Founder Spotlight: Amy Keller (Climate Candy)
Meet Amy Keller:
Climate Candy rescues perfectly imperfect fruits and vegetables from farms and gives them new life as FAVES fruit snacks. FAVES fruit snacks are stealth nutrition by providing 1 serving of fruits and vegetables in every 1 oz serving. We help the food industry and planet by reducing food waste and stopping produce and plastic from going to landfills. We are building a circular future from farm to market. The 1M pieces of produce we rescue per year have saved over 1M sq ft of crops and 50M liters of water.
Location:
Hermosa Beach, California, USA
When did you launch the business?
2018
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Startup Stage:
Seed
What led you to where you are today?
I am a 7-time ironman and climate activist and knew there had to be a way to combine my passion for environmental issues and health, by creating an alternative to traditional sweet treats. I come from sugar, my family is Spangler Candy Company, the world's largest lollipop maker, we make 2 billion DumDum lollipops along with other nostalgic candies. I am the disruptive great-great-granddaughter who is the 7-time Ironman and environmentalist. Five years ago I went to Svalbard, Norway visiting the Global Seed Bank to learn about food security. I witnessed the United Nations installing generators due to climate change to keep the glacier refrigerated for all the backup seeds of the world.
What do you wish you knew before embarking on your entrepreneurial journey?
The two things that keep me up at night are quality assurance at our factory and having the right team to grow the business. I thrive under pressure because as a start-up CEO, I have been under pressure for 5 years and succeeding every step of the way.
What is the most difficult decision you've had to make regarding your business so far?
I have been a risk taker over the course of the last 5 years as we grew this business. We pivoted from an ingredient company to a candy company. We changed from a West Coast to an East Coast factory. And we took risks moving from DTC and ECommerce into Retail and Food Service as channels to consumers.
What can you help the VEGPRENEUR community with?
Cutting food waste by half in the U.S. would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 million metric tons each year. It would also generate an economic return of $75 billion each year. And importantly, reducing food waste also leads to several key co-benefits that get at critical issues of climate justice, climate adaptation, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss. That’s why we work side by side with the non-profit 501cthree.org and the founder, Drew FitzGerald.
How can the VEGPRENEUR community help you?
Food is the single strongest lever to optimize health and environmental sustainability on Earth. This requires a substantial shift towards plant-based dietary patterns and a 50% reduction in food waste. More than 20 billion pounds of produce go to waste each year simply because they are excess or not perfectly shaped for grocery stores. Meanwhile, climate change is escalating and people are going hungry. This is unacceptable wasting so much food, all while running out of land, water, and healthy soil. It’s time to help people realize their power in our highest potential solution to heal ourselves and the planet: What we choose to eat and this includes all of us.
Fun fact about you:
I am inspired by modern art and painted huge 6-foot canvases that are hung on walls throughout our home in Hermosa Beach. We like to call them Amy Art and they will be worth millions someday.... Also, my passion for sustainability is not just for my company but extends to all parts of my life with my husband. We practice minimalism in a practical way to reduce our footprint and effect on our fragile Earth’s environment.
Anything else you would like to share?
This is a very complicated world and people will only remember so much about us so we need to be really clear on what we stand for. This is a world that is evolving faster than ever, we must rely on our mission to unlock differentiation through our unique power to move people's hearts and minds in a positive way. You may have the greatest product in the world, and the greatest ideas, but if people can't understand the problem they solve, they'll never buy into it.
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