Entrepreneur turned Rabobank corporate banker Manuel Gonzalez launched FoodBytes! in 2015. The two-day FoodBytes! events, which have taken place in cities across the U.S. and beyond, target both early-stage startups and corporations.
Gonzalez designed the FoodBytes! format to be as anti-conference as possible. “I didn’t want it to be panel discussions, key-notes,” explains Gonzalez, “people check out.” Despite the requisite name badges hanging around necks that might signify a stogy conference, FoodBytes! is infused with buzzing energy.
Young event producers with headsets run around the venue, while house photographers and videographers capture moments. Entrepreneurs network, as do FoodBytes! attendees, veteran food industry insiders that include CEOs and investors, each paying about $169 a ticket. Crowds mill around the venue tasting startups’ samples, exploring an app or online service, as well as snagging plentiful swag and swapping business contacts.
On the surface, the main focus of each FoodBytes! event is the pitch competition, given in either three and a half minutes or 60 seconds, however, there is no financial reward for the winner. “Most of the event,” concedes Gonzalez,” is about the networking.”
The concept behind FoodBytes! came to Gonzalez when he moved to San Francisco six years ago from Mexico City to head Rabobank’s West Coast division. Gonzalez has worked for Rabobank, a food and agriculture bank based in the Netherlands and the main sponsor of FoodBytes!, for more than two decades. He’s now Rabobank’s Global Head of Banking for Food Startup Innovation.
Upon his San Francisco arrival, Gonzalez set out to experience Silicon Valley’s startup scene for himself. “You read about Silicon Valley,” recounts Gonzalez while on a New York City business trip, “but when you get there and meet the people, it’s like, oh my God. Wow, the world vision…” Gonzalez trails off, “… And how aggressive people are!”
Gonzales began to attend a monthly entrepreneur Meetups in San Francisco. He found enthusiastic entrepreneurs who believed they have the ability to change the world.
“The ethos really affected me, in a good way,” says Gonzalez sitting in a café near Rabobank’s Manhattan office, “because that idea that you can change the world, no matter who you are, I think it’s also the heart of American entrepreneurship.”
“There were many things I started asking myself with respect to us as a bank,” continues Gonzalez, when he began to absorb Silicon Valley culture. “If we really want to help to feed the world in a sustainable way,” he recalls thinking, “we need to help the people who are finding the solutions for that; those are mostly these entrepreneurs.”
Gonzalez already had an affinity for entrepreneurs. Prior to his banking career he had a yogurt business in his home city, Guadalajara. Due to Mexico’s financial crisis, often called the “Tequila Crisis” in the mid-1990s, his loan interest rates skyrocketed to 150%; he had to sell the business. He relates to the Elon Musk quote that equates being an entrepreneur to “eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” “It is like that!” affirms Gonzalez.
Jazzed by the Bay Area entrepreneurs’ innovation, drive and ambition, Gonzalez spotted a need for industry knowledge, funding and scale. At the same time, Gonzalez knew food corporations possessed plenty of knowledge, money and scale, but lacked innovation. Gonzalez decided a platform like FoodBytes! could be mutually beneficial for both groups.
There have been ten FoodBytes! events since its launch in 2015. The next one will take place in San Francisco on March 1, 2018; upcoming events in New York City and Montreal are now open for pitch applications. Each event has 20 startups participating in the pitch competitions, chosen from an average of 120 applicants.
“Every company needs to show that they have social impact at their core,” notes Gonzalez of FoodBytes! applicants, as well as be viable, scalable and combine food and tech.
Gonzalez’s definition of social impact is any product or service that has nutritional value, helps farmers, improves a supply chain, eliminates waste, has a better use of resources or availability of food. “Any aspect of sustainability,” Gonzalez sums up.
A notable number of immigrant-owned startups have pitched at FoodBytes!, however Gonzalez stresses that companies founded by U.S.-born and immigrants are judged equally. Once, he did have to recuse himself from judging Purely Pinole because the product, toasted corn with coconut and cinnamon, was something special he used to eat in Mexico, he felt he couldn’t be unbiased. (Purely Pinole did make the cut.)
Other immigrant founders who have pitched at Foodbytes! include the raw honey startup Apiterra, the food and beverage crowdfunding platform PieShell, Gebni, an app that discounts restaurant food delivery based on demand and the nutrition platform Edamam. Sugarlogix makes sugars from breast milk, Selffee, a company that makes edible cookies or cappuccino foam with selfie images at events, The Empanada Shop that specializes in organic empanadas and ImpactVision, which uses hyperspectral imaging and spectroscopy to measure food qualities. (Read Forbes stories about Apiterra here, PieShell here, Gebni here and Selffee here.)
Gonzalez says that many immigrant and second-generation food entrepreneurs take risks with respect to taste, types of products, appearance and aroma. He points to Masienda, who makes tortillas with heirloom corn from small Mexican farms. “You see more people from the Middle East, or from Asia, or from Latin America, coming up with completely far out products,” says Gonzalez, due to exposure. “You can’t think of pinole if you’ve never had it before,” notes Gonzalez.
According to Gonzalez, the relationship between food corporations and startups has changed dramatically since his arrival in the U.S. six years ago; large food companies had no interest in engaging with startups. However, since technology continues to further break down barriers for
startups—they can market on social media, distribute through websites—stagnant corporations are now looking at startups for innovative ideas, from actual products to Millenial marketing know-how. “They’ve been suffering the last few years,” says Gonzalez of food corporations, “not really growing."
Read Manuel Gonzalez's advice to social entrepreneurs in the early stages of a food/tech startup here.
