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The food system employs more workers than any other industry in America, yet it remains one of the most underserved by modern technology.

For decades, innovation focused on office workers and consumers while the frontline workforce that grows, processes, moves, and serves food stayed largely invisible to software.

We believe that is changing.

The advancement of AI technology, near-universal mobile access, mounting regulatory complexity, and acute labor scarcity are converging to create a new generation of workforce technology built specifically for frontline workers. The best companies will invest in this technology to change how work actually feels and functions each day, and in the process, they will improve worker safety, productivity, financial stability, and retention.

At Supply Change Capital, Labor and Workforce Resiliency is a core tenet of our investment thesis. Our conviction starts with one core principle: worker augmentation, not replacement.

For a more extensive read on our Labor and Workforce Resiliency thesis, you can find the full report here.

A big, urgent, and underserved market

Food system workers across production, processing, distribution, retail, and food service are disproportionately low-wage, hourly, and deskless.

Turnover runs far above the ~35% all-industry average: roughly 43% in food manufacturing, ~49% in warehousing, and over 100% in fast food.

Every worker departure restarts a costly cycle of classification, documentation, training, and benefits enrollment inside a regulatory landscape that grows more complex each year, spanning predictive scheduling laws, worker classification rules, ACA subsidy expiration, and OSHA safety standards.

Workers feel the strain just as sharply as employers. The median frontline food-worker income is about $28,000; 76% of workers cite burnout and low pay as top reasons for quitting. In addition, the sector has owed more back wages to employees than any other sector, every year, since 2010. Intensified immigration enforcement in 2025 added acute pressure, with California ICE raids alone driving an estimated 20–40% agricultural workforce reduction.

The three sub-markets most relevant to our thesis are large and venture-backable, representing hundreds of billions in existing and projected spend:

• HR Tech: $40B today, projected $82B by 2032.

• FinTech: the global earned wage access (EWA) market is $12.6B in 2026, projected to reach $36.3B by 2030.

• HealthTech: the global digital health market is $199B, of which employer-directed corporate wellness accounts for $66.3B today and roughly $89B by 2030.

AI is a game changer

Roughly 50% of global VC now flows into AI-enabled companies, and AI is compressing development costs 60–80% for early-stage builds. That matters here because it finally makes it economically viable to serve a workforce that was previously too fragmented and price-sensitive to build for.

Crucially, food system workers show some of the lowest AI-coverage exposure of any occupational category. The same AI wave displacing knowledge work is what makes affordable, accessible tools for frontline food workers possible.

Source: Anthropic: “Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence”

Our view: Worker augmentation, not replacement

The automation debate is usually framed as replacement, but the more useful frame for food system investors is augmentation: technology that makes existing workers safer, faster, and less prone to injury, rather than technology that eliminates them.

What does this look like in practice? AI-enabled robots, or ‘cobots,’ take the hauling and repetitive tasks, while workers keep the dexterous tasks that require human judgment.

The reason this matters is that the physical stakes are high, and dangerous. Injury rates in food manufacturing run 50–80% higher than average; that toll drives turnover and liability on the employer side and burnout and healthcare costs on the worker side.

Image via StockCake

The market gap

In our market map, innovation themes in frontline workforce technology cluster around five areas:

• AI-native hiring, scheduling, and labor forecasting and optimization;

• Worker financial wellness infrastructure, including earned wage access, savings products, and financial benefits and education;

• Safety platforms, compliance and reporting automation;

• Worker-augmenting robotics and cobots that reduce physical strain, increase productivity, and keep humans at the center of food system work; and

• Multilingual training, upskilling, and workforce development tools alongside benefits navigation and access platforms, including tools built specifically for non-English-speaking workforces.

Food System Worker Journey: Hire to Retain and Grow

Within this landscape, SCC sees four structural opportunities where the food system’s specific constraints create durable competitive advantages for early-stage companies:

1. Multi-feature platform plays that start with a highly painful initial wedge. In the competitive set of 128 companies we evaluated, 55% are building features across multiple categories, such as payments and training. Companies that start with a big pain point (e.g. newly introduced compliance regulations for employee benefits, such as healthcare, that force an employer to change the way they record and track benefits overnight) can expand from there to include large recurring revenue opportunities like paycheck processing. The payments and earned wage access (EWA) segment of the market is crowded, making differentiation all the more important for winning initial customer adoption when competitors offer virtually the same payments solution. Multi-feature platforms both create differentiation and expand a company’s addressable market, which is critical to achieving venture scale, especially when a company’s initial offering targets a specific industry subsegment, such as restaurants.

2. Worker-supportive automation that makes work safer and more engaging. Many jobs in the food value chain are unsafe: animal processing, pushing carts through a distribution center with a hundred pounds of product on them, and operating heavy machinery such as manufacturing equipment, forklifts, or tractors. We see a lot of opportunity in automation that removes unsafe work, but requires collaborative human interaction, such as a worker unloading smaller parcels off of a heavy cart that a robot moved, or a farmworker picking produce while an automated cart moves autonomously alongside them. There are many complex tasks that humans are simply better suited to complete at this point, and we believe that collaborative work between humans and robots yields lower-cost solutions that are more beneficial to the worker.

3. Mobile-first solutions that connect employers to net-new workers at scale across any geography. In conversations with corporates in our network, there is a strong need to connect with new workers, but a cynicism about how to best deliver technology that connects employers with these workers who are often not searching Indeed.com for the next opportunity. Historically, these corporates have worked with multiple agencies to gain access to frontline workers in specific geographies, and the scale of these agencies has been highly constrained by the time of agency employees, as many are highly local and not very large. Though there are a number of companies focused on hiring frontline workers, we see a clear white space for startups focused on mobile-first hires that are best reached via SMS over apps. Companies that come up with unique ways to automate and scale access to tens of millions of mobile-first hires on the supply side while maintaining the discernment that helps agencies place workers who are a good fit for a specific role will grow quickly in this market.

4. Models focused on retention, in addition to hiring. As the labor market has tightened, keeping pace with hiring is not enough to keep manufacturing lines and restaurant tills staffed. Companies that comprehensively address retention through upskilling, benefits, enhanced safety, and improved initial employer assessment of a potential employee’s fit for a given role can deliver recurring value for both employees and employers. The economics are compelling: replacing an hourly frontline worker costs an estimated 16% of salary, a figure that compounds quickly in high-turnover food-system environments, where the cycle repeats dozens of times per year. The most durable retention plays are those that create value the worker feels directly: a safer shift, a training credential that travels with them, or a financial benefit that reduces the economic precarity that drives attrition in the first place.

The Bottom Line

SCC believes the investment case is strongest where employer ROI and worker outcomes converge: the same product that reduces turnover costs also reduces income instability, and the same platform that automates compliance also gives workers visibility into their own rights and benefits. Winning solutions, therefore, must be designed from the ground up for the mobile, multilingual, often economically vulnerable population that keeps the food system running.

Our conviction is that the future of work isn’t about replacing labor, but about augmenting and strengthening it. Resiliency is not a single product. It is what happens when hiring, pay, safety, training, and support are designed for the worker’s actual life.

If you’re building in this area, please share your idea here. To read our in depth analysis, download the full report here.

Special thanks to Maria Juur, our spring 2026 MBA fellow from UCLA Anderson, for her extensive and thorough work as we built this thesis. We could not be more impressed or grateful!

This year we refreshed our Theory of Change. A Theory of Change is a framework that maps how Supply Change Capital uses its resources to achieve the positive impacts we aim to achieve. It’s a foundational tool for our firm and helps us reflect together on the changing external environment, zero in on focus areas for investment, and capture how we believe we can mobilize our resources and unique networks as a firm to bring about that change.

Here’s what prompted the refresh, and what’s different now.

Why We Refreshed Our Theory of Change

Our Theory of Change is a living document, not something we set once and file away. We built it to give us a consistent way to screen companies, set impact expectations, and track whether our capital is actually moving the food system in the direction we want. That only works if we keep revisiting it.

This year, we refreshed it because the external environment shifted substantially, and it was time to reflect that shift. Geopolitics moved fast. Health policy moved fast. Cultural conversations around nutrition and health moved fast. And underneath all of it, climate change is still very real, still shaping supply chains and production in ways that aren’t going away. When that much of the landscape shifts, the framework has to catch up.

What is a Theory of Change

A Theory of Change is a structured framework that maps how an organization uses its resources to achieve the positive impacts it’s aiming for. GIIN, the Global Impact Investing Network, defines it as a roadmap for how an organization’s resources get put to work to achieve its intended impact through capital allocation.

For us, it’s the backbone of both our investment strategy and how we evaluate impact. It’s what lets us screen companies consistently, set impact expectations up front, and track progress from near-term activities and outputs all the way through to the long-term outcomes we’re actually trying to enable. It’s meant to bridge the gap between what a portfolio company is doing today (remember, we invest early!) and the systemic change we want to see down the road.

What the refreshed framework covers

We centered the refreshed Theory of Change on three interconnected themes:

• Supply Chain Resilience – from traceability, forecasting, and risk monitoring to the manufacturing and logistics that keeps food moving reliably and reduces the waste and volatility baked into today’s system

• Health & Nutrition – the tools, platforms, and hardware that preserve nutritional quality, build food safety, and give people better decision-making power to steward their own health

• Labor & Workforce – the technology that supports the people actually doing the work, from automation that complements labor to training, safety, and benefits systems that make the job more sustainable

Each of those themes maps to a bigger, systemic outcome we’re working toward: a Regenerative Planet, Thriving Communities, and a Reliable and Trusted Food Economy. The framework still runs on the same inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes logic we’ve always used. What’s different is that it’s now explicit about the connective tissue between them, and it forces us to ask, for every investment, which lever of the system it’s actually pulling.

The backdrop

Our 2025 Impact Report lays out the headwinds and tailwinds we’re watching across the industry, painting a useful picture of why we felt the framework needed to evolve.

On health, the numbers are hard to ignore. The WHO estimates the hidden costs of the global food system at $12.7 trillion annually, with about 70% of that attributable to human health. More than half of the U.S. population now lives with at least one diet-related chronic disease. At the same time, GLP-1 drugs are starting to shift what and how much Americans eat, with nearly 30 million Americans projected to be using these drugs by the end of the decade.

On the supply chain side, geopolitical shocks disrupted fertilizer and shipping routes this year, and bird flu wiped out more than 30 million laying hens in the United States. Procurement, logistics, and manufacturing teams that used to deal with the occasional disruption are now managing multiple shocks a year, across crops and regions.

And on labor, immigration policy shifts and new wage rules have put real pressure on the workforce that keeps this system running. In California alone, heightened enforcement this year was tied to a 20 to 40% drop in the agricultural workforce and $3 to $7 billion in crop losses.

Taken together, these forces made it clear that the environment in which we built our original framework has changed, pulling the food system in different directions, and prompting us to refresh our Theory of Change.

The MIT connection

Back in the fall of 2024, we worked with MIT’s Systemic Investing for Social Change Working Group to look at how we approach systems-aware investing. Noramay and I are MIT alums, and Jason Jay, who runs the program, asked if we’d serve as a case study for one of his graduate students.

The project mapped our existing practices – our Fellows program, our philanthropic support, our network-building – against the broader typologies of systemic investing and pointed out where we had room to be more intentional about connecting those pieces to the change we’re actually trying to drive. It wasn’t the reason we set out to refresh the Theory of Change, but it’s part of the thinking that fed into it.

We worked with Jason Jay’s group again this year, as MBA student Sara Dugan supported us directly on this latest Theory of Change refresh.

Where this leaves us

A Theory of Change is only useful if it keeps up with the world you’re operating in. This year, that meant sitting with a landscape that shifted on multiple fronts at once: geopolitics, health policy, culture, climate, and being honest about what our framework needed to reflect.

If you want the full picture, including the framework diagram and the portfolio metrics behind it, our 2025 Impact Report is up now. We’d love to hear what you think.

We are thrilled to share that Rachel Stinebaugh has been promoted to Principal at Supply Change Capital.

Rachel joined us in early 2024 as Senior Associate. Since then, she has been a driving force on our investment team. She runs the deal flow process, managing investment stage-gates and ensuring founders have a best-in-class experience from first call through close.

Rachel lives and breathes the Supply Change thesis. She sourced our most recent investments in Loamy and Peltier, led published market maps on the cold chain and AI in the food supply chain that informed both investments, and continues to build industry relationships that result in a strong pipeline of thesis-aligned opportunities.

Beyond deals, Rachel leads our MBA/PhD fellowship program and publishes deep-dive analyses on areas of strategic interest for the firm — including recent work on sustainable packaging, AI-enabled traceability, and AI in the food value chain. She is also active on the events circuit, organizing and leading gatherings at New York Climate Week, Future Food Tech, and SF Climate Week. She always brings the energy and enthusiasm that anyone who has met Rachel knows and loves.

And that energy is contagious. Portfolio founders shout out Rachel consistently. We recently heard from a founder who went out of their way to share how much her support has meant to them.

As Principal, Rachel will take on expanded ownership across the investment process, leading diligence, shaping pipeline strategy, deepening ecosystem relationships, and stepping into board observer roles with portfolio companies.

We are proud of you, Rachel. Onward!

Last week, I attended the VC Platform Global Summit in San Diego for the first time. Over 500 platform professionals, from emerging managers to multi-billion dollar institutions with dedicated platform departments gathered to talk about what’s working, what’s not, and where VC portfolio support is heading.

I came expecting the conversation to be dominated by AI. And in a sense, it was - every panel, every breakout, every hallway conversation circled back to it. But the insight that stuck with me wasn’t about the technology itself. It was about what the technology makes possible: a future where VC teams are freed up to be more human, not less.

That’s the real story. And for our founders and LPs, it has meaningful implications for the kind of support we can deliver.

Everyone is experimenting. No one has the playbook.

The honest reality is that the industry is early. Every firm I spoke with is exploring AI, and no two are doing it the same way. A room full of smart people acknowledging that nobody has fully cracked the code yet. AI-enabled workflows are becoming table stakes, but the firms that will succeed beyond are the ones tailoring adoption to their own operations, not copying someone else’s playbook.

At Supply Change Capital, our AI journey is still early, too. But we have a strong foundation: years of sector-specific knowledge, rich data, and a network of relationships built over three decades in the food industry. The opportunity isn’t to replace any of that. It’s to layer automation on top of it, handling the manual work so we can spend more time on the creative, relationship-driven support that founders and our network tell us matters most.

AI will make our platform support faster and sharper in ways founders will feel directly. Corporate matchmaking becomes more targeted, where the right corporate partner is surfaced based on a company’s stage and strategic fit. Introductions arrive better prepared, with deeper context on both sides. And our systems become proactively intelligent, so when a conversation with a corporate partner surfaces a relevant need or priority, AI flags the right portfolio company for an introduction in real time, not months later.

Specificity wins. Firms that try to do everything fail.

One of the clearest signals from the Summit was this: the best platform teams don’t try to be all things to all portfolio companies. They do something incredibly specific, and they do it at a level that’s hard to replicate.

