How Can Good Business Make America's Cities Healthier?

By Mark Paris, Managing Director, Citi November 22, 2013 03:00 PM

Kirsten Saenz Tobey and Kristin Groos Richmond are Citi clients of mine and the co-founders of Revolution Foods, a company that is tackling the challenge of the more than 20 million Americans who lack access to healthy food. I sat down with them recently to talk about the growth of their business and the importance of building a team from within the cities they serve. In these select excerpts from the interview, Kristen and Kristin share Revolution Foods' origins, their passion for food and the impact their company has had beyond the school lunchroom. Catch the Q&A in its entirety on Monday, December 2nd, on Huffington Posts's Urban Progress blog, presented by Citi.

Q: So tell us, how did you two meet? What's the story behind Revolution Foods?

Kristin Groos Richmond: We met on the first day of business school and within our first year we started crafting the business plan for Revolution Foods. Both of us had a passion for food and nutrition, so we saw what an opportunity there was, both from an impact standpoint and from a business-building standpoint.

Kirsten Saenz Tobey: We started seven-and-a-half years ago with very humble roots as most entrepreneurs do. Revolution Foods began with three schools, serving about 500 meals a day out of a 500-square-foot kitchen in Oakland, California. We hand-produced every meal -- we made our homemade turkey sandwiches, rolled our quesadillas, packed our fruit -- and delivered each one to schools every day in one truck that we leased.

Q: I met you both as your business really began to expand, first to more schools and then to new product lines. What has that been like?

Kirsten Saenz Tobey: From that original kitchen, we have now expanded to seven culinary centers around the country, and we are now serving over one million meals a week. It's a tremendous undertaking and a very complex operational business. It's also one that has allowed us to create more than 1,000 jobs in urban communities, which is one of the things that we treasure most about Revolution Foods.

Kristin Groos Richmond: We knew early on that we wanted to have a large-scale impact and to provide as many families in America as possible access to high-quality food. That came first in the form of expanding to new geographic areas: serving more schools and more families through our school meals program. But very quickly we also realized that teachers and parents wanted to see our food on store shelves, so we recently launched our meal kits, which are now available nationwide.

Q: Kirsten, you mentioned the pride you feel in creating jobs for your teammates. Tell us more about that.

Kirsten Saenz Tobey: When we do town halls with our team, we always say we've done almost every job in the company and really respect the folks who are working at Revolution Foods in cities across the country. It feels good to have grown up with the idea, to have created it step-by-step, and most importantly to have built an incredible team to help us scale. One of the things we're most proud of is watching our teammates grow and turn jobs into careers.

Kristin Groos Richmond: People come in for an interview because they're looking for a job, but then they join the company because they believe in what we're doing. They stay because they have opportunities to grow and to contribute. It's really the ability for someone to come in at an entry level and earn a sustainable income while gaining an ownership stake in the company, and then be managing a team of 20 people within four to five years with hard work, solid coaching, and great performance.