Bountiful's Restaurant-Quality Meals from Home

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Bountiful's Restaurant-Quality Meals from Home

This week, Member Monday features Julian Cohen, Founder and CEO of Bountiful Kitchen. Bountiful is a community-driven dinner delivery service based in Somerville that works with local chefs, farms, and artisans to provide a fresh and seasonal rotating dinner menu featuring restaurant-quality dishes. Keep reading to learn about launching a business during a pandemic, partnering with local farms and chefs, and more. Don’t forget to check out Julian’s Instagram takeover on our Member Monday highlight!

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Revolution Retail - Our first ever pop-up store in Boston highlighting the future of food!

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Revolution Retail was the first of its kind popup store showcasing emerging retail technologies and innovative CPG food and beverage brands from Boston and beyond. Branchfood, in partnership with Foodboro, Roche Bros Supermarkets, Survey.com, BREX, and the Faneuil Hall Marketplace built Revolution Retail and hosted GMDC and Retail Tomorrow’s Boston Immersion tour attendees welcoming 80+ national retail executives to experience the future of food. Revolution Retail launched in the heart of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace on Thursday, July 18th with a sold-out Community Event including 150+ attendees and remained operational until Sunday, July 21st. Over the course of just 4 days, we had more than 1K+ visitors from different walks of life and nationalities and were thrilled to share these startups with the community.

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Planting the Seeds of Growth - How Bohana is Bringing One of India’s Favorite Snacks to the U.S.

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Our blog series, “Five Food Startups Winning the Branding Battle,” is all about founders at rising startups in the Branchfood community who are launching the next wave of exciting food brands. We spoke to five incredible founders about product development, branding and marketing, and the success stories they’ve experienced so far. Wrapping up our series is Nadine Habayeb, cofounder and CEO of Bohana, a snack food brand selling popped water lily seeds. Join us as we hear from Nadine how she and her cofounder, Priyal Bhartiya, built their own global supply chain, why brands have to reflect consumers’ lifestyles, and the harrowing story of how they made it to Expo West this year.

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Making Mealtime More Mindful - How Kinsho is Getting People to Slow Down and Pay Attention to Food

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Our new blog series, “Five Food Startups Winning the Branding Battle,” is all about founders at rising startups in the Branchfood community who are launching the next wave of exciting food brands. We spoke to five incredible founders about product development, branding and marketing, and the success stories they’ve experienced so far. Part 4 features Heather Sears, founder of Kinsho (formerly Kensho Kitchen), a retailer of kitchen products based on the idea of mindful eating and food choices. In this interview, you’ll learn Heather’s approach to starting her own online retailer, how her mission drives her decision-making, and why she’s changing the name of her company.

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Strength from Diversity - How i-Bars Club is Creating Innovative Protein Bars With International Ingredients

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Our new blog series, “Five Food Startups Winning the Branding Battle,” is all about founders at rising startups in the Branchfood community who are launching the next wave of exciting food brands. We spoke to five incredible founders about product development, branding and marketing, and the success stories they’ve experienced so far. In part 2, we spoke to Moemen Abbas, CEO and founder of i-Bars Club, whose mission is to create internationally themed, healthy protein bars. Read on to learn how i-Bars Club tests new ideas, how an incredible team is driving his innovative products, and the secret ingredient in his soon to be released Tokyo-themed bar.

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5 Disruptive Takeaways from Food Edge 2018

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5 Disruptive Takeaways from Food Edge 2018

Here at Branchfood, we like to say, “Innovation will fix the food system.” Another way to put this is, “Disruption will innovate the food system.” Last week, innovation and disruption were on full display at the first-ever Food Edge Summit, a two-day “meeting of the food minds” in Boston’s Seaport District that brought together the entrepreneurs, scientists, thought leaders, and chefs who envision a food system that is safer, tastier, simpler, and better for all.

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The State of Food Innovation: Food Retail in Boston

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In the old days – meaning 20 years ago – Boston eaters had but a few options for filling their pantries and refrigerators. Some could find the ingredients they needed at a farmer’s market or a co-op, but most likely, we were visiting the local supermarket, with its lines, its crowds, and its fluorescent lighting. For many locals, it was Stop & Shop, which began in Somerville in 1914 as the family-owned Economy Grocery Store before adding dozens of stores throughout New England over the coming decades.

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The State of Food Innovation: Life Sciences in Boston

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One cannot discuss food innovation without discussing food science. Scientific inquiry and innovation undergirds nearly every facet of food, from how and what we grow to the nutritional balance of foods we consume, and to the environmental sustainability of what we eat.