This resonated with how we operate at Supply Change Capital. Our platform is built around commercial activation, connecting founders to the right people across our deep network of corporate partners in the food and supply chain ecosystem, built over 30 years of industry experience across our team. When a portfolio company needs an introduction to a strategic buyer or an innovation team at a global CPG, we make that connection with context and credibility.

The Summit validated that this kind of specificity is where platform teams deliver outsized value. Breadth without depth doesn’t move the needle for founders.

Platform Is a pre-investment weapon, not just a post-close service.

Here’s a point that doesn’t get discussed enough: the platform isn’t just about what happens after you write the check. Increasingly, it’s what gets you into the deal in the first place.

In competitive rounds, especially at the Seed and Series A stages where we operate, founders are choosing between multiple term sheets. The differentiation often isn’t in terms of valuation. It’s what the firm can do for the company after the investment closes. The best platform teams are walking into those conversations with a clear, specific answer: here is exactly how we will help you, and here is the evidence that we can deliver.

For a fund like ours, that means walking into a competitive process with proof: 150+ corporate relationships across the food ecosystem, a track record of introductions - like the 20+ we’ve facilitated for Helios AI to companies including General Mills, Chick-fil-A, PepsiCo, Target, and Nestlé, and sector expertise that makes our support relevant from day one. Platform is becoming a deal-winning asset. Firms that treat it as an afterthought are losing competitive rounds.

AI levels the playing field between small and large firms.

One of the more interesting dynamics in the room was the bifurcation between small- and large-firm platform teams. The value both provide is fundamentally the same but the mechanics are different. Large firms have dedicated teams of five or more platform professionals with specialized functions. Smaller firms often have one or two people wearing many hats.

AI is narrowing that gap. AI agents that automate reporting workflows, CRM enrichment, and portfolio monitoring are giving smaller teams the operational capacity that previously required significantly more headcount. The manual tasks that once consumed hours are increasingly automatable.

And here’s where the paradox becomes an opportunity: when you free a small team from manual work, you don’t just get efficiency. You get proximity. Smaller firms are already closer to their GPs, to warm networks, to founders. With AI handling the operational overhead, that closeness becomes an even greater advantage. The time recaptured goes straight into the kind of high-touch, personalized support that founders value most.

What this means for our portfolio companies and LPs.

I left San Diego more optimistic about what we can deliver to our portfolio companies, more confident in our approach to deep specialization, and clearer about where the right tools can take us further.

For founders in our portfolio and those considering working with us: our investment in AI isn’t about dashboards or internal metrics. It’s about making every introduction sharper, every check-in more informed, and every touchpoint more valuable.

The best platform support comes from deep relationships and sector expertise; AI doesn’t change that thesis, it gives us more time and better tools to deliver on it. The firms that get this right will be the ones whose founders feel the difference.

The manual work is becoming automated. The future is even more human. And at Supply Change Capital, that’s exactly the direction we’re building toward.

The Problem: Cold Chain Infrastructure Was Built for a Different Era

Walk into any grocery store today and you’ll find a quiet crisis unfolding behind the scenes. Retailers are racing to meet explosive e-commerce demand, but the infrastructure they rely on was never designed for dynamic, order-by-order fulfillment. Analog temperature controls offer no visibility, no precision, and no compliance data. When cold products move from warehouse to store to tote to doorstep, operators are largely flying blind. As Peltier CEO Hanson puts it:

“Refrigeration hasn’t changed in a century, but global commerce has. The battle against heat has fundamentally changed, while our tools have been stuck in the 1930s.”

For over a hundred years, cold storage has relied on compressors, refrigerants, and brute-force cooling of large volumes. The consequences are significant: approximately 20% of food loss globally is attributable to improper refrigeration, up to 50% of vaccines are wasted in transit, and traditional refrigerants contribute up to 4% of greenhouse gas emissions in certain geographies, with tightening regulatory pressure to phase them out accelerating each year.

Meanwhile, the grocery industry is in the middle of a fundamental operational shift. Major retailers are investing heavily in store-level automation to serve online orders profitably. These systems have historically struggled with cold chain, and for stores without the square footage for walk-in coolers, e-commerce has simply been off the table.

The cold chain needs a new modular infrastructure layer built from the ground up. Peltier fills that gap.

The Solution: Solid-State Cooling as a Platform

Peltier secured an exclusive license from Phononic, a world-leading semiconductor company that has raised over $300M to develop novel IP, to advance thermoelectric cooling technology. The partnership forms the foundation of Peltier’s Modular Cold Chain (MC²) platform: a scalable ecosystem of hardware and software that reinvents refrigeration with solid-state precision, integrates seamlessly into existing operations, and unlocks new levels of efficiency, compliance, and sustainability.

The platform has three components:

1. The Peltier Tote is the new building block of modular cold: a portable, tri-temperature device capable of handling frozen, chilled, and ambient goods with precision to within one degree, eliminating ice and refrigerants. Unlike compressor-based systems, which cycle between temperature ranges, a Peltier tote maintains exactly the target setpoint with dynamic temperature and power management.

2. The Peltier Framework deploys Totes into modular systems through purpose-built racks and carts that adapt to any fulfillment footprint and operational flow. The same tote that moves through a grocery store’s micro-fulfillment workflow can slot into a pharmaceutical distribution center’s compliance system or an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) automation line.

3. The Peltier Cloud connects devices to proprietary on-device data via onboard IoT and software, unlocking PhysicalAI across the refrigeration industry for the first time.

For retailers previously locked out of e-commerce by space constraints, Peltier doesn’t just improve the cold chain, it creates a business model that didn’t exist before.

The Market: A Generational Infrastructure Build

The global cold chain market was valued at $371B in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.6T by 2033, growing at 20.5% CAGR. North America alone represents $122B of that opportunity today.

Three converging forces are creating a generational opening for cold chain hardware:

1. The grocery automation wave is accelerating. The micro-fulfillment market is projected to reach $125B by 2034, growing at 33% CAGR. Retailers are investing heavily in ASRS systems to serve online grocery profitably, and Peltier’s mixed-temperature capability is the piece that makes those systems viable across ambient, chilled, and frozen products simultaneously.

2. Compliance pressure is mounting for both food and pharmaceutical cold chains. Central fulfillment centers processing thousands of orders daily need verifiable, time-stamped temperature records. IoT-connected cold chain data is shifting from a “nice to have” to a regulatory requirement.

3. Sustainability and refrigerant regulation are converging. Traditional refrigerants are being phased out globally under increasing regulatory pressure. Peltier’s refrigerant-free platform puts the company on the right side of that regulatory wave while delivering operational advantages that customers feel immediately.

Peltier has identified a $6.1B serviceable addressable market across manual fulfillment, automated fulfillment, central distribution, and last-mile logistics, with $1B+ in ARR potential at scale.

The Traction: Enterprise Customers with Real ROI

Peltier has already demonstrated this value nationwide, with deployments at some of the largest names in grocery and pharma.

ShopRite has deployed Peltier totes across several stores for digital grocery order fulfillment. In East Coast locations, for stores without the space for traditional refrigerated walk-in infrastructure, Peltier has unlocked millions of dollars in incremental e-commerce revenue that would otherwise go to competitors.

Another retailer has specified Peltier as the cold chain hardware and software solution for an ASRS deployment at the store level. The automation system provider redesigned its system to integrate Peltier’s charging infrastructure, a signal that this is becoming foundational infrastructure rather than a vendor relationship.

The Team: Built for This Moment

CEO Hanson Li didn’t arrive at Peltier through a straight line, and that’s what makes him the right person to build the company. After years in product management and B2B startups, and an MBA at Stanford GSB as both an Arjay Miller Scholar and a Siebel Scholar, he became one of the country’s leading China-US cross-border technology investment experts before founding Salt Partners, a food and beverage conglomerate whose portfolio included Humphry Slocombe ice cream and Michelin-starred restaurants under Crenn Dining Group and Saison.

That operational chapter is where Peltier’s origin story lives. Running an ice cream business means living and dying by the cold chain, and Hanson found himself constantly fighting analog refrigeration equipment with no visibility and no control. When Phononic, a company he had encountered while investing, was looking to license its cold chain technology platforms, he recognized the opening immediately. He combines a long-range vision for a reimagined cold future with the hard-won operational experience of someone who has actually run the businesses that depend on it.

Hanson is joined by Jordan Drake, Customer Success Engineering Manager, who brings 20,000+ IoT-enabled refrigeration unit deployments from his prior role at Phononic, and Joe Nagy, Enterprise Account Executive, with 25+ years of B2B hardware-software sales to Fortune 500 companies including U-Haul, Mayo Clinic, and Chevron.

Thesis Alignment: Decarbonizing the Cold Chain

At Supply Change Capital, we invest in technology transforming the infrastructure of the global food system, and Peltier fits that thesis while driving meaningful environmental impact.

Poor cold chain infrastructure results in 526 million tons of food loss every year. Refrigeration accounts for up to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and fully optimized cold chains could cut food waste-related GHG emissions by 41% globally. Peltier’s solid-state infrastructure addresses this directly: greater energy efficiency, real-time visibility, and the complete elimination of refrigerants, a structural shift, not a marginal improvement.

We’re also excited by Hanson’s long-term vision of building “the Dyson for refrigerators,” a connected, design-forward approach spanning last-mile logistics, tabletop CPG displays, and beyond. The Phononic IP platform, retail relationships, and early customer base give Peltier an exceptional foundation to build that company.

With this round, Peltier will fulfill its first wave of commercial deployments, scale its go-to-market and customer support team, and begin the next tote manufacturing run to support accelerating demand.

We’re proud to lead this round alongside PreSeed investors Precursor Ventures, OVO Fund, GSBackers and new investors Fulcrum Global Capital, Amok Consumer Growth Fund, and Velocity Catalyst, as Peltier builds out the cold chain infrastructure layer the food system has needed for decades.

Learn more at peltierpro.com

Throughout my travels, I got to spend time with doctors and dieticians, food brands and grocery retailers, startups and investors. At SXSW, I moderated a panel exploring how technology and shifting consumer values are rewriting our relationship with food. The conversation ranged from the quiet but seismic impact of GLP-1s and recent scrutiny of ingredient labels to how technology and the next generation of consumers are reshaping how we discover and shop for new foods.

This isn’t just a story about grocery retail. It is a story about a fundamental shift in how people think about what they eat, why it matters, and who they trust to help them figure it out.

The Informed Grocery Cart SXSW Panel at Midwest House on Chicago Day 2026.

1. We’re All Reading the Label Now

Across generations, consumers are questioning what’s in their food. Not just wellness devotees or new parents, but everyone. A Purdue study found that 82% of grocery shoppers changed their habits in the last two years, and the changes go well beyond price sensitivity. Consumers across generations are scanning ingredient lists, seeking out products free of artificial dyes, seed oils, and high fructose corn syrup, and asking questions about product quality that would have seemed niche just a few years ago. On my panel at SXSW, Disha from Here Here Market shared an anecdote that illustrates this perfectly: they are now fielding questions from customers about olive oil polyphenol levels and harvest dates, not just where the olive oil came from. Consumers are looking at the health implications of their olive oil!

This scrutiny reflects something deeper than trend-chasing. People are connecting the dots between what they eat and how they feel, and they’re demanding that the food system meet them there. Purpose and self-care are increasingly inseparable from what we put in our bodies. Per the panel, life changes — a new baby, a health diagnosis, a shift in how you move through the world — can make ingredient lists feel urgent.

The food brands and platforms earning trust in this moment are those treating transparency not as a compliance exercise but as a core part of the product and its marketable attributes.

2. These Shifts Are Happening Across Generations

Every generation reshapes food culture, but Gen Z is doing it faster and at higher volume than any before them. Shaped by social media and an almost anthropological curiosity about other cultures, they’re more adventurous, less brand loyal, and more likely to discover a product on TikTok than in a store aisle. Discovery has moved online, while the transaction, for now, still mostly happens in person1.

But it would be a mistake to write this off as a trend that only holds amongst younger generations. E-commerce has changed how all generations shop. Baby Boomers, post-pandemic, have become comfortable with online shopping and are increasingly label readers themselves, though highly loyal once they find what works.

The shift to e-commerce doesn’t just change where the transaction happens. It fundamentally changes what we can learn from it. A physical store captures a sale; an online platform captures a journey. Every search, hover, scroll, and abandoned cart becomes a data point, and in aggregate, those data points paint a remarkably precise picture of individual preference.

This creates an unprecedented opportunity to personalize the food experience, from grocery discovery to meal planning. Granular behavioral data, combined with AI, makes it possible to surface the right product to the right shopper at exactly the right moment — whether that’s a first-generation immigrant searching for a childhood staple or a health-conscious Boomer scanning for low-sodium alternatives. For food brands, this is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s fast becoming the primary battleground for market share.

3. GLP-1s Are Quietly Reshaping How America Eats

The rise of GLP-1 medications is already shaping food consumption in the US. The medication’s impact will only grow in the next decade: by 2030, GLP-1 users are expected to account for 35% of food and beverage sales.

This matters because GLP-1 users’ spending habits are different. A Cornell study found that households with a GLP-1 user cut grocery spending by more than 5%, with savory snacks taking a 10% hit. At scale, massive changes to what is stocked in the center store and how products are formulated will be necessary. In the future, we may well see smaller portions, a preference for protein-dense and nutrient-rich foods on shelf, and less impulse buying overall.

The downstream effects on food are still playing out. But the strategic question for anyone in this industry is no longer whether GLP-1 adoption will matter, it’s how fast and for whom.

At SXSW, our panel agreed: trends like GLP-1 adoption will make the “split dinner table” a new household reality, with family members eating different foods, optimized for different goals, sitting across from each other at the same meal. Companies that can serve the whole household with its diverse needs and preferences will be well-positioned. Those selling a single product to a single imagined consumer may very well need to rethink their approach.

4. Personalization Is Becoming Infrastructure

The exciting opportunity lies in where all of this leads: a world where your food choices are deeply, almost invisibly personalized to your health goals, intolerances, budget, and household. When a platform knows your GLP-1 status, your macro targets, and your brand preferences, you’re less inclined to switch to another. Personalization becomes a moat.

AI has a fundamental role to play in all of this. In the future, we may well move from AI that recommends to AI that acts, replenishing your pantry, building your weekly cart around your macro targets, and making decisions before you’ve thought to. The brands and products that earn algorithmic preference will have an advantage that’s hard to replicate.

At Supply Change Capital, we’ve invested in several companies that align with the new consumer and a more personalized future: FoodHealth Co’s nutrition scores and analytics, Verve Market’s hyper-personalized grocery shopping experiences, People Science’s clinical validation of health products on shelf, and Prado’s enablement of doctor-prescribed meals all point us toward a future that is ready for the consumer who’s coming.

The Consumer Who’s Coming

The closing question I posed to the panel was this: is the food industry ready for the consumer who knows exactly what’s in their food, why they’re buying it, and what it’s doing to their body?

