Last week, Branchfood, the Boston-based launchpad for food businesses, officially opened in Rhode Island with a kick off celebration at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Providence, featuring Secretary of Commerce Liz Tanner, Blount Fine Foods CEO Todd Blount and Hope & Main founder Lisa Raiola.
Over the past seven years, founder Lauren Abda notes, Branchfood has helped more than 800 startups and small businesses in the New England area. Additionally, through the organization’s sister company Branch Network Group, the organization has facilitated the investment of nearly $3.5 million in 15 early-stage food and agri-food tech startups.
Abda said it was the perfect time to expand into the Ocean State, with Rhode Island already buzzing with innovation from companies tackling sustainable seafood solutions, innovations in nutrition science, and the farm-to-institution supply chain.
Abda said she sees so much potential for boosting the already burgeoning food scene in Rhode Island and hopes to leverage some of the 16,000 contacts they've already made working at the "forefront of food."
"Our launch in the Ocean State has been made possible in part through a grant from Rhode Island Commerce, which has a deep commitment to bolstering innovation in the food economy," she said. "There is such an incredible food community here already, and our focus is on lifting it up and advancing it through the proven tools and resources that we bring to the table."
Abda launched Branchfood in 2015 through a partnership with the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in downtown Boston. It has since grown into one of the largest communities of food entrepreneurs in the world. She said the Branch Network Group investment portfolio consists of businesses working on everything from improving planet and human health through the development of new kelp products at Ocean Approved, to novel, all-natural shelf-life extension technology made by Mori, to creating new shellfish traceability and tracking technology at Blue Trace.
All these companies are at the forefront of the industry bringing novel products, technologies, and services to support food system sustainability, she said, and that's why Abda said she's so excited to work in Rhode Island.
"There are amazing organizations in Rhode Island doing a phenomenal job of nurturing a promising community of food entrepreneurs: Hope & Main, RIHub, Social Enterprise Greenhouse, university incubator programs, and the list goes on. These organizations are helping entrepreneurs understand so much about their businesses—how to launch a product, scale up a recipe, identify a target market, put together a pitch for funding, assemble a team, you name it. And it’s working!” she said.
As companies grow from that stage, Abda said they need increasingly specialized support in terms of manufacturing their unique products and navigating partnerships and contracts with suppliers, copackers, distributors, brokers, and buyers.
“They need capital—and ideally from people that can offer industry expertise, too. Branchfood was built to support this next stage of development—what we call stage two—and in our research of the food community in Rhode Island, that is where we've identified the greatest need,” she added.
