Founder Spotlight: Jody Boyman (Hungry Planet)
Meet Jody Boyman
Company:
Hungry Planet
Hungry Planet is a mission-driven company that offers the broadest selection of delicious and nutritious chef-crafted plant-based meats for food service and retail including beef, Italian sausage, chorizo, chicken, pork, crab (breakfast sausage, turkey, and lamb coming soon). Hungry Planet was created to inspire people to make positive changes, to bend the curve on human and planetary health one delicious plant-based meat bite at a time.
Startup Stage:
We were self-funded during the first several years. We raised an oversubscribed Series A in January 2021 and will be raising a Series B sometime in 2022. In the first quarter of 2021, during the pandemic, we successfully brought to market 17 new retail items while continuing to grow in foodservice channels. Our "Find Us" page shows all the retail locations (including 362 Sprouts) and restaurants where you can find and purchase Hungry Planet. We are also available on Costco.com and Amazon.
Location:
St Louis, Missouri, USA
When did you launch the business?
We launched Hungry Planet about five years ago, following well over a decade of culinary R&D to bring the widest range of delicious and nutritious plant-based meats to market. As a chef-crafted company, all our meats are to be used as a 1:1 swap for conventional meat in any recipe.
What led you to where you are today?
From an early age, growing up in St Louis, I became aware that our food choices had unintended consequences for our health, the environment and animals. I began connecting the dots and realized that while our planet is abundant, it is not without limit - and our daily food choices are a powerful vote for the world we want to inhabit, and future generations will inherit.
What do you wish you knew before embarking on your entrepreneurial journey?
Just how much brute tenacity is required to bootstrap a startup that aims to fundamentally change our broken food system! Also the importance of building out a team who work cohesively and bring enormous talent to the mix. And because we have such a wide range of plant-based meats, learning to focus and prioritize rather than be purely opportunistic (which can be quite alluring early on).
What is the most difficult decision you've had to make regarding your business so far?
To walk away, after almost 10 months, from a partnership with one of the biggest meat companies in the world. We ended up realizing that they just weren't agile enough to accelerate as rapidly as we knew was necessary.
What can you help the VEGPRENEUR community with?
Happy to lend advice to plant-based startups who have big dreams to change entrenched paradigms that hold humankind back from a healthy, sustainable, animal friendly future.
Fun fact about you:
I had my children later in life (at 38 and 40) and have raised them proudly plant-based. Thankfully, they and their peers are a woke generation and will author the future of life on Earth.
Anything else you would like to share?
Our mandate has always been to craft a wide range of plant-based meats that are delicious, nutritious, versatile, affordable and ultimately, ubiquitous. We strive to optimize people’s choices, and nudge them toward more healthful and sustainable ones. We believe that eating more plants, including plant-based meats, allows us to align our actions more closely with our most deeply held values.
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