The consensus was that readiness is beside the point, because change is coming regardless. Retailers and e-commerce platforms, closest to the consumer and most attuned to how grocery baskets are shifting, will likely move first. But coming out of this conversation and many others over these past few weeks, I’m increasingly convinced that the companies that will win, whether they’re food brands, retailers, or technology platforms, are those working hardest to understand why people are eating the way they do, not just what they buy.

The intersection of food, health, and technology is one of the most consequential places to be building right now. It was incredibly energizing to spend time with people across ecosystems — from major retailers to early-stage founders — who are serious about getting it right.

Thank you to my co-panelists Jaime Sutton-Wells of H-E-B and Disha Gulati of Here Here Market, and to thought partner Stacy Bates of SPAN Health Strategies. And thank you to the many people who shared what they’re working on, from products targeting the gut microbiome to AI-powered product discovery.

The informed consumer has arrived. And players across the food value chain need to be ready for the change that this will bring.

If you’re building in this space, we’d love to hear from you! You can get in touch with our team here.

Over the past year, food has quietly become one of the most politicized topics in America. Ingredients that most consumers had never heard of two years ago are now headline news. State legislatures are proposing bans on additives. Seed oils have become a cultural flashpoint. And for the first time in a long time, what we eat feels like a central and public debate, not just a niche policy or wellness conversation.

But loud debates and actual change are different things, and in a system as large, complex, and slow-moving as food, that distinction matters enormously. Over the past year, the topic of rapid change is top of mind in many of the conversations our firm has had across the food ecosystem, with founders, ingredient companies, regulators, and large food manufacturers alike. What’s clear from those conversations is that something meaningful is shifting, but there is also real uncertainty about what it means in practice. Which raises a question: how does meaningful change actually happen in a system as large as food?

The scale of the underlying problem is hard to ignore

Part of what’s driving this moment is a set of health-related statistics that are genuinely difficult to look away from:

• Diet-related cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the U.S., responsible for 1 in 5 deaths every year (CDC); more than 60% of adults live with at least one diet-related chronic condition.

• High ultra-processed foods consumption is associated with a 37% increased risk of developing diabetes and a 32% increased risk of hypertension and obesity (Advances in Nutrition, 2023), findings that held consistently across dozens of studies.

• Roughly 70% of the U.S. food supply is classified as ultra-processed, and about 60% of the calories consumed in the U.S. come from those foods.

Those figures go a long way toward explaining why policymakers, consumers, and companies are all paying closer attention to the role of food in public health, and why the conversation has moved so quickly from the margins into the mainstream.

The role of science in policy and consumer perception

Amid all the policy activity and media noise, it’s worth asking: what does the science actually say? In some areas, the evidence is substantial and growing. The links between ultra-processed food consumption and chronic disease risk are now supported by large-scale, peer-reviewed research across millions of participants — the kind of findings that should drive policy and industry response.

But in other areas, politics and some consumer sentiment are actively running counter to the scientific consensus. Seed oils are an example. Decades of nutritional research support the role of unsaturated fats (i.e. seed oils) in supporting cardiovascular health. Now, some social media and political figures are actively advocating against seed oils, without a substantial shift in the evidence. The same goes for limiting red meat, where decades of evidence linking consumption to cardiovascular risk is being similarly contested. The danger is that consumers change their habits away from the evidence, while the deeper drivers of diet-related disease go unaddressed.

Several forces are converging at once, and they don't always point in the same direction

The policy landscape is becoming more active and more fragmented. States are experimenting with ingredient restrictions and new labeling requirements, while at the federal level there is renewed attention on nutrition policy and "food as medicine," at least in rhetoric. Federal agencies are navigating all of this under significant resource constraints, and the patchwork of state-level activity creates real complexity for national food manufacturers trying to respond.

Consumer expectations are also evolving, though not always where the headlines suggest. Transparency is increasingly acting as a signal of quality, but for most households, cost, taste, and convenience still drive purchasing decisions, particularly as food prices have risen nearly 30% since 2020. That economic reality shapes what change is actually feasible, at scale, and for whom.

GLP-1 medications add another variable. Nearly 30 million Americans could be using these drugs by end of decade. Early research suggests that users consume significantly fewer calories and shift toward more nutritionally dense foods, with potentially significant implications for food industry demand that companies are only beginning to understand.

Meanwhile, ingredient science has been advancing more quickly than regulatory frameworks can keep pace with. AI-driven tools are giving formulators more options for improving nutritional profiles without sacrificing taste or shelf stability, but approvals take time, supply chains evolve slowly, and the distance between what's scientifically possible and what's commercially viable remains wide.

The harder question: how does change actually happen in a system this large?

Products are shaped by supply chains, business economics, and deeply ingrained habits — not just by regulation or ingredient lists. Reformulation takes time. Policy moves unevenly. And the ingredients dominating media and political conversations are not always the primary drivers of what happens inside food companies. Meaningful change in food tends to happen at the intersection of these forces, when policy, science, consumer behavior, and commercial incentives align.

The question worth asking right now isn’t whether change is coming. We are in the midst of profound changes. It’s whether the current convergence of pressures is enough to move a system this large, and whether what emerges will be grounded in science or driven by politics and noise.

Next week, I’ll be moderating a panel at Future Food-Tech San Francisco 2026 that takes up exactly these questions, bringing together perspectives from regulation, consumer insights, ingredient innovation, and global food manufacturing. I’ll share a follow-up post with key takeaways from the conversation.

In the meantime, if you’re building an early-stage company at the intersection of any of these themes — healthier food systems, ingredient innovation, supply chain infrastructure, or technologies reshaping how we produce and consume food — we would love to hear from you. Tell us more about your company via our website, and if you’re attending Future Food-Tech, reach out to connect in person.

Global Growth & Insights, January 2026

As we settle into 2026, we’re taking stock of the major shifts reshaping the food value chain and wanted to share our team’s view of the market. We opined on topics ranging from industrial efficiency to private equity’s role in accelerating tech adoption in traditional food production and manufacturing contexts.

At the heart of our insights is the reality that food technology is no longer a “future of food” story — it’s a race for industrial efficiency. The AI market for the food industry is predicted to double from $19B in 2025 to $40B by 2027. Nearly half of food companies are actively investing in AI across the supply chain and manufacturing. Many sub-sectors are facing unprecedented contraction, driven by shifting consumption habits, rising costs, and the adoption of GLP-1, with users cutting food spending by 53%. Capital is flowing to platforms that hard-wire efficiency into operations and margins in order to stay competitive in the current environment

1. Process efficiency reigns supreme. Technology that delivers measurable improvements in workflow and process management will separate winners from the rest in 2026. The data is compelling: businesses that implement workflow automation achieve an average ROI of 240% and typically recoup their investment within six to nine months. Manufacturing executives are taking notice—80% now plan to allocate at least 20% of their improvement budgets to smart manufacturing initiatives focused on automation, data analytics, and cloud computing. Mid-sized manufacturers lose an average of $11 million annually to inefficiencies linked to legacy systems, while companies deploying AI-driven process automation are seeing up to 40% reduction in downtime and higher throughput through predictive scheduling and automated quality checks.

   An additional contributor to this pull is private equity (PE), with a focus on efficiency, data, and margin expansion. Private equity firms are accelerating their focus on mid-market manufacturers in 2026. They are attracted by stable cash flows and the ability to generate efficiencies through technology implementation rather than capital-intensive expansion. When PE owns assets like farmland, storage, and manufacturing facilities, new leadership makes technology investments to increase operational efficiency, and they leverage internal data to make their decisions. With approximately $500 billion in private equity dry powder and 90% of large enterprises viewing automation as a strategic priority, we see an opportunity for collaboration between VC, PE, and startups building tech that promotes operational efficiency and data visibility.

2. Dashboards are dead. The next wave of AI runs the plant, sets pricing, and moves product. AI that merely surfaces insights will increasingly be deprioritized in favor of AI agents that can execute end-to-end decisions. In food and supply chains, this means forecasts won’t matter much unless they automatically influence pricing, ordering, contracts, or payment terms—areas where value is actually realized. This shift is already underway: Gartner predicts that 40% of enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025, reflecting a move away from passive analytics toward systems that can plan, decide, and act within real workflows.

   The food industry has always been a notorious technology laggard, which is exactly why this is a massive opportunity. The AI that wins won’t be flashy — it will blend seamlessly into operations, quietly running plants, forecasts, and logistics while competitors scramble to catch up.

3. Technology for the frontline workforce will take off. The backbone labor force—truckers, warehouse workers, pickers, and distribution teams—represents the next frontier for technology investment, requiring context-appropriate technologies to close the productivity loop. Global warehouse automation investment reached $21 billion in 2023 and is expected to exceed $90 billion by 2033, yet 67% of frontline manufacturing workers still rely on outdated two-way radios for communication. Over half of workers lose at least 24 minutes per shift waiting for safety-critical information.

   In our deal flow, we are seeing technologies that improve efficiency and empower the workforce, attributes we consider crucial to success. In the logistics space, telematics that provide real-time driver coaching and predictive maintenance for trucking are unlocking efficiency for workers who have been underserved by prior generations of technology investments. Across industries from restaurants to manufacturing, a new generation of HR and benefits technology is giving workers more control over their schedules while ensuring full-shift coverage and enabling employers to offer fractional healthcare to part-time workers. Such investments will be critical as both large and small companies address chronic labor shortages while simultaneously improving safety, retention, and throughput across their operations.

4. The AI market splits. Platforms win. 82% of enterprises are working to reduce the number of software suppliers they work with. Startups that deliver clear value through their core offerings with a holistic suite of software modules will start to pull ahead of the pack, while startups offering 1-2 easily replicable modules will face increased competition and risk of replacement as customers look to consolidate their software suppliers.

   The opportunity remains significant as the market for AI software in the food industry is expected to balloon to hundreds of billions of dollars in the next 10 years, but the winners will be defined by one thing: who actually delivers differentiated, holistic value, and who just promises it. We see this playing out across the food value chain, with software customers ranging from growers and shippers upstream to grocery retailers and brands further downstream.

   For a longer read, we recently published a full piece on this topic: “AI in the Food Value Chain: Separating Scalable Innovation from Hype.”

The food system touches everyone, every day, but it is not serving people or businesses as it should, which creates a massive opportunity for disruption. Forces ranging from GLP-1 adoption to chronic labor shortages across manufacturing, growing, and food service are colliding with a new generation of AI, robotics, and automation solutions built to address them. We see an immense opportunity at this intersection.

The companies that thrive won’t be the ones reacting to change — they’ll be the ones engineering it into their operations. For founders, this is a call to build deep, sticky products that become infrastructure, not nice-to-haves. For investors, it’s a moment to back companies solving real operational pain points with measurable ROI, not just chasing narratives.

If you’re building technology that addresses some of these sticky challenges for customers across the food value chain, share your opportunity here. We’d love to hear from you!

Highlights

• We made five new investments: Alveo, Supply Pay, Cargologik, People Science, and Loamy Technologies.

• We published our 2024 Impact Report, highlighting the incredible impact our portfolio is having across environmental and health metrics.

• We published four research reports covering topics from AI-enabled supply chain traceability to technology enablers for GLP-1 users and sustainable packaging.

• We closed out our Fund I portfolio and began investing out of Fund II.

Firm Overview

• AUM: $62M (Fund I + partial Fund II)

• Vintages: 2021, 2025

• Capital Deployed: $29.1M

• Portfolio Size: 28 (24 active)

• Deals Led: 8

• Stages: 24% PreSeed, 69% Seed, 6% Other (Initial checks only)

Who We Are

After five years of investing, we’ve refined how we articulate our work. Through hundreds of conversations on the road, we discovered that our story had evolved faster than our ability to tell it. We worked closely with partners and our own team to distill what we’ve learned into language that honors our roots while pointing toward our future. Here’s how we now introduce ourselves:

This articulation reflects years of pattern recognition across our deal flow, the evolution of our portfolio, and the emerging needs we see in the market. It’s specific enough to guide our investment decisions and broad enough to capture the innovation happening across the food system’s most critical infrastructure.

Deals & Data

Our investment approach is built on research-driven pattern recognition. In 2025, we published four reports exploring key thesis themes, each designed to accelerate our evaluation process and sharpen our understanding of where technology can create the most value across the food system:

1. AI-Enabled Traceability

2. Technologies Enabling Long-Term Health Outcomes for GLP-1 Users

3. Unwrapping Innovation: Sustainable Packaging

4. AI in the Food Value Chain

This research doesn’t just inform our thinking—it directly impacts our deal flow and diligence velocity. Throughout the year, we evaluated 1,612 deals, up only 2.5% from 2024 but double our 2021 volume. Our investment decisions reflected both discipline and conviction: across the five investments we made, our average diligence time from initial call to investment decision was 47 days. Notably, all five deals came through investor referrals, including two from our limited partners—a testament to the quality of our network and the trust we’ve built within it.

The efficiency gains from our research are clear: we’re able to move faster on opportunities that align with our thesis while maintaining the rigor required to make sound investment decisions.

New Investments

At the start of 2025, our team published forecasts for the technologies poised to transform the food system. We highlighted AI-enabled supply chain transformation, the GLP-1 revolution’s ripple effects, and infrastructure gaps that technology could solve. Throughout the year, we saw these predictions materialize—and our research directly informed where we deployed capital.

We made five new investments and five follow-on investments in 2025. The new additions to our portfolio spanned critical infrastructure across the food supply chain:

• Alveo: Food safety & molecular diagnostics

• Supply Pay: Ag financing

• Cargologik: Logistics tech

• People Science: Nutrition clinical research platform

• Loamy: Supply chain operating system

The connective tissue between our research, our forecasts, and our actual investments wasn’t coincidental—it reflected a thesis-driven approach that allows us to move with both speed and conviction when the right opportunities emerge.

Strengthening our Team

As our portfolio grew, so did our capacity to support it. Jack Warning joined as our first dedicated Platform hire, bringing experience across investment banking, venture investing, and operating roles. Jack expanded our ability to deliver quantitative support that early-stage teams often need but lack—financial modeling, market sizing, data-driven decision frameworks, and follow-on investment analysis. His role ensures we’re not just a capital partner but a strategic one, helping founders sharpen their financial narratives and make disciplined decisions as they scale.

We also welcomed Lori from DeLuca Financial Services as our fractional CFO. With 25+ years of accounting and financial-reporting experience, including deep expertise with emerging managers, Lori elevated our back office operations. She handles accounting oversight, budgeting, financial reporting, and strategic fund-level finance—delivering full CFO capabilities on a flexible basis. Her team has already proven invaluable.

We continued our fellowship partnerships with Chicago Booth, MIT’s Sustainability Initiative, PledgeLA, and UC Davis’ Innovation Institute for Food & Health. To date, we’ve hosted 36 fellows through partnerships like these!

These programs bring fresh perspectives and research capacity to our work while creating pathways for the next generation of investors and operators. Sarah from UC Davis wrote about her six-month fellowship exploring sustainable packaging and food waste valorization, a perfect example of how these collaborations deepen our thesis work while supporting emerging talent.

Building As We Rise

Community has always been at the heart of how we operate and build, and 2025 reinforced why this matters. We hosted and co-hosted 13 events across six cities – Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and New York – creating spaces for founders, investors, and ecosystem builders to connect around shared challenges and opportunities.