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The State of Food Innovation: Food Waste and Recovery in Boston

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Maybe mom was right: we should be finishing more of our plates. Food waste is obviously an equity issue. Feeding the world gets more difficult each year, as the population explodes (expected to top 9 billion by 2050) and the extreme weather associated with climate change threaten crop yields in developing countries year over year. Even as we write this, Yemen is on the verge of famine, with 3.2 million children and adults at imminent risk of starving.

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The State of Food Innovation: Agriculture & Farming in Boston

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With every food revolution, expect to see a farm revolution. The reason for this is simple: as consumers demand more from their food – locally sourced, fresher, fewer chemicals, and the like – food innovators are working to shorten the distance between field and fork. Consequently, growers are changing their practices to accommodate this new, more transparent reality.

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The State of Food Innovation: Restaurants in Boston

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From humble beginnings, Boston’s restaurant scene is fast developing a national reputation. Celebrities like Julia Child and Ming Tsai have added star power to the city for decades, and local favorites such as Mike’s Pastry and Legal Sea Food attract tourists by the droves. Now, the next generation of restaurant innovators is changing the face of Boston dining through technology like never before. As Sam Hiersteiner writes, “economic growth, a rising crop of young talent, burgeoning ethnic communities, and culinary innovation from the likes of MIT and Harvard are all contributing factors working in [Boston’s] favor.” Providing restaurateurs with a supportive environment to bolster business development, this primordial soup continues to nurture new ventures in a virtuous cycle of innovation that benefits newcomers and veterans alike. In an industry where the average profit margin is 3.7%, Boston innovators lay the groundwork for a whole new restaurant experience.

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The State of Food Innovation: Consumer Packaged Goods in Boston

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Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturing is a leading global industry. Over the past ten years, food manufacturers have transformed business practices in response to changing consumer preferences. Campbell Soup, one of the largest CPG companies in the world, saw a decrease in profits of almost 20% in the last fiscal year, and is one of many Big Food companies that are experiencing the shift: since 2009, the top twenty-five food and beverage names in the United States lost the equivalent of $18B in market share to startups and small businesses. The entrepreneurs behind these smaller companies create products that reflect changing public values and build trust between company and consumer. Greater Boston has been an unsuspecting leader in CPG since the dawn of the NECCO wafer and cites companies like Schrafft's, Stacy's Pita Chips, and The Boston Beer Company as more recent success stories. Beyond brand, Boston is a place where innovative food product companies continue to launch and grow.

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Boston's Newest Restaurant Website: The Food Lens

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Boston's Newest Restaurant Website: The Food Lens

If you’re a Boston local, or planning a visit to the city, you know that you have no shortage of options when it comes to dining out. But paring down an extensive list of hotspots can be overwhelming, and there aren’t many resources available to find out where to go directly from the mouth of a local. A new website aims to solve this dilemma. If you know the vibe you’re after, or the cuisine, or the neighborhood, or even just the price point, The Food Lens offers to solve your dining dilemma with a few clicks.  

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Announcing: Innovation and the Future of Food Allergies

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Announcing: Innovation and the Future of Food Allergies

Every 3 minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room– that is more than 200,000 emergency department visits per year. The number of people who have a food allergy is growing, but there is no clear answer as to why. As millions of Americans are diagnosed with food allergies, there is an increasing concern that research has not been keeping up.

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Know Your Food Entrepreneurs #6: Joyce Lee of Nibble

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Know Your Food Entrepreneurs #6: Joyce Lee of Nibble

Snacking is trending. Everywhere you look, people are forgoing the “three square meals” regimen to incorporate more snacks and light meals into their day. But finding the coolest and newest products in the snacking world isn’t easy. Grocery shelves are overflowing with options, and it’s hard to know what to choose, especially, as Joyce Lee would argue, from a taste standpoint. Lee,

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Know Your Food Entrepreneurs #4: Danilo Leao of BovControl

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Know Your Food Entrepreneurs #4: Danilo Leao of BovControl

BovControl, the fast-growing mobile livestock analytics platform, was founded in 2013. But, as co-founder Danilo Leao informed me, its roots go way back. When Danilo was a child on his father’s farm in Brazil, he was already experimenting with the way that data could be used to affect livestock productivity. At 12, he had taken on the duties of “tracking and tracing animals, understanding their activity, and understanding nature.”

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The 5 Tech Advancements That are Boosting Revenue for Restaurants

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The 5 Tech Advancements That are Boosting Revenue for Restaurants

We recently collaborated with our friends at Toast POS by trading blog writers for a day. Read on to see what they have to say about technology in the restaurant industry. When you're done, head over to their blog and check out Branchfood's contribution!

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Upcoming Food & Food Tech Summits & Events!

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Upcoming Food & Food Tech Summits & Events!

Building innovative solutions to food system challenges requires diligent networking and a constant exchange of ideas, and a good summit does both. So, we here at Branchfood have done a bit of the heavy lifting for you and compiled this list of upcoming summits and other events -- all the way up until June!

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