’s mission of enabling progress.
Kristin Groos Richmond: Working with Citi has put fuel in the tank for us and our team. It’s given us an absolute turbo boost in terms of how many jobs we can create, how many students and moms and dads and families we can reach, and how many communities we can be in across the country. Like us, I think, Citi believes that by building a strong business, we can continue to drive change in cities across America.
For more stories on how Citi is helping unlock opportunities for progress makers around the world, check out citi.com/progress and #ProgressMakers.
This content is developed and paid for by Citi.