These gatherings weren’t about us; they were about the network. We partnered with January Ventures, FTW Ventures, Streetlife Ventures, Artemis Fund, and Family VC to amplify reach and deepen relationships. We continued our active participation in Kauffman Fellows, Somos VC, PEWIN, Journey to Lead, and several other Women in VC affinity groups – networks that push us to be better investors and more thoughtful stewards of capital.

Our second annual Women in Food Pitch Showcase drew 113 applicants from around the globe, each building technology to transform the food system at its earliest stages. The quality and diversity of innovation was remarkable. We awarded $25,000 in non-dilutive funding to a winner selected by a panel of experienced investors, but the real value came from the connections forged and the visibility gained by every participant.

This work—the collisions, the conversations, the deliberate bridge-building—is what makes venture more than a transaction. It’s how we find better deals, provide more valuable support, and contribute to an ecosystem that’s stronger than any single firm.

The Landscape in which we Operate

The venture environment in 2025 remained challenging. The timeline from startup to IPO has doubled, and the path to Series A now averages 2.1 years—up from 18 months in 2019-2021. Median Seed valuations held steady at 2022 levels, but downrounds still represented 16% of financings while bridge rounds accounted for 29% of Seed and Series A deals. (Carta)

The funding landscape split sharply. AI captured roughly 50% of all global venture funding—$211 billion, nearly double 2024’s $114 billion. Healthcare and biotech followed distantly at $71.7 billion. But these numbers miss the deeper story: AI isn’t a standalone sector anymore. It’s embedded infrastructure across every vertical, including food, where companies race to integrate AI capabilities to improve operations and win market share. (Crunchbase)

Policy added complexity. When tariffs were announced, we polled our portfolio: roughly half saw opportunity through increased demand for efficiency and visibility tools, while the other half faced headwinds from higher costs or distracted customers. Shayna explored these dynamics in Forbes, examining how shifting policy priorities could reshape the food industry around supply chain management, food safety, and labor resilience. (Forbes)

In this environment, our portfolio companies that thrived weren’t necessarily those with the easiest tailwinds—they were the ones building essential infrastructure that customers couldn’t afford to ignore, regardless of the macro backdrop.

Staying Grounded in Impact

Impact remains embedded in how we invest, not layered on after the fact. Across our portfolio, 53% of companies track environmental outcomes, 68% track health outcomes, and 58% track diversity outcomes, reflecting the essential systems our companies are rebuilding—from climate-resilient supply chains to nutrition access and workforce equity

Each portfolio company defines 3–5 core impact KPIs, aligned to more than 50 IRIS+ metrics, creating early discipline while allowing flexibility as businesses scale. This framework connects operating performance to real-world outcomes across customers, employees, and communities—and it’s shaping decision-making: 77% of founders report that our process strengthened their ability to articulate impact, and 85% actively use impact goals to guide business decisions.

In a market where impact is often treated as optional, we remain conviction-driven: the companies best positioned to win in the long term are those that align durable economics with healthier people, more resilient supply chains, and a more sustainable food system.

In Summary

Five full years in, we find ourselves in a fundamentally different place than where we began – not just as a firm, but as practitioners deeply embedded in the transformation of how we feed ourselves and how supply chains operate. The venture landscape remains challenging, with Series A graduation rates stretching and market dynamics favorite AI-everything. Yet within this complexity, we see clarity: the critical systems that grow, process, and move our food need technological transformation more urgently than ever.

This year tested our adaptability and sharpened our conviction. We closed a chapter with Fund I, opened another with Fund II, and strengthened the connective tissue between our portfolio companies and the resources they need to scale. As we head into 2026, we’re energized by the momentum we’ve built – the research driving our deal flow, the team amplifying our impact, and the community that continues to expand around shared purpose.

And, we invite you to join us on the journey. How?

1. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter here.

2. Submit a deal here.

3. Subscribe to our blog here.

4. Learn more about our approach via our website.

5. Follow us on IG and LinkedIn.

6. Reach out to hello@supplychange.fund for a chat!

With gratitude and excitement for what’s ahead,

Noramay & Shayna, and the Supply Change Team

We’re excited to announce our investment in Loamy, a Los Angeles-based company working at the intersection of AI and food supply chains. Loamy is building an AI-enabled, mobile-first ERP platform built for food manufacturers, distributors, and growers—bringing real-time visibility, intelligence, and coordination to one of the most complex and under-digitized industries in the world.

At a time when food companies face increasing pressure around traceability, food safety, margins, and waste reduction, Loamy is laying the data infrastructure required to operate modern, resilient food supply chains.

The Problem: Fragmentation Across the Food Supply Chain

Walk into almost any food manufacturer or distributor today, and you’ll find teams juggling a patchwork of tools: paper forms for quality checks, spreadsheets for inventory and orders, point solutions for food safety compliance, and legacy ERPs that were never designed for perishables or field operations.

This fragmentation isn’t due to a lack of effort. Traditional ERP systems are expensive, slow to deploy, and require extensive customization. Implementations can cost hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of dollars and take over a year to complete. For mid-sized food companies, that tradeoff is often untenable.

The result is a massive technology gap at exactly the wrong moment. Major retailers like Walmart, Costco, and Kroger are demanding increasingly granular traceability that goes beyond FDA FSMA 204 requirements. Without modern systems, food companies face higher rejection rates, costly recalls, lost contracts, and unnecessary waste.

The industry doesn’t just need digitization—it needs infrastructure designed specifically for how food actually moves from farm to shelf.

The Solution: A Food-Native ERP, Reimagined

Loamy addresses this challenge by replacing fragmented systems with a single, mobile-optimized platform built for the realities of food operations. The platform digitizes and automates workflows across food safety, inventory management, compliance, logistics, pricing, and sales with AI — connecting growers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in one shared system of record, and turning tasks that used to take up significant employee time into seamless AI-enabled interactions that require minimal manual effort.

What sets Loamy apart isn’t just the breadth of features—it’s the intelligence layer woven throughout the platform.

Leveraging satellite imagery, Loamy uses AI to detect crop stress weeks before traditional agronomists, enabling customers to make proactive quality and harvesting decisions rather than reactive ones. AI-driven pricing analysis then helps customers optimize margins in real time, bringing data-backed decision-making to a function that has historically relied on intuition. And with a mobile-first design for in-field AI workflows, field workers can easily complete quality checks, track inventory, and update orders on the spot—eliminating clipboards, manual handoffs, and end-of-day data entry entirely.

Instead of static reporting and siloed tools, Loamy delivers real-time insight where decisions are actually made.

The Traction: Early Proof in a Legacy Industry

Loamy has nearly a dozen paying customers, including ReadyPac (the third-largest food processor in California), Evolution Fresh (a Starbucks subsidiary), Better Produce, and DeBernardi Brothers, a key grower and packer within the Driscoll’s ecosystem.

Customer feedback has been consistently strong. Teams report:

• 50% reduction in product rejections

• 75% faster recall management

• Seamless integration of food safety compliance into daily operations

For a historically slow-moving industry, this level of early traction signals deep product-market fit. Customers aren’t just adopting Loamy—they’re expanding contracts and introducing the platform to partners across their networks.

The Team: Proven Builders of Vertical Platforms

Loamy is led by co-founders Charles Julius and Jason Pesek, who previously spent years together at Motive, helping scale the company from under $10M to over $200M in revenue.

Charles brings deep experience building enterprise platforms, including leading Procore’s app marketplace and scaling infrastructure for large, complex customers. Jason led product, compliance, and customer success initiatives at Motive, developing systems that supported thousands of field operators.

Together, they bring rare insight into how to digitize legacy, operationally complex industries—and how to build software that actually gets adopted by frontline teams.

The Market: A Platform Opportunity

Loamy operates at the intersection of several large and growing markets:

• Food & Beverage ERP Solutions: Valued at $3.6B in 2023, projected to reach $6.4B by 2030 (8.5% CAGR)

• Food Traceability: $15B market in 2025, expected to reach $45B by 2034

• Warehouse Management Systems: $15.9B by 2033

• Supply Chain & Logistics Software: $72.7B by 2033
  

While Loamy’s initial focus is on specialty crops and fresh food, the platform is architected to scale into meat, beverages, and prepared foods—and, over time, into sectors beyond food altogether. We view this as a “wedge in food”: rapid technology adoption in the food industry drives early traction and revenue, creating a strong foundation for expansion into adjacent verticals. The team’s prior experience in construction and logistics reinforces this strategy, and the product roadmap reflects that ambition, with planned modules spanning inventory and warehouse management, transportation management, payroll, and a full financial stack.

Thesis Alignment: Transparency & Efficiency To Reduce Supply Chain Risk

Loamy aligns directly with our thesis around building transparency and resilience into the food system.

By enabling real-time quality tracking, predictive insights, and end-to-end traceability, Loamy helps reduce food waste, improve safety, and democratize access to sophisticated supply chain technology. Smaller food companies gain tools once reserved for enterprise players, while consumers benefit from safer, more efficient systems behind the products they buy.

The next generation of food infrastructure will combine operational workflows with intelligence, addressing multiple value chain segments at once to create sticky data flywheels and transform communication between suppliers and their customers with shared insights. At Supply Change Capital, we’ve been on the lookout for companies that meaningfully deploy AI to provide intelligence and next-level insights across the food value chain. In Loamy, we found a sticky product that does so for growers, shippers, and all different types of upstream customers.

Looking Forward

With this round, Loamy will scale its engineering and go-to-market teams, advance its AI-driven product roadmap, and accelerate adoption across an expanding set of food categories.

We’re proud to partner with Charles, Jason, and the Loamy team as they lay the foundation for a new operating system for the food supply chain—one built on real-time data, predictive intelligence, and deeply connected workflows. We’re proud to support the Loamy team and to partner with investors Zeal Capital Partners, Slauson & Co., and Amplify.LA.

Over the coming years, food will be one of the fastest adopters of applied AI, driven by margin pressure, labor constraints, and increasing operational complexity. Platforms that can unify data across inventory, logistics, labor, and finance will define the next generation of category leaders.

Loamy is building that platform—starting in food, and expanding far beyond it.

Learn more:

https://getloamy.com/

In 2025, a surge of AI startups has entered the food and agriculture supply chain, from revenue-maximizing lead generation for manufacturers to agentic order management flows that cut lead times and free up operational bandwidth for brands and distributors. AI represents a renewed opportunity to digitize and capture data in traditionally opaque areas of the food value chain. The question is: what is just hype? And what separates the solutions that will deliver real value for customers?

At Supply Change Capital, we look for technologies that underpin the critical infrastructure of the food supply chain—systems that improve labor efficiency and safety, predict climate and supply risk, and make operations measurably smarter. In AI, we believe the durable opportunities tie directly to data. Companies generating new data or creating sticky data flywheels across customer segments will be best positioned to win in an increasingly competitive landscape.

AI lowers the barrier to adoption by automating historically time-intensive workflows, eliminating the need for manual data entry, and delivering actionable recommendations from data in real time. As a result, there is significant potential in manufacturing, supply chain & logistics, distribution, post-harvest production – segments of the value chain where software has typically faltered because manual data entry or interpretation of last month’s reports were required to render it effective.

The market for AI software in the food value chain

The market for software in the food value chain – spanning operations, procurement, manufacturing, traceability, pricing, and workforce management – is sizable. The combined opportunity across various software tools and value chain verticals is expected to reach $118.2B by 2033.

Sources for this market sizing include: Fortune Business Insights, Pheonix Research, Apex Lens, The Business Research Company, Virtue Market Research, and Inecta.

In addition to our broader market analysis, we analyzed 100 companies developing AI solutions for the food value chain, mapping the types of solutions new and existing startups have built for their customers:

AI in the Food Value Chain: Startups by Segment*

*generated from an internal Supply Change Capital analysis of 100 VC-backed companies working on AI in the food value chain

We found that more than half — an estimated 58% — of companies focus on point solutions in operations optimization. Solutions address a range of customer problems, including inventory management, waste reduction, demand forecasting, labor and process automation, distribution efficiency, and procurement optimization for food distributors and retailers. In these solution areas, customers typically own the data – SKU, purchase order, logistics, inventory, and other operations data sit at the core of operations optimization solutions. In our view, these solutions are at risk of commoditization as a result. Without owning the data or bringing a differentiated technical solution to the table, it becomes difficult for companies to stand out from the crowd.

Limited potential for moat combined with the concentration of companies working on point solutions in operations optimization puts the market at serious risk of fragmentation. We wouldn’t be surprised if the status quo in a few years consists of several inventory management or demand forecasting tools splitting the market, with one tool winning out amongst strawberry farmers in California’s Central Valley while another wins with soybean farmers in the Midwest. The same analogy will apply across distributors, retailers, and other segments of the value chain if companies are unable to find a way to establish moat.

Although AI’s footprint within food supply chain software is positioned to meaningfully expand in the next 5 years, fragmented markets focused on point solutions will be too small to support meaningful exits. So we asked ourselves – where does the opportunity to build the next generation of food value chain software lie? The answer came down to one key point: data moats.

Where Value Will Be Created

While AI’s power to transform workflows is real, it has also eroded the traditional “software moat.” Quality of code is no longer a differentiator – access to proprietary data and defensible integrations are. The current AI landscape in food is saturated, with many companies offering similar solutions with few distinct competitive advantages. Startups that fail to develop a self-reinforcing data advantage risk being outcompeted or commoditized.

To scale meaningfully, we believe companies must either:

1. Unlock previously inaccessible data that delivers new business insights and strategic levers, or
   

2. Build a self-reinforcing data flywheel that makes their product indispensable to customers within a specific wedge of the value chain.
   

The most promising – and in our experience, rare – opportunities extend beyond pure software, integrating physical AI (e.g., robotics and sensors) or creating dual-sided value through marketplaces. These models make solutions sticky and scalable in a sector defined by fragmentation, thin margins, and risk aversion.

It Pays to Be First

In the AI food value chain landscape, early entrants are reaping the rewards. Companies that built customer relationships early and began accumulating operational data are now entrenched behind data moats that improve their model performance with every transaction. This translates into commercial ROI for customers—reduced shrink, higher on-shelf availability, and improved margins—and a durable competitive advantage for the startups themselves.

In operations optimization (roughly 58% of the startup landscape), early entrants benefit from a first-to-market advantage. Given the maturity of the market for AI solutions, exits have been scarce relative to total investment. Historically, before the AI boom, the highest valuations and largest round sizes tended to concentrate among early movers with defensible data positions:

• Afresh ($148M raised, $430M valuation in 2022) scaled quickly across grocery by amassing data and winning large enterprise rollouts, positioning itself as one of the few category-defining players in AI-driven demand forecasting.

• GrubMarket ($605M raised, $3.5B valuation in 2025) began with a wedge in fresh-food logistics and eCommerce, and has since grown into one of the largest food supply chain tech operators in the United States. In November 2025, GrubMarket acquired Procurant, a procurement, traceability, and food safety platform with over $5.5B in gross merchandise volume annually. The deal expands GrubMarket’s footprint across procurement, compliance, traceability, and order management (well beyond its original wedge!). Together, GrubMarket and Procurant illustrate how early movers with scale and data advantages can consolidate upstream and downstream nodes, raising the bar for later entrants.

