3 Principles—Mission, Partnerships and Distribution—Guide B Corp’s Growth Strategies
Richa Gupta was in a bind. A working mom and wife, she’d come home after a busy workday and couldn’t find quick shortcuts to whipping up a healthy meal for her family. Her options were “loaded with preservatives or loaded with stuff I couldn’t call food,” says Gupta. Hailing from India, she believed in home cooking as a way to eat good food, enjoy time with family, and support her community by choosing food produced by the local ecosystem.
Determined to find a better way to feed her young family, she created Good Food For Good, a company committed to making it easy for Canadians to eat healthy while helping someone in need. From the outset, Richa wanted to create a company that lived into impact and breathed her values, solving nutrition and hunger challenges at home and around the world. The three principles outlined below guided Richa as she designed an impact-minded business model and growth strategies.
To create change, tie impact to the business mission.
Richa embarked on countless conversations with busy moms and discovered they, like her, were concerned with the compromises they had to make for convenience and couldn’t find enough sugar-free, preservative-free shortcuts to prepare meals. Creating products made with organic, good-quality, fresh ingredients meant that Good Food For Good could contribute to reducing disease and feed healthy families.
But providing healthy, convenient food products for her customers wasn’t enough — Richa knew she wanted to make a deeper contribution to global hunger. Through previous experience as a marketing executive at a large food company, Richa was familiar with the inequities of global food distribution. She saw an opportunity through a Buy One, Feed One model — inspired by TOMS’ One for One shoe model — to involve the consumer in making an impact on global hunger through their daily purchases.
“We need to rethink how we grow and consume food that is not only good for us but also for the planet,” Richa says. “Research tells us it is possible for everyone in the world to have nutritious food and generate decent incomes for food producers, while supporting rural development and protecting the environment. We want to be part of this solution, and Buy One, Feed One is just the beginning.”
“It’s possible for everyone in the world to have nutritious food. … Buy One, Feed One is just the beginning.”
The Buy One, Feed One model places social impact at the heart of Good Food For Good’s values and operations, and enables Good Food For Good to create change through its product offering. As the business scales, so can its impact: Good Food For Good aims to provide 1 million meals to people in need by 2020, and is proud to have provided 225,000 meals through its partners to date. Its marketing strategy ensures consumers are connected to the “metric that matters,” informing them of how their purchases solve global hunger issues by tracking the number of meals provided to people in need around the world.
Certified B Corporations like Good Food For Good meet the highest standards of positive impact on society and the environment. Learn what it means to be B Corp certified.
Build thoughtful partnerships that support the impact model.
Richa knew that the right partnerships were integral to executing the Buy One, Feed One model in a way that reflect the social values of her company and consumer. Richa and her team took care in selecting their first partners, the Akshaya Patra Foundation in India, and have continued building local partnerships with the same critical selection process since founding the company. Richa personally visits potential partners to ensure the organization operates in a way that supports Good Food For Good’s social values and effectively solves local hunger issues. The company has added Food Banks Canada and Los Angeles Food Banks to its roster of partners, to ensure customers are contributing to solving hunger challenges in their own communities.
Partnerships also feature as part of the company’s marketing messaging, reminding consumers of the impact they make by choosing Good Food For Good products and letting them engage with their contributions through blog stories, social media, and other content marketing. Good Food For Good is proud of its accreditation as a Certified B Corporation, joining a community of impact-making companies, and leverages its affiliation in connecting with customers through stories and marketing messaging.
Focus on a strong distribution network to make maximum impact.
Because the Buy One, Feed One business model depends on sales to create impact, leveraging a strong distribution network is a key component to creating big impact.
Good Food For Good recently entered the U.S. market through Thrive Market, an online retailer that caters to the company’s target consumer. Richa also has secured distribution at major grocery retailers across Canada, making it easy for consumers to find products in the stores they frequent as part of their weekly routines.
Good Food For Good’s distribution and marketing strategies let customers know they’re contributing to solving hunger challenges while feeding their families healthy food.
Richa has used “local” as a theme to build awareness through her marketing, resulting in a strategy that has scaled as the company grows its distribution network. Good Food For Good relies on in-store sampling, product partnerships and community events to build awareness when entering new markets. Customer engagement provides consumers with another reminder of their ability to make impact with their family’s health and their contribution to global hunger issues. This also gives Good Food For Good Brand Ambassadors the opportunity to have conversations with consumers to stay abreast of ever-evolving tastes, preferences and needs.
What’s next for building impact?
Good Food For Good’s future is bright. Richa is inspired by the company’s growth and remains persistent in her goal to feed 1 million people by 2020. Her recent expansion into the U.S., leading with online retailers, has launched Good Food For Good onto a new growth path that will catalyze the company in meeting its goal. With the right strategies and team — and a healthy dose of perseverance — she knows Good Food For Good will make a difference.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
Good Food For Good Builds Impact into Every Aspect of Business Model was originally published in B the Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
