Minneapolis has long been called "Mill City" – a nod to the area's history as a leader in milling and flour production. So it's no surprise that a milling startup found its way to the city for the first Techstars Farm to Fork cohort.
Renewal Mill, one of nine startups participating in the inaugural Farm to Fork accelerator, is an Oakland, California-based company that aims to build a more sustainable food system by harvesting byproducts from food manufacturing and upcycling them into high-quality ingredients.
"This is a problem that exists at a tremendous scale," said Renwal Mill CEO Claire Schlemme. "Producers take great care in sourcing their ingredients, only to see half of it go out the door as waste."
Renewal Mill's flagship product is okara flour. Okara is a high-fiber superfood that is harvested from the pulp of organic soybeans during soymilk production. Okara can be mixed with regular white flour to give baked goods a nutritional boost. Renewal Mill uses the product to make a line of cookies, which it sells through its site.
Schlemme told Minne Inno that she hopes to soon be selling Okara flour in convenience stores such as Target or 7-Eleven, where she believes there's a hunger for affordable, healthy food.
Schlemme was first motivated to create a solution for food waste while working for a Boston-based juice company. During the juicing process, skins, peels and pulps were constantly being discarded. She wondered if there was a way to upcycle these byproducts into something new.
"It became a moral dilemma ," Schlemme added. "We were creating a lot of waste and selling products at a high price that was inaccessible to a lot of the people that could benefit from it."
She hopes that Okara flour will be seen as a benefit for not just consumers, but producers as well.
The company's first partner, a tofu producer in Oakland, produces 40 tons of Okara a week. Renewal Mill dries out some of this Okara on site, converting it into flour, which reduces the time and cost of disposal.
"The cost of storage and disposal is a huge headache," she said. "We want to turn this from a cost stream to a revenue stream."
Though Renewal Mill has only been in the Twin Cities for 12 weeks, the company has made valuable connections with local startups and large corporations alike. Through Techstars' mentorship program, Schlemme has worked with leaders from Cargill, Ecolab and General Mills.
Renewal Mill also recently announced a new partnership with Minneapolis-based Local Crate, a startup that participated in the Target + Techstars accelerator last year. Local Crate will incorporate Renewal Mill's okara flour into some of its meal kits.
Schlemme, a California native, said she was compelled to apply to Farm to Fork because of Cargill's involvement in the accelerator. Since arriving in the Twin Cities' though, she's been impressived by the smaller startups that make up local food and ag-tech community.
"I'm embarrassed to say that I was surprised by all the innovative food things happening here," she said. "There's a lot of energy and willingness to collaborate that you don't always see in other places."