Both benefited from early data accumulation and rapid iteration cycles that latecomers struggled to replicate. We expect this dynamic will continue in the food value chain as AI companies compete for customers with very similar software offerings.

The Next Frontier: Where AI Can Still Win

Early movers have captured much of the value in first-generation AI applications, such as forecasting, ordering, and basic operations automation. The next wave of opportunity lies elsewhere. As the industry matures, differentiation will hinge less on predictive accuracy and more on where and how data is captured, shared, and acted upon. The frontier for venture-backed companies now belongs to companies that integrate deeply into workflows, become indispensable infrastructure, and build self-reinforcing data advantages that scale with every transaction.

At Supply Change Capital, we see the strongest potential in solutions that find a very sticky initial wedge, including companies that:

1. Become the system of record – and in some cases, simultaneously become the system of action. These players can build endless solutions on top of customer data, driving insights that suit whatever needs arise over time, from inventory management and forecasting to fintech tools that help customers finance growth. The key differentiator for these companies is that they act as a system of record first, whether through ERP software or unstructured data. They can solve customer problems because they have unique access to all the data they need to pull key insights and build actionable workflows.

Ex: Digit, FirstBite, Pesto AI

2. Are built around a distribution strategy, reaching customers before they start paying to become embedded in cross-customer workflows. For example, software that suppliers pay for, which their distributor customers log in to to see updates. Platform value is clear from the start, and a significant amount of the data customers need already lives on the platform. Aligned incentives with distribution partners lead to faster reach and lower customer acquisition costs.

Ex: Loamy, Ampere

In the food value chain, where customers have historically resisted digitization due to the onerous task of manually entering data, and in other cases where customers, like SMB manufacturers, have been underserved by expensive, cut-and-paste generalist enterprise SaaS solutions, we see one additional critical variable that drives success:

3. Founder-market fit. Businesses along the food value chain are complicated. In segments like manufacturing, where 98% of companies are SMBs, there are countless friction points for generic software products that won’t allow food manufacturers to add required food safety details to generic compliance templates, for example. Those who know their markets and their customers well will build products that are rooted in the right level of nuance and detail to drive widespread adoption.

Conclusion

AI has enormous potential to reduce friction and increase efficiency across the food value chain—but only for startups that truly understand the sector’s operational realities. The standout companies will go beyond point solutions, building comprehensive platforms that embed into workflows and grow through creative distribution and defensible data moats.

We’re especially interested in solutions that:

• Deliver tangible customer value early through sticky workflows

• Have a clear path to multi-feature expansion

• Make data capture effortless—whether from machinery, sensors, or employees

• Are built by founders with deep, lived experience in food manufacturing, distribution, retail, or post-harvest processing

If you’re building an AI solution for customers in the food value chain, from manufacturers and distributors to shippers and retailers, share your opportunity here. We’d love to hear from you!

At this year’s LA Tech Week, we co-hosted From Gut Feelings to Data Points: How Tech Is Eating the Nutrition Industry with FTW Ventures — bringing together founders, scientists, investors, and operators who are redefining human health from the microbiome outward. The conversation made one thing immediately clear: the market around supplements and nutrition is shifting from marketing claims to measurable, personalized, evidence-driven systems, and the pace of change is faster than most realize.

I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel with Dr. Belinda Tan of clinical research platform People Science (an SCC + FTW Ventures portfolio company), Marc Washington, former CEO of Supergut, and Brian Frank of FTW Ventures. The panel offered distinct perspectives from clinical research, consumer brand building, and venture capital. Despite differing vantage points, the discussion converged on a shared insight: hyperpersonalization and rigorous science will form the backbone of the next generation of wellness.

Panelists at the Supply Change Capital and FTW Ventures LA Tech Week Event, “From Gut Feelings to Data Points: How Tech is Eating the Nutrition Industry” hosted at the Shay Hotel in Culver City.

1. With Increased Concern About Health, Efficacy Isn’t Optional

The U.S. supplement market is enormous, worth $63.9 billion in 2024, and is projected to nearly double by 2033. Yet it operates under unusually light regulation: dietary supplements do not require FDA approval before going to market, and companies are responsible for ensuring safety and efficacy on their own.

This regulatory gap has created a market where quality varies widely and consumer trust is increasingly fragile. Across the panel, there was clear agreement that we’re heading toward a future where the winners will be companies that treat evidence as a must-have, prioritizing genuine efficacy over less rigorous marketing claims.

Dr. Tan emphasized that trust – earned from consumers, clinicians, and other folks in the ecosystem, such as retailers – will be the new currency for ingredients and supplements making better-for-you claims around gut health. In her work at People Science, she ensures that the highest quality products are able to differentiate themselves from other brands on-shelf with clinically rigorous claims about health.

Supergut, founded by panelist Marc Washington, is an excellent example of clinically-backed claims driving commercial success. The company conducted a 3-arm, double-blind randomized controlled trial with 192 participants over 3 months to demonstrate the positive impacts of Supergut products on metabolism. The study was a rare example of rigorous clinical research in the supplement and ingredient industries when it was published in 2022. Sales increased 172% year-over-year in 2024 as the company’s rigorous claims met the moment alongside the rise of GLP-1 usage and increased consumer interest in the impact of food on health.

2. Hyperpersonalization Is Coming, and Feedback Loops Will Continuously Improve It

It was clear to the panel that personalization has evolved far beyond calorie counting. With AI, next-level hyperpersonalization becomes possible, integrating data ranging from:

• Wearable data tracking glucose, sleep, activity, and other biomarkers

• Bloodwork and lab results from clinical visits

• Microbiome and metaboloic insights

• Nutrition tracking, meal planning, grocery orders – any number of tools tracking what you eat

In practice, this means nutrition and exercise interventions can now be continuously tailored, moving away from one-size-fits-all solutions toward dynamic, individualized health strategies.

Panelists differed in how and when they believed personal health data and AI would deliver meaningful recommendations and support to consumers. With the complexity of the health system and the food system, true integration – of your wearable data with your blood tests, shared with both you and your doctor, paired with AI-driven insights on your eating habits – may take time.

Supply Change Capital sees a significant opportunity for innovation here – the global wearables market was valued at $84B in 2025, and is expected to grow at a 13.6% CAGR to $186B in 2030. Innovators who eliminate the need for data entry and make it seamless for consumers to track their health and their food choices (via grocery data integrations or seamless consumer tracking tools) stand to benefit from growing consumer interest in understanding the health impact of what they are eating.

Shout out to SCC portfolio companies FoodHealth Co, Verve Market, and Prado, who are innovating at the intersection of tech, food and health!

3. The Future Is Being Built Now

LA Tech Week always brings a lot of amazing people together, buzzing with energy and great ideas. What made this session special was the distinct focus on substance and rigor across all attendees, from panelists to founders and ecosystem partners in the audience. After the panel wrapped, founders building nutrition and health tech startups shared challenges, lessons learned, and real progress in their work building at the intersection of nutrition, technology, and science.

Some patterns stood out:

• Next-generation nutrition companies are evolving into science platforms, not just consumer brands

• Wearables are being integrated into more holistic nutrition and health platforms to provide consumers with one-stop shop solutions

• Evidence and transparency are now core competitive advantages, not optional marketing tools

Coming out of the event, I was in awe of the LA ecosystem, where so many founders are already bridging technology, clinical science, and rigor. It is exactly the space that will define the next decade of health innovation.

Event attendees were deeply engaged and came prepared with excellent questions around accessibility, what hyperpersonalization truly means, and what it will take to get to the evidence-backed future envisioned by the panel.

Looking Forward

Our LA Tech Week event reaffirmed a core insight: the nutrition industry is at a structural inflection point. Supplements are moving from unregulated claims to validated efficacy. Personalization is evolving from a concept to reality. Companies that combine rigorous science and high-quality ingredients will set the standard. Those that don’t will be left behind.

We’re grateful to Dr. Belinda Tan, Marc Washington, Brian Frank, our wonderful moderator Macielle Osterling, and all the founders and funders who joined the conversation. The next decade of evidence-driven wellness is being built now — and this community is leading the way.

The Problem: Evidence Gap in Wellness

Walk down any grocery aisle today and you’ll see shelves lined with products making bold health claims: “reduces anxiety,” “improves gut health,” “supports immunity.” Yet the vast majority of these claims rest on shaky foundations. Unlike pharmaceuticals, which undergo rigorous clinical testing before reaching market, nutraceuticals, supplements, and functional foods typically skip the evidence-gathering phase entirely.

This isn’t because companies don’t want proof—it’s because traditional clinical research infrastructure makes it prohibitively expensive and slow for most wellness brands. A single clinical study can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years to complete using legacy Contract Research Organizations (CROs). For a probiotic startup or functional beverage company, that’s often more than their entire Series A round.

The result is a massive evidence gap right when consumers need it most. As 58% of consumers now turn to AI for product recommendations, brands without robust clinical data will increasingly get left behind. AI algorithms prioritize products with detailed, validated information—exactly what most wellness products lack today.

The Solution: Clinical Trials, Reimagined

People Science tackles this problem head-on with Chloe, a comprehensive virtual clinical research platform that makes rigorous studies accessible to companies of all sizes. Instead of requiring participants to visit clinical sites repeatedly, Chloe enables studies to be conducted entirely in participants’ homes through an intuitive mobile experience.

The platform integrates with wearables like Apple Health and Fitbit, partners with labs like Quest Diagnostics for biomarker testing, and captures both quantitative health data and qualitative participant feedback. Companies can run everything from pilot studies to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to post-market longitudinal analyses—all through a single, scalable system.

What sets People Science apart isn’t just the technology, but the rigor. The platform is designed to meet regulatory-grade standards while delivering the speed and affordability that wellness companies need. A study that might cost $300K and take 18 months with a traditional CRO can be completed in 6 months for a fraction of the cost.

The Traction: Real Results, Real Revenue

People Science is already working with 40+ leading customers across the health and wellness spectrum, from nutraceutical startups that are about to put wellness products on the market to established corporate players in the health sector looking to test the efficacy of food-as-medicine programs.

Customer feedback has been unequivocally positive – many customers have doubled down on the platform, extending annual contracts and citing People Science as a transformative alternative to traditional CROs.

The Team: Proven Operators

The founding team brings rare credibility to this space. Co-CEOs Dr. Belinda Tan and Dr. Noah Craft are both MD-PhDs from UCLA who previously co-founded Science 37, a pharmaceutical-focused clinical research company that reached a $1.1B public market valuation. Their firsthand experience in academic research, tech-enabled trial design, and company building informs every aspect of People Science’s strategy.

Having navigated both the successes and challenges of their previous exit, Belinda and Noah understand exactly what it takes to build a scalable clinical research platform. They’ve adapted their proven model specifically for the unique needs of the wellness industry, creating a more sustainable and expansive business in the process.

The Market: Multiple Expansion Vectors

People Science sits at the intersection of several massive, growing markets:

• Nutraceuticals: $591.1B in 2024, growing at 7.6% CAGR

• Probiotics: $87.7B in 2023, growing at 14.1% CAGR

• Food-as-Medicine: $25B in 2024, growing at 4.3% CAGR

• Virtual Clinical Trials: $8.75B in 2023, growing at 5.7% CAGR

The company’s long-term vision extends well beyond nutraceutical trials. Their roadmap includes expanding into hospital systems, CPG R&D teams, academic researchers, and even a B2C platform offering personalized health insights. The ultimate opportunity is becoming the infrastructure layer for consumer-driven health validation across industries.

The Thesis: Transparency Through Evidence

People Science aligns perfectly with our thesis around building transparency into the food system. By enabling clinical research in categories that have historically lacked rigorous validation, they’re empowering consumers with the evidence they need to make informed health decisions.

This matters more than ever as the wellness market becomes increasingly crowded with products of varying quality. Clinical validation will separate best-in-class products from the rest, creating a competitive advantage for brands that invest in proof while raising the bar for the entire industry.

We believe People Science is building a new category: real-world, real-time, evidence-based health research. Their early traction with repeat founders and a clear vision to transform how we validate wellness products positions them to lead this transformation.

Looking Forward

With this round, People Science will expand their team, enhance the Chloe platform, and accelerate customer acquisition across multiple industry verticals. We’re excited to support Belinda, Noah, and the entire team as they build the evidence infrastructure that the wellness industry has been waiting for.

The future of health and wellness will be built on data, not marketing claims. People Science is laying that foundation today.

More at https://www.peoplescience.health/

When 1 in 8 Americans are taking hunger-suppressing GLP-1 medications, every bite of food needs to work harder. At IFT FIRST 2025, over 1,000 food companies gathered to figure out how.

We’re back from IFT FIRST, and it’s clear that the food industry is experiencing a fundamental shift. The conversations we overheard while walking the floor weren't about incremental improvements or next quarter's margins. They were about survival.

Comfortable old assumptions — cheap global ingredients, predictable supply chains, nutrition as nice-to-have — are crumbling in real time. But here's what caught our attention: the smartest manufacturers aren't panicking. They're capitalizing by redesigning how food functions, nutritionally, economically, and transparently. More simply, the winners are rebuilding from scratch around a simple truth: food that doesn’t deliver serious nutrition won’t survive what’s coming.

Four Forces Reshaping Every Food Formula

The pressure is coming from every direction, forcing companies to completely reimagine how they build products:

1. Nutrition reformulation: Consumers demand less sugar and more protein/fiber, even in their guilty pleasures. No exceptions.

2. Ingredient volatility: When cocoa and eggs become luxury items overnight, manufacturers either innovate with alternatives like okra flours and precision fermented proteins, or watch their margins evaporate.

3. Price sensitivity & the premium paradox: Inflation-squeezed consumers still want products that feel expensive but cost less. Good luck threading that needle.

4. Regulatory scrutiny: Clean labels aren’t optional anymore. Every additive is under a microscope.

The result — innovation isn’t just helpful, it’s existential. IFT became a showcase for companies betting their futures on ingredients that can solve multiple problems at once: upcycled byproducts that cut costs while boosting nutrition, fermentation technologies that replace volatile crops with predictable alternatives.

The old food system is breaking. The new one is being built right now.

Why Nutrition Became the New Supply Chain North Star

Nutrition is no longer just a health benefit. Smart food companies are weaponizing nutrition as their competitive advantage, evolving how products are formulated, sourced, and positioned. Formulators are now actively balancing sugar, fiber, and protein ratios alongside supply chain constraints and shifting consumer behavior, especially in response to the growing adoption of GLP-1 medications. With hunger cues suppressed and portion sizes shrinking, every bite must deliver more nutritional value and functionality for consumers. This isn't just a trend — it's a fundamental reset of how food companies will compete for the next decade.

During talks at IFT, several large CPG companies — including Nestle — shared that they are already in the process of reformulating products to include more fiber and protein while reducing sugar. These changes aren’t just consumer-facing: they require shifts across the entire supply chain, from sourcing new functional ingredients to adjusting manufacturing lines and reworking co-packer relationships. Reformulation at scale is creating opportunities for suppliers who can meet rising demand for cleaner, nutrient-dense inputs with reliable availability and consistent quality.

The conversations at IFT also made clear that consumers are demanding more from their food, not just in flavor, but in function. Sales of “better-for-you” snacks, which offer more nutrients per calorie, are outpacing traditional snack growth as people seek satisfying, health-forward options that align with smaller appetites and higher nutritional expectations (NielsenIQ, 2024). Several IFT talks centered on how protein and fiber have become key markers of value, particularly in portion-controlled formats such as bars and mini meals, where consumers want each bite to contribute to satiety and wellness.

The Great Reshoring: When Global Goes Local

As climate change, trade policy volatility, and ingredient shortages disrupt global sourcing, brands are being forced into what IFT speakers called "forced domestication" of their supply chains. Tariffs and shifting food safety regulations are making imported ingredients increasingly expensive and unreliable, pushing companies to source closer to home while still delivering on taste, texture, and functional nutrition.

The result creates winners and losers on both sides: brands scramble to find ingredient swaps that won't destroy their margins, while domestic producers face pressure to lower prices even as demand surges. But opportunity exists in the chaos —when brands get priced out of tapioca flour, potato suppliers suddenly have eager new customers.

But here's where it gets messy. Brands face an impossible choice: stick with familiar ingredients that are becoming prohibitively expensive and unreliable, or bet their product identity on untested alternatives that consumers might reject. Swapping tapioca for potato isn't just a procurement decision — it's gambling with your brand's DNA. Will your loyal customers notice? Will they care? Most brands are betting they won't have a choice and there's a steep cost to resisting change. Without embracing innovation, brands get trapped in expensive, operationally complex workarounds:

• Hoarding inventory during weather disruptions

• Buying in frequent, costly cycles between harvests

• Running inefficient small batches to manage ingredient inconsistency

These desperate measures are killing speed-to-market and making it nearly impossible to deliver the nutrition-first products consumers now expect. But here's the silver lining: according to one food strategy consultant, this creates massive tailwinds for companies willing to invest in innovative, functional ingredients that can transform domestic supplies into exactly what consumers want.

And there’s a cost to resisting innovation.

From Novelty to Necessity: The Upcycling Revolution

The weirdest ingredients at IFT used to live in the "innovation corner" — curiosities that sustainability-focused brands might try for PR points. Not anymore.

Walk the expo floor today and okra flour, coffee waste protein, and fermented egg alternatives are front and center at major CPG booths. What changed? Simple economics. When your core ingredients triple in price overnight, yesterday's "weird" suddenly becomes tomorrow's competitive advantage.

Fermented proteins aren't winning because they're ethical — they're winning because they're predictable. While egg prices swing wildly with every avian flu outbreak, fermented alternatives deliver consistent pricing and guaranteed availability. Smart brands are making the switch not to feel good, but to sleep better at night.

Take our portfolio company Compound Foods: they're not just replacing cocoa —they're engineering better cocoa. More stable supply, controlled flavor profiles, and none of the child labor headlines. When Hershey's supply chain manager sees that value proposition, sustainability is simply a positive externality.

The tipping point is here. Upcycled and fermented ingredients offer something traditional supply chains can't: complete control. Brands get locked-in pricing, customized functionality, and domestic production all wrapped into one solution.

The companies still treating these innovations as "nice-to-have" sustainability plays are about to learn a very expensive lesson.

Conclusion

IFT FIRST 2025 revealed a food industry at an inflection point. The old playbook — familiar ingredients, global supply chains, nutrition as an afterthought — is breaking down fast.

But that breakdown is creating the biggest opportunity we’ve seen in decades. Faced with ingredient volatility, regulatory complexity, and evolving consumer behaviors like GLP-1 usage, food brands are being pushed to reformulate, rethink sourcing, and reimagine product development. Companies that master nutrition-driven supply chains now will own the next era of food. Those that don’t will be left scrambling for scraps in an increasingly expensive, unreliable system.

This pressure is paired with real momentum: AI is lowering the cost of innovation, upcycled and precision-fermented ingredients are going mainstream, and a new generation of consumers is open to trying what’s next — as long as it delivers on flavor, culture, and function.

Our portfolio companies at IFT FIRST 2025 — Supply Pay, Compound Foods, PartnerSlate, Cargologik, and Michroma — aren’t just riding this wave. They’re the ones creating it. While others debate whether change is coming, these founders are already building the supply chain-resilient, nutrition-first food system that consumers demand and economics require.

The transformation is happening. The only question is who will lead it.

Supply Change Capital (SCC) is an early-stage venture capital firm powering the food systems of tomorrow.

We invest in technology across the food supply chain - systems that people and our planet rely on every day. From automation that improves labor and safety to platforms that predict climate volatility and supply chain risk, we back the critical food infrastructure that no one sees but everyone needs.

Our edge? Deep, operational and technical expertise - across food, scaling startups and manufacturing - means we navigate complexity with clarity, and bring a strong corporate network that helps founders gain traction, faster.

In a market chasing headlines, we invest in what lasts.

TLDR:

We invest in Pre-seed and Seed US-based companies powering the food systems of tomorrow, in focus areas including: Supply Chain Risk Mitigation, Food as Health, and Labor and Workforce Optimization.

We lead and participate in rounds with an average check size of $500K-$1M. Please fill out our intake form to share your company information.

Want to learn more? See below.

Our Approach

Our “Sweet Spot”

• Early-stage (Pre-seed and Seed rounds)

• Software

• Though we invest in a range of industry-agnostic technologies, the product or service should support or power the food industry - now or in the future

• US Incorporated

Our Investment Model

• We’re investing out of Fund II

• Average initial check size is $500K-$1M

• We lead and participate

• We reserve capital for select follow-on rounds

Focus Areas

Supply Change Capital backs B2B technologies that solve the food system's most critical challenges. We focus on three interconnected themes where operational complexity meets massive market opportunity:

1. Supply Chain Risk Mitigation: Technologies that build resilience into fragmented, vulnerable food networks - from traceability and transparency solutions to sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics optimization.

2. Food as Health: Innovations that bridge food and healthcare, helping people live healthier through personalized nutrition, AI-enabled dietary tailoring, and smarter shopping experiences, while preserving and amplifying nutritional quality throughout the supply chain.

3. Labor and Workforce Resiliency: Solutions addressing the industry's chronic labor challenges through automation, workforce management platforms, and technologies that augment human capability rather than simply replace it.

Founder Profiles

• We invest in founders from ALL backgrounds. We collect demographic data only to ensure the breadth of our pipeline.

• We love founders who are tackling problems they’ve come to know well with hard-earned insights – including prior entrepreneurship, industry expertise, and lived experience.

We do not invest in:

• Non-profits, brick-and-mortar restaurants/stores, consultancies, or venture studios.

• DAOs or crypto.

• Direct competitors to active portfolio companies.

• Companies not incorporated in the United States.

• Consumer packaged goods (CPG) or plant-based products.

How can you share your business with us?

• Fill out our intake form. All submissions are reviewed. If the opportunity is a fit, someone from our team will reach out.

Our Investment Process

1. Intake Form

Whether we meet you through a cold inbound to our website or a warm introduction through our investor network, the first step in our process is to fill out our intake form. This helps our team come prepared for the first meeting and keeps meetings more focused.

We meet founders via events, cold inbounds, our investor network, and our various professional networks.

Note: If you submit an opportunity and do not hear back from us, it’s likely because there isn’t a current strong fit for our investment thesis or priorities. We look at every submission within 7 days, but don’t have the capacity to meet with every company in our pipeline.

2. First Call - 30 Minutes

The company CEO will meet with a member of the Supply Change deal team. We discuss every call during our weekly deal meeting and may follow up with questions that come out of the initial discussion in an email after the call.

We’ll review your intake form submission ahead of time to ensure that we can spend our time together in the details of the business. We also take this opportunity to share what Supply Change brings to the table as an investor.

During the call, we’ll discuss:

• Supply Change Capital overview

• Founder Background(s) & Vision

• Problem, Market, and Solution

• Revenue/Business Model

• Traction and Market Validation

• Fundraising (details on the current round & prior rounds if applicable)

We’ll also explore alignment to our FOODS Framework during the call:

• Founders – what gives you a unique advantage to build in this space? Can you articulate, and get us excited about, where the company is heading? Do we want to join this journey?

• Opportunity – is this a venture-sized market or opportunity?

• Operations – does your business model make sense? Are you tracking and responding to KPIs?

• Dynamics - does the round size and valuation align with our strategy? Does the company’s technology align to our thesis, driving impact across the food supply chain?

• Sustainability/Impact – is there a core business KPI that ties directly to impact across the food supply chain?

3. Initial Diligence

Following the initial call, we usually have clarity on whether we want to continue exploring the opportunity or not. In some cases, founders may receive an email with follow-up questions to clarify thesis alignment, market opportunity, and/or vision.

If we choose to proceed to a team call, our team creates a FOODS framework for that company, where we summarize learnings from the first call, answers to follow-up questions, and our own preliminary diligence research on the market opportunity and exit comparables to get the team aligned on top priorities and critical questions for the team call. If we decide to pass at this stage, we loop back with founders either way.

4. Team Call

After our initial diligence, the company CEO and other founding team members will meet with one or both Supply Change partners.

During the call, we’ll discuss:

• Founder Background and Motivation – why did you decide to build in this space?

• Customers and Initial Customer Profile (ICP) – who are/will be your first customers, and what is the key pain point you’re solving for?

• Product – we may ask for a short product demonstration if applicable.

What we’re looking for during a team call:

• Technology that will transform the food supply chain – your company is building technology that will substantively improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the food supply chain. Positive impact on health, the environment, or worker livelihoods is a plus.

• A strong business model with the operations to support it – your business model aligns with customer needs and consistent revenue generation. You have the right team and operations in place to scale.

• Deep understanding of the problem and the customer – your solution is built in meaningful collaboration with or consideration of key customers. You’ve spent time with them and know what the problem you’re solving is, and why it causes customers a lot of pain.

• Clear path to revenue and a venture-scale exit – you’re addressing one or more major markets with your business model. You know your numbers, and we understand your vision for how you’ll get to a venture-scale exit.

5. Memo

Following a team call, we’ll begin crafting an investment memo, completing deep diligence on the exit opportunity and the competitive landscape. We’ll also diligence product-market fit and growth strategy, leveraging our expert network to better understand how the opportunity addresses customer pain points and fits into the landscape. Founders may receive a series of questions from the team on these points and any other outstanding diligence areas, over email or on quick follow-up calls.

As we initiate the final stages of the diligence process, we may ask for references from customers, investors, and employees (former or present) to deepen our understanding of the opportunity and founder leadership.

Once the team has reviewed these diligence materials, the Investment Committee (IC) will vote. For companies that pass IC, we complete legal diligence and founder references. Note that investment is contingent upon successful completion of legal diligence.

Portfolio Company Support

When companies join our portfolio, we invite founders to a kick-off strategy onboarding session and create a plan for SCC’s ongoing support.

Here are ways that we support the founders in our portfolio:

Supercharge III

Supercharge III is a program we built based on our own experience as operators, which includes building (1) Leadership, (2) Management, and (3) Culture for fast-growth organizations.

As companies join our portfolio, we place them into cohorts, providing founders with both the benefits of the program itself and the advantages of building strong connections with peers from other portfolio companies. We love seeing connections form between portfolio founders who may be working with similar customers, hiring for similar roles, or facing similar challenges. You can learn more about our approach in this Substack post.

Corporate Network, Investor Ecosystem and Events

SCC has cultivated an active network of corporate and investor partners, with whom we regularly host events and share investment opportunities.

As a member of the Supply Change portfolio, you will have access to:

• Our corporate network of 90+ F500 companies in the food industry to help you get connected to potential customers and supercharge your growth.

• Our investor network of Seed, Series A, and Series B+ investors with theses spanning the food supply chain, industrial transformation, and generalist early-stage investing to help fund your next round.

• Curated events including our Annual General Meeting (AGM) and side events at industry conferences such as Future Food Tech, IFT, and Tech Weeks in SF, LA, and Chicago, to help introduce you and your company to our ecosystem partners.

Impact Monitoring and Reporting

We also work with portfolio companies to identify and track metrics linked to their core business strategy that align with positive environmental or health outcomes. More information will be shared throughout the diligence and portfolio onboarding process.

In 2024, the global food and beverage industry spent $185B on product packaging. Packaging serves many different purposes for brands: it’s designed to draw attention on the shelf, tell stories that solidify brand identity, and share important information about ingredients and potential allergens. In recent years, brands have also increasingly used packaging to demonstrate sustainability commitments and environmental consciousness to customers, with 14 out of 15 of Fortune 500 food and beverage consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Mondelēz, and General Mills, publicly disclosing specific goals and timelines to reduce the amount of plastic waste generated by their product packaging.

To meet the needs of these customers, the packaging industry has responded with sustainable alternatives to plastic and other carbon-intensive materials. Innovators like TetraPak represent the fragmented industry perfectly: the family-owned company has been operating since the 1950s, but took off as a sustainable alternative to plastic packaging with its innovations in highly functional plant-based packaging in 2015. Alongside corporate R&D, over 400 startups have entered the race to develop sustainable packaging innovations in the last decade, per Pitchbook, including a range of alternative bioplastic materials, nanocoatings, and reusable solutions.

However, a significant gap has emerged between the innovations developed by startups and backed by venture capital firms, and the operational needs and requirements of leading food and beverage companies that represent their target market.

We conducted interviews with a dozen leading Fortune 500 food and beverage corporations, including both CPG companies and B2B ingredients suppliers who signatories of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastic Economy Global Commitment. We also spoke with retailers, packaging manufacturers, startups, and non-profit startup accelerators. Across our interviews, we found that the innovation taking shape in the startup landscape is structurally misaligned with corporate priorities for the future of packaging.

Our analysis shares key insights from corporates, maps the market for startup innovation, and identifies investment opportunities that better align with customer needs for present and future startups in the packaging sector. We see exciting opportunities for venture capital to invest in packaging innovations that address corporate interest in drop-in solutions that are cost-competitive and highly functional. These venture-scalable innovations span from AI-driven material design and development to intelligent packaging systems that monitor products and deliver real-time data to consumers.

Market Overview

Sustainable packaging encompasses a range of material innovations and circular technologies and systems that focus on minimizing the environmental impact throughout a product’s lifecycle, with an emphasis on alternative or sustainably sourced materials, resource efficiency, and waste reduction. Examples include the use of recycled paper, plastic, or aluminum, designing packaging for reusability or recyclability, as well as packaging traceability tools and the infrastructure to support these innovations.

The global sustainable packaging market is projected to nearly double its 2025 market value in the next 5 years, driven by growth in the food and beverage segment, which represented over 49% of the market in 2023. Meanwhile, 69% of consumers expect brands and retailers they purchase from to offer sustainable packaging by 2025.

Delivering on sustainable packaging commitments faces both policy headwinds and tailwinds. At the federal level, the current administration has been rolling back environmental regulations, with a focus on supporting domestic oil and gas production that will favor virgin plastic production. At the same time, several US states have passed or are actively considering Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws for packaging. These laws require manufacturers and brand owners to fund and manage their own recycling programs, which could incentivize sustainable packaging design and require the use of recycled materials, opening the floor for innovation to meet sustainability standards while maintaining performance and price parity.

Key Insights from the Food & Beverage Industry

We found that the leading food and beverage companies interviewed shared several strong beliefs about the future of packaging:

1. Cost is the #1 priority. It is hard to justify paying a premium for packaging when profit margins are under strain from other supply chain considerations.

Across our interviews, implementing a sustainability-related cost premium on packaging was a non-starter. This was especially true for B2B business models, where incremental costs of sustainable packaging cannot be passed on to consumers. For this reason, corporates were almost unanimously skeptical of 1:1 material substitutions with high operating expenses that often face scalability challenges (e.g. from plastic to bioplastic alternatives). Instead, they sought innovations that minimize overall material use, simplify material streams, and enhance recyclability.

2. Functionality and performance are imperative. When it comes to packaging performance while ensuring food safety and customer satisfaction, there is no room for compromise.

Packaging must balance sustainability with functionality – an aspect the industry is not willing to compromise on, especially if it interferes with consumer experience. Innovations that address the complexity of multi-material packaging (e.g. through single-material, multi-layered packaging) while improving the shelf-life of the packaged goods are particularly promising, as long as they can easily fit into existing supply chains.

3. Innovation requires adequate and advanced infrastructure. Delivering on corporate sustainability goals will require system-level infrastructure supported by a supportive legislative and policy landscape.

Current collection systems, especially upstream, are insufficient to support circular models. A critical bottleneck is the mismatch between the high demand for post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic and its limited supply, making it difficult for corporations to meet their recycled content targets. Delays in infrastructure and design changes have led some major members to exit the US Plastics Pact, even as the alliance shifts focus to 2030 targets.

In response, stakeholders are exploring several solutions. There's growing interest in enhancing the traceability and sharing of PCR plastics and packaging more broadly. Many stakeholders also support the development of advanced recycling technologies, which could not only reduce plastic waste but also supplement existing supply chains with non-virgin materials.

Sustainable Packaging VC Landscape: A Mismatch Between Investment Dollars and Corporate Needs

Between 2016 and May 2025, a total of $1.91B in venture capital funding went to US sustainable packaging companies, with the largest amount of capital raised in 2022, totaling $603.52M across 42 deals. The vast majority of companies that have received funding were developing novel materials to replace virgin plastic in single-use applications. However, based on our conversations with corporates, these innovations are not a top priority. Unsurprisingly, only 42% of the companies that received funding between 2016-2022 have gone on to raise another round of venture funding since. The macrodata confirms this trend, with less capital raised between 2023 and May 2025 combined than in 2022.

Source: Pitchbook (May 2025)

Investment Gaps & Alignment Opportunities

While challenges remain, the space is ripe for innovation and success will depend on aligning innovation with genuine concerns and priorities faced by the food industry. Corporates are eager to explore innovations that cut packaging and/or operational costs, enhance performance, and enable traceability within their supply chains. Startups developing sustainable packaging solutions must clearly identify the core function of their technology.

Our market map reveals a crowded market for alternative materials (also referred to as biomaterials or biopolymers). This stands in opposition to industry voices, who shared concern over low profit margins, issues with scalability and cost-competitiveness, and a questionable impact case. In contrast, a white space emerged around the design of recyclable and smart packaging, as well as the supply and traceability of virgin-grade PCR streams.

Informed by our conversations with corporates, we believe venture capital can unlock strong returns across three fast-evolving areas in sustainable packaging: material and design innovation, smart packaging technologies, and system-wide circular infrastructure.

(1) Material & Design Innovation

Material and design innovation is accelerating through AI-powered technologies like AI Materia and Orbital Materials, which accelerate the identification of high-performance and/or mono-materials while reducing R&D costs and optimizing packaging design for enhanced recyclability. In parallel, emerging startups like Macrocycle, New Hope Energy, and Flo.materials are developing advanced recycling technology that restores PCR packaging to virgin-like quality.

The use of AI-assisted material design platforms can help identify and scale novel materials and tailored applications with significantly better unit economics. These platforms also allow for flexibility in revenue model, with options for licensing, material sales, and joint ventures leading to a higher likelihood of venture scale. Meanwhile, achieving cost-competitive, virgin-grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and other plastics commonly used in packaging will unlock access to the broader plastic packaging market. Corporate customers are especially interested in virgin grade recycled material, as it is a drop-in replacement that allows them to incrementally increase the sustainability of their supply chains with a blend of both recycled and new materials.

(2) Smart & Functional Packaging

Smart packaging – technology-enhanced packaging that monitors, tracks, and communicates product data – is gaining traction as a venture investment area. Innovations like RFID, QR codes, and embedded sensors enable real-time traceability and product monitoring across the supply chain. The trend is underscored by AgroFresh’s 2023 acquisition in a go-private transaction as the company continues to expand its intelligent packaging capabilities for food safety and quality control.

By combining innovative sensor technology with wireless data collection and analytics, startups like Evigence Sensors and Blackbear act as freshness management platforms, offering additional value to corporate customers looking for traceability and/or increased interaction with their customers on pack. This sensor + analytics model allows companies to capture recurring SaaS revenues rather than being limited to per-unit sales, making them a stronger fit for venture capital.

(3) System-Wide Circular Solutions

At the system level, companies like MUTA and Magnomer are advancing the use of PCR plastics via enhanced traceability and sharing and drop-in solutions that improve recyclability without disrupting existing production lines. In logistics, startups such as Sojo Industries, which raised $40M from S2G Investments, are streamlining automated packaging assembly through track-and-trace software platforms. Ex: MUTA, Magnomer, Sojo Industries

The majority of the companies working in these innovation areas are early-stage. Many are engaging in initial pilots with corporate partners and working to understand the key milestones and operational constraints that must be met to achieve commercial scale. At Supply Change, we see immense opportunity for venture capital and corporate partnerships to fuel the growth of these solutions in tandem, driving the next generation of startup innovation in alignment with customer needs.

Conclusion

The next generation of sustainable packaging solutions will be built alongside end customers in the food & beverage industry, through partnership models in the early stages of commercialization. We see sustainable packaging solutions not as a mere one-to-one substitution, but as a multi-faceted transition that expands the functionality of packaging.

We’re especially interested in solutions that:

• Improve recyclability and/or carbon emissions with drop-in manufacturing solutions

• Meet or exceed the high bar for functionality and food safety set by corporate customers

• Enhance product traceability and monitoring in addition to sustainability requirements, providing dual value to customers, and

• Engage in early and substantive collaboration with corporates to support both development and scale.

You can read our full report on challenges and opportunities in the space here.

If you are developing an innovative solution that addresses real industry concerns across the packaging value chain, share your opportunity here – we’d love to hear from you!

Please welcome Supply Change Capital's newest team member, Jack Warning!

Jack joins Supply Change Capital as our first Senior Associate of Platform, bringing both operator and investment experience to his role. He's been on both sides of the table, having worked on strategy and innovation at children's nutrition startup Yumi before moving into investing at Cerity Partners Ventures, which we think will be incredibly valuable as our founders scale their businesses. He studied finance at the University of Iowa and has spent his career across traditional finance, M&A valuation, food startup operations, and venture capital.

Jack brings experience in supply chain and sustainability investing, along with a deep understanding of the operational challenges that can impact even the most innovative food tech companies. As a Senior Associate of Platform on the Supply Change Capital team, he'll support our portfolio companies through the critical post-investment phase, helping them scale efficiently while avoiding common pitfalls. Jack's dual perspective will help us continue to provide best-in-class support to our founders. And as a bonus, he's a Chicago Cubs fan, so he knows a thing or two about patience and long-term thinking.

Walk us through your career journey—how did you transition from traditional finance into investing in technology and operating startups in the food industry

I grew up in a traditional finance family, so starting my career in investment banking felt like the obvious path. But I quickly realized it wasn’t for me; I craved work that energized me. Venture capital was the right shift, giving me the chance to partner with ambitious founders trying to change the world.

My passion for food runs deep, thanks to my Italian mother, where food meant literally everything. I learned to love the story of ingredients, the extended time at the dinner table, and having a round Italian belly. That early love evolved into a deeper curiosity about the food system and its potential to improve human health (as it did for me) and sustainability. And I’ve wanted to get my hands dirty in the category ever since.

What drew you specifically to Supply Change Capital versus other venture capital firms?

This decision was easy. We share a deep curiosity about the food industry. From my very first conversation with Noramay and Shayna a few years ago, things just clicked. We’d lose track of time in tangent-filled conversations. Every time I ran into the team at conferences, it felt like reconnecting with old friends. It’s refreshing to work with a team that's aligned on the opportunities in food, agriculture, and health, as well as everyday life.

Beyond the connection, the team is incredibly sharp. You always hear the phrase, “Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you,” and I genuinely felt that here. Shayna and Noramay bring deep expertise in food and ag, which makes it easy to feel inspired and motivated by leaders who truly know their stuff.

You've been on both sides of the table—advising startups at Yumi and investing at Cerity Partners Ventures. What's the biggest insight you're bringing from the operating side?

It's okay to ask for help. Throughout my time as both an operator and investor, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside some incredible founders. Still, there’s often a stigma around leaning on your partners for guidance. “What if I come across as uncertain and ruin my chances for follow-up?” Or, “VCs notoriously have busy schedules, I don’t want to bug them.” I’ve come to learn these are common thoughts.

What I aim to offer through Supply Change is a consistent, non-biased resource - someone who’s available around the clock, whether it’s diving into the nitty-gritty of a financial model or serving as a sounding board during a GTM pivot. Being that approachable and reliable partner to our portfolio companies is my north star.

What are your predictions for the future of food - where will we be in 20 years?

This question finds me in a pretty reflective (and maybe slightly pessimistic) moment, fresh off reading the famous The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Carbon by Paul Hawken, and currently working through Barons by Austin Frerick. I’m nervous about what the health of our planet will look like in 20 years.

One of the core questions I keep coming back to is: how do we feed a growing population while dramatically improving efficiency? Nearly half of the world’s habitable land is already used for agriculture (Our World In Data). An alarming percentage is projected to be lost due to unsustainable farming practices and deforestation, and McKinsey estimates we’ll need farmland the size of Brazil just to keep up with population growth.

Yes, it’s daunting, but it also creates space for innovative thinking. From AI to supply chain optimization to biomanufacturing, there’s enormous potential to reimagine how we produce and distribute food. While I may feel pessimistic about the scale of the challenge, I’m genuinely optimistic about the opportunity and the startups rising to meet it.

What emerging technology do you think will be the biggest game-changer for food systems?

I'm a big believer in the use of AI. After working directly with multiple Fortune 500 companies across manufacturing sectors, including food, it's clear that even industry leaders rely on outdated systems. In many cases, Excel is still the backbone for managing thousands of customers, supply chains, and even compliance reporting. The ROI for AI tools in manufacturing and food systems is both clear and immediate. It’s a no-brainer.

What's your go-to efficiency hack that you'd recommend to founders?

When I saw the word “hack,” my mind immediately went to cold plunges - yes, I’m that kind of bio-nut. But in terms of work efficiency, I recommend using a streamlined email tool like Superhuman. It helps cut down on time spent in your inbox so you can focus on more valuable work, or better yet, make space for life outside of work. Email shouldn't dominate your day.

What is an app that didn’t exist 3 years ago but you can’t live without?

ChatGPT - but not for the reason you’d expect. It’s been my go-to guide for this year’s gardening adventure. I finally have a yard (our two dogs are thrilled), and I’ve been diving deep into companion planting, plants that deter pests, nutrient timing, soil acidity, irrigation, and even regenerative practices (yes, chickens are on the radar). My goal is to be at least 25% self-sustaining from my garden this year, and ChatGPT has been essential in helping me ramp up quickly.

Cocoa futures hovered at $10,000 per ton last week. That might sound like good news since this 'relief' represents a 25% decline from the year's peak of $12,646—until you realize that it still sits at 3-4x historical levels of $2-3,000 per ton. Welcome to the new normal of extreme volatility in one of the world's most beloved commodities.

As investors focused on food system transformation, we're watching a perfect storm create conditions ripe for technological disruption. The question isn't whether alternatives will emerge—it's which technologies will win, and how quickly they can scale.

Last week, I spoke on a panel at Future Food Tech "Chocolate in Crisis: Unlocking Solutions to Stabilize Supply" alongside Hershey, Celleste Bio, and Voyage Foods where we considered what emerging innovations are offering viable alternatives to cacao and chocolate as climate impacts, global tariffs, and crop disease disrupt supply.

The Numbers Don't Lie

The latest data from the International Cocoa Organization tells a sobering story. The 2023/24 growing season delivered a production deficit of 462,000 tonnes, with global stocks hitting a 45-year low. While the 2024/25 season shows improvement, we're still working through historically depleted inventories that leave the market vulnerable to any weather shock in West Africa.

In the wake of the cocoa deficit, chocolate manufacturers and confectionery businesses are utilizing compound chocolate and reducing cocoa content. Major chocolate supplier Blommer Chocolate shared that they are seeing "an uptick in compound coating sales as our customers struggle to hit price points required by retailers;" The compound chocolate market (which replaces expensive cocoa butter with cheaper vegetable oils) is growing at 6.3% CAGR through 2035, outpacing the growth of traditonal chocolate.

Translation: manufacturers are literally replacing real chocolate with substitutes to manage costs.

The Tariff Twist

Just as the industry was grappling with supply shortages, U.S. trade policy added another layer of complexity. American chocolate manufacturers now face a 10% baseline tariff on all cocoa imports, plus retaliatory tariffs reaching 21% on beans from Ivory Coast and 10% from Ghana—countries that represent 60% of global supply. Factor in the additional baseline tariffs of 10% on finished chocolate products, and this is no longer just about commodity prices. It's about supply chain resilience in an increasingly fragmented global trade environment.

Demographics Tell a Different Story

While manufacturers scramble with reformulations, consumer preferences are quietly shifting beneath them. The non-chocolate candy category grew 6.8% compared to chocolate's more modest gains of 4.1%. Gummies are projected to experience a whopping 20% annual growth globally.

Millennials alone increased their non-chocolate candy purchases by 9% year-over-year, indicating a broader generational shift in preference.

The takeaway? The chocolate market isn't just facing a supply crisis—it's experiencing a generational shift in preference that could reshape demand patterns for decades.

Enter Plant Cell Culture

This is where our investment thesis for companies like Cellese Bio crystallizes. Plant cell culture offers the ability to produce cocoa-identical compounds by cultivating actual cocoa plant cells in controlled bioreactor environments. And, plant cell culture is less costly than animal cell culture (from the growth media to the ease of culturing).

The economics could be compelling. Current production cost targets would provide a competitive advantage when traditional cocoa prices remain elevated above historical ranges. More importantly, the signaling of industry’s investment in alternative cocoa solutions (Mondelez, Cargill, and Meiji) signals possible industrial-scale validation—their R&D capabilities and distribution networks provide a pathway from lab to commercial production at the scale required for market impact.

Three Paths to 2030

During our panel discussion at Future Food Tech, moderated by Jess Spiring from Food Navigator and featuring Charlie Chappell from Hershey, Michal Beressi Golomb from Celleste Bio, and Adam Maxwell from Voyage Foods, we explored several critical questions: How do cocoa alternatives compare in taste and quality? What are the implications for price parity with traditional cacao? How willing are consumers to embrace alternative chocolate products?

Our conversation revealed possible scenarios for how larger companies might integrate alternatives into their chocolate offerings:

Scenario 1: Hybrid Integration: (Most Likely) Alternative cocoa ingredients capture a percentage of market share through blended products that maintain taste profiles while reducing supply chain risks. This gradual integration approach enables consumers to transition to new ingredients without compromising familiar experiences or price.

Scenario 2: Premium Bifurcation: Clear market segmentation emerges between "traditional" chocolate for premium and specialty applications, and "blended" chocolate for mainstream consumption.

Scenario 3: Localized Production: Indoor cultivation and plant cell culture facilities in major consumption markets handle regional demand, reducing 6,000-mile supply chains from West Africa. This distributed manufacturing model could reshape global trade patterns.

And these are not mutually exclusive scenarios - any of these could emerge, given the fundamental reshaping of the industry and its supply chain.

What This Means for Investors

The cocoa crisis illustrates how supply chain vulnerabilities, shifts in trade policy, and changing consumer preferences create opportunities for innovative food technologies. Smart investors and food companies are already placing their bets on technologies that can decouple chocolate production from geographic constraints while meeting the quality standards that consumers expect.

The companies that succeed won't just solve the supply problem—they'll anticipate the evolution of demand. As Gen Z consumers increasingly seek functional benefits and sustainability credentials in their food choices, alternative cocoa technologies that can deliver on taste, cost, and environmental impact will capture outsized market share.

Unlike alternative proteins, which require the development of entirely new supply chains and consumer categories, alternative cocoa technologies can leverage over 150 years of established chocolate manufacturing infrastructure and deeply ingrained consumer preferences. This creates a unique advantage: innovation can focus on ingredient substitution rather than market creation.

The Bottom Line

Cocoa prices may have retreated from their peaks, but the structural vulnerabilities remain. Climate change, political instability in producing regions, and evolving trade policies ensure that supply chain risks aren't going anywhere.

Smart investors and food companies are already placing their bets on technologies that can decouple chocolate production from geographic constraints while meeting the quality standards that consumers expect. The race isn't just to create alternatives—it's to scale them before the next crisis hits.

Because in food technology, as in venture capital, timing is everything. And for alternative cocoa, that time might just be now.

We’re excited to announce our investment in Cargologik, the all-in-one supply chain orchestration platform democratizing logistics technology for small and medium enterprises. The logistics industry is at an inflection point, transitioning from traditional, manual operations to intelligent, automated systems. Cargologik is at the forefront of this transformation, building the tools that will define how cargo operations work in the digital age.

The Problem: SMEs Left Behind in Supply Chain Innovation

Of the more than 200,000 importers bringing goods into the United States, 78% are small and medium enterprises with fewer than 50 employees (US Census). These companies form the backbone of our global supply chains, yet they've been chronically underserved by existing logistics technology solutions.

While enterprise customers have access to sophisticated supply chain management platforms, SMEs have been forced to rely on spreadsheets, email chains, and manual processes to track shipments worth millions of dollars. Existing enterprise solutions are prohibitively expensive, require lengthy implementation cycles, and demand technical resources that most SMEs simply don't have.

This creates massive inefficiencies throughout the supply chain. A large importer of perishable products and one of Cargologik's early customers was managing over 1,000 containers per month into major US ports using nothing more than Excel spreadsheets manually updated by a dedicated team. Before Cargologik, they routinely sent trucks to ports to pick up containers that weren't actually ready, resulting in wasted fuel, time, and money—and contributing to the estimated 35% of truck miles driven empty on US roads (FreightWaves).

The Solution: Affordable, Modular Supply Chain Orchestration

Cargologik has built what we believe is the first supply chain visibility platform designed specifically for the SME market. The platform offers:

• Real-Time Visibility: By aggregating visibility data from ocean, air and other sources, Cargologik delivers more accurate and reliable tracking information than single-source solutions.

• Streamlined Operations: Automated workflows replace manual processes for quotes, rate management, and shipment tracking, freeing up valuable time for logistics teams.

• Collaborative Tools: Built-in communication features eliminate the need to switch between emails, phone calls, and disconnected systems.

• Carbon Intelligence: Integrated CO2 reporting helps customers meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations while making more sustainable routing decisions.

• Modular Pricing: Starting at just $99/month with a freemium option, making sophisticated logistics technology accessible to SMEs for the first time.

An Expanding Market Due to Global Supply Chain Pressure

The logistics software market is experiencing unprecedented growth, valued at $14.8B in 2024 and expected to reach $20B by 2031 at an 8.2% CAGR. This expansion is driven by mounting pressures on global supply chains, including climate-related disruptions (from Ukraine's wheat supply impact to West African cocoa crop failures), escalating trade tensions and tariffs, and stringent new regulations like the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requiring full supply chain traceability.

With $33 trillion in goods crossing borders globally in 2024 and increasing volatility, companies desperately need visibility tools. Yet existing solutions target expensive enterprise contracts, leaving 78% of US importers—small and medium enterprises—underserved. This creates a massive white space for Cargologik's affordable, modular platform.

Additionally, the logistics software sector offers multiple attractive exit opportunities. Anticipated IPOs from Flexport and ShipBob could create the industry's first $1B+ public companies, while serial acquirers WiseTech Global and Descartes have completed over 80 acquisitions since 2015 (Pitchbook). Recent deals include WiseTech's $414M acquisition of Blume Global and Descartes' $218M purchase of GroundCloud, demonstrating strong appetite for supply chain visibility platforms.

Cargologik's strategy of starting with underserved SMEs before expanding to enterprise customers positions it well for both strategic acquisition and eventual public market opportunities.

Commercial Validation: From SME to Enterprise

Cargologik has demonstrated strong product-market fit with initial customers reporting significant improvements in operational efficiency and cost reduction. In the last year, Cargologik has onboarded 10 paying customers, with 20 additional companies using the freemium product. The company has also attracted early enterprise interest, validating the platform's ability to expand upmarket over time.

With self-onboarding capabilities launching soon, the company will accelerate customer acquisition.

The Team: Proven Leadership

Gabriel de Godoy is the Chief Executive Officer of Cargologik. He has over 20 years of experience in international freight forwarding and supply chain solutions. He founded Freight Logistics in 2001 and nXT Software Solutions in 2006, both of which were later acquired. He is passionate about technology and supply chain management and as someone who lived his target customer’s pain points firsthand, he’s focused on finding innovative solutions to this industry’s problems.

Clemen Jespersen is the Chief Commercial Officer at Cargologik. He has over 12 years of experience in sales and logistics technology, holds a Bachelor and Master in Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School, and has previously served as CEO of ItsMyCargo and Chief Commercial Officer at Freightfy. He has a background in strategy, management, sales, HR, administration, and product development, and is motivated by introducing innovative products.

Our Investment Thesis: Efficiency Drives Sustainability

At Supply Change Capital, we invest in companies that can improve the efficiency and sustainability of food and agriculture value chains. Cargologik aligns by addressing waste and inefficiency at the foundational level of global trade.

In 2024, $33 trillion in goods and services crossed borders around the world (UNCTAD), with the US alone importing $3 trillion and exporting $2 trillion worth of goods (Forbes). Approximately 59% of all global food shipments are transported by sea, 31% by road and 10% by rail (Our World in Data).

The environmental impact potential is significant:

• Reduced Empty Miles: Better visibility prevents unnecessary truck trips to ports before containers are ready, directly reducing fuel consumption and emissions.

• Optimized Routing: Carbon intelligence tools help customers choose more sustainable shipping routes and carriers, with measurable CO2 reduction potential.

• Supply Chain Resilience: Real-time visibility helps food companies better manage perishable goods, reducing spoilage and waste.

• Regulatory Compliance: As the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and other traceability regulations take effect, Cargologik's platform helps SMEs meet new requirements without massive IT investments.

The company is already tracking impact KPIs including CO2 emissions avoided through better routing decisions and reduced empty truck loads—metrics that will become increasingly important as environmental regulations tighten globally.

We're excited to support Gabriel and the Cargologik team as they work to level the playing field in logistics technology, investing alongside existing investors Ocean Azul Partners and Blue Impact Supply Chain Ventures. By making sophisticated supply chain tools accessible to SMEs, they're not just building a business—they're helping create a more efficient, transparent, and sustainable global trade system.

The backbone of our supply chains deserves better than spreadsheets. Cargologik is delivering much more than that.

For more information:

• Learn more about Cargologik at cargologik.com

• Read our other portfolio company stories on our Substack

The Growing Threat

We are facing a global biosecurity crisis. The ongoing Avian Influenza (H5N1) outbreak has evolved into an unprecedented threat, spreading across birds, mammals, and now humans. In the U.S. alone, this outbreak has affected over 85 million poultry birds across 48 states since 2022 (CDC), causing billions in economic damage and driving egg prices to 45-year highs.

The CDC reports that the virus has expanded its reach beyond birds to infect at least 26 mammalian species, including dairy cattle across 12 states, creating concerns about potential adaptation to human-to-human transmission (CDC). Harvard Medical School experts warn we may be "on the cusp of a major bird flu outbreak," with the potential to become a pandemic if the virus gains the ability to spread efficiently between humans (Harvard Medical School).

Supply Change Capital Senior Advisor and Venture Partner Neil Willcocks notes, “Given the intensification of animal husbandry across the world and the continued encroachment of human activity on the remaining wilderness ecosystems, we should anticipate further zoonotic disease outbreaks and the potential for further epidemics.”

This escalating threat demands a fundamental rethinking of how we detect, track, and respond to emerging pathogens.

The Diagnostic Gap

Current molecular diagnostics remain trapped in a centralized lab paradigm:

1. Time: Samples must be shipped to specialized facilities, with logistical costs and hurdles to contend with, which translates into results taking days or weeks

2. Cost: PCR testing infrastructure requires expensive infrastructure, equipment, and trained personnel

3. Accessibility: Rural and resource-limited areas lack access to critical testing capabilities

4. Scalability: Centralized labs become bottlenecks during outbreaks, as we witnessed during COVID-19, but particularly so when contemplating reportable and foreign animal diseases such as Avian Flu

As experts at MedPage Today have highlighted, we must move beyond traditional PCR testing toward platforms that deliver "accurate and rapid diagnoses outside of traditional laboratory settings" to enable real-time decision-making where it matters most.

Alveo's Platform

This is where Alveo Technologies delivers unprecedented value. Their IntelliSense™ platform brings molecular diagnostic precision directly to the point of need with:

• Lab-quality results in under an hour (versus days/weeks for traditional methods)

• PCR-comparable accuracy with 98.3% sensitivity and >99% specificity for their Avian Influenza test currently on the market internationally

• Affordable testing that, over time, could enable molecular trade testing at antigen-competitive price points

• Unmatched multiplexing capability of up to 7 targets per run, with 1 control

• Cloud connectivity for real-time outbreak tracking and surveillance

What makes Alveo truly special is their complete ecosystem approach. Beyond the portable analyzer and test cartridges, their secure Alveo Vista™ platform provides geotagged, time-stamped results that enable real-time outbreak monitoring and response, creating a valuable data layer that traditional diagnostics cannot match.

Market Opportunity

The market opportunity is massive and multi-faceted:

• Agriculture & Nutrition Testing: $23B TAM across food, agriculture, livestock, and companion animal testing

• Medical Diagnostics: $51B TAM, including infectious disease testing

• Industrial & Environmental: Additional multi-billion dollar opportunities

Importantly, Alveo isn't just taking share from existing markets—they’re expanding them by making molecular testing accessible in entirely new settings. The platform can detect pathogens days or weeks earlier than traditional methods, creating tremendous economic value through prevention rather than reaction and extending reach to remote locations.

Commercial Validation

Alveo's technology isn't just promising but market-ready:

1. CDC Partnership: The CDC selected Alveo to develop a point-of-need test for human avian influenza, providing $5.3M in funding and validation from the gold standard in pathogen detection.

2. Industry Leaders: Strategic partnerships with Corteva, CDC, Royal GD, and several others in the fermentation, crop, and livestock spaces demonstrate significant commercial and partnership interest.

3. Commercial Traction: The company secured over 100 orders/leads across 31 countries within a month of their first product launch.

4. Regulatory Progress: They have received approval in the Netherlands with validation underway in Italy, France, and the UK; in the USDA licensure submission process as well.

The Team

Alveo has assembled an exceptional team with deep domain expertise from companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific, Illumina, Mesa Biotech, and Abbott.

CEO Shaun Holt brings more than 20 years of operational and financial leadership experience across technology and life sciences, from startups to established companies. He served as the COO of Atonarp, Inc., an optical and mass-spectrometry instrumentation company, as CFO for Berkeley Lights, Inc., where he led the digital cell biology company through its $205M IPO, and as Head of Finance for Global Business Units & Research at Illumina, Inc., the global leader in DNA sequencing technology, where he served in a series of strategic finance leadership roles over 7+ years.

Erik Tyrrell-Knott is the Chief Business and Strategy Officer of Alveo Technologies and also brings over 20 years of experience in strategic business development for medical device and diagnostic companies. Erik most recently served as Vice President of Business Development at Atonarp, Inc, and previously as Head of Business Development for Thermo Fisher Scientific, following the acquisition of Mesa Biotech, innovator of the Accula RT PCR point-of-care testing platform, where he had served as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Product Management. Prior to Mesa, Erik served as Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships at Elsevier Corporation, and as Vice President of Business Development at GE Healthcare. He holds a Juris Doctorate from Boston College.

This is precisely the team that can help Alveo’s next phase of growth - entrepreneurs who have successfully commercialized diagnostic technologies at scale.

Our Investment Thesis

We believe Alveo Technologies represents a paradigm shift in molecular diagnostics that will:

1. Transform disease surveillance: Enabling early detection and containment of emerging threats

2. Protect food systems: Preventing devastating outbreaks that threaten global food security

3. Democratize precision diagnostics: Making molecular testing accessible where it's needed most

4. Generate actionable data: Creating valuable insights for disease monitoring and prevention

Alveo is positioned to become a category-defining company with substantial financial returns and world-changing impact. That's why we're proud to participate in the Company’s Series A extension round, joining existing investors Celesta Capital, Black Diamond Ventures, H. Barton Asset Management, and Opaleye Management in backing this exceptional team on their mission to reshape molecular diagnostics for a healthier, more secure food system.