Making a Difference With a Healthy Food Brand Featuring Richa Gupta, Good Food for Good

Intro 0:05 

Welcome to the Gooder Podcast where we talk with powerhouse women in CPG about their journeys to success. This episode is sponsored by Retail Voodoo. A brand development firm guiding mission-driven consumer brands to attract new and passionate consumer base crushed their categories through growth and innovation and magnify their social and environmental impact. If your brand is in need of brand positioning, package design or marketing activation, we are here to help. You can find more information at www.retail-voodoo.com.

Diana Fryc 0:43 

Hello, Diana Fryc here, I am the host of the Gooder Podcast where I get to talk with the powerhouse women in the food, beverage and wellness industries about their journeys to success and their insights in business. This episode is brought to you by Retail Voodoo. This episode is brought to you by Retail Voodoo. Retail Voodoo is a brand development firm. Our clients include Starbucks, Kind, Rei, PepsiCo, Highkey and many other market leaders, we provide strategic brand and design services for leading brands in the food, beverage and wellness industries. If your goal is to increase market, share, drive growth or disrupt the marketplace with new and innovative ideas, give us a call and let’s talk. Well, today I get to introduce you all to Richa Gupta, who is president and founder of Good Food For Good. Richa is a passionate consumer marketer with 15 plus years of experience in Canada, the USA and India spanning consumer packaged goods retail and fashion industries, which includes General Mills and Hudson Bay. Richa uses her leadership and cooking experience to build a better healthier food experience by making it easy for everyone to eat well and do good. Well. Hello, Miss Richa. How are you today?

Richa Gupta 2:05 

I am great. Thank you for asking. How are you doing?

Diana Fryc 2:10 

I am fine. Apparently my tongue is tied today. I’m not sure but that’s okay. I’m good. Might be a little tired. You’re in Canada right now. Are you in Toronto today?

Richa Gupta 2:24 

I am definitely in Toronto.

Diana Fryc 2:28

I love my Canadian neighbors. You guys are so good. So I want to first start off by having you tell us a little bit about your brand, Good Food For Good. Why does it exist?

Richa Gupta 2:45 

Sounds good. So Good Food For Good is the purpose-driven brand on a mission to make it easy for people to eat well and do good. That’s the reason we started. That’s why we exist. We make a line of sauces that are organic, that don’t compromise on ingredients for convenience, or I should say don’t compromise on quality for convenience. And every time you buy our product, we feed a person in need. It’s by one feed one model and we’ve been able to donate over 1.2 million meals to date. Thank you we’re very grateful for that opportunity.

Diana Fryc 3:26 

Yes. So when you say sauces, what do you mean by that?

Richa Gupta 3:30 

We have three lines in the market right now we have a line of condiments are no added sugar, ketchup and barbecue sauces are available all across Canada and United States. Our second line is our line of organic vegan Indian and Mexican cooking sauces. We are just adding some flavor to the organic section off your food because before we launched our sauces, there were no flavorful so it was only either pasta sauce or soy sauce or coconut aminos if you go to an organic section and for me the question was hey, if I’m trying to eat healthy, why am I required to cook everything from scratch every night of the day? And people who are ready to eat not so good food are able to use convenient stuff, right? That’s why we created and right now we are launching the world’s first plant-based bolognese sauce that’s powered by seeds. Oh, only use pumpkin seeds. It has same amount of protein as your meat sauce. Yeah, same textures, but all plant-based.

Diana Fryc 4:41

I love it. Food science has certainly helped us quite a bit in these last few years. Actually not too long ago. It was really hard to find food that was that didn’t have a lot of additives and all of those extra elements that got added for into convenience foods and food technology, not just from the food manufacturing side, but from the fulfillment side, like how are we filling in it like has come such a long way. And so grateful that brands like yours have kind of pushed that technology along and taken advantage of it in order to bring these kinds of conveniences that a lot of parents and families and, frankly, everybody’s looking for right now. Yeah. So I understand that you guys are a fellow B Corp just like we are. And I always like to ask, well, why was becoming a B Corp important for you and your brand?

Richa Gupta 5:43

So Good food For Good from day one has been a social enterprise right? Started with the by one feed one mission, we knew we wanted to do good. Prior to Good Food For Good, I worked in a very capitalistic environment. And I was pretty done with it, I wanted to do something that made a difference. So we knew the minute we found out about B Corp, we knew this is something that we can relate to. It’s like finding a community that believes in the same things that you do. And you know what it takes a village to raise a child and it takes a village to grow a brand. So we wanted to join the village, we wanted to join forces with similar-minded companies to bring this difference. Because to be honest, what B Corp does should be the norm for every business. It should not be a certification, that should be how businesses should be run. They need to not just do good for the shareholders, in terms of financially good for shareholders, but do good for shareholders that do get impacted whether they have invested in the company or not. Like your environment, people who work for you, just people in general, we all live on one planet. So to me, that was important to be part of a community that believed in the same values.

Diana Fryc 7:16 

Yeah. And for those of you who are listening today that maybe are not familiar with, or maybe you’re not intimately familiar with what a B Corp is. B Corp are is a type of certification that company can get, whereby you subscribe to the way you run your business as literally a force for good. And it’s pretty invasive, in in by way of methodology, like you are investigated by all of your different business practices around social and environmental justice, and elements along those lines, everything from how you source your vendors, how you run your business, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it is a really holistic ecosystem and environment that is very self-feeding. And so Richa, when I asked people this, I get different responses frequently, but what B Corp initiative, would you say that you find yourself advocating for the most? Or maybe right now, but is there like an element that you’re really like, I’m really passionate about blank right now? Anything in particular,

Richa Gupta 8:33 

For me, giving back was always something that I was very passionate about. So the fact that it’s not just good for you, but it’s also good for someone who’s not related to the business at all. That idea of what we do not just not have negative impact on the planet, but how can we have a positive impact on somebody’s life who might not even know who you are? I think that’s something that I’ve been very passionate about. Climate change, of course, like that’s something that no one can ignore what’s happening. And if we are not actively doing something to make a positive difference, we are actively making the negative difference. So I think that’s become a big priority.

Diana Fryc 9:31 

Interesting. Well, I wanted to kind of step back into you and your brand. Now we know what the brand stands for. Maybe can you share a little bit about your journey to good food? How did you get here? Where did the idea come from?

Richa Gupta 9:50

Absolutely. So prior to Good Food For Good I was working at General Mills and marketing and even before that, actually, story goes little bit before that, I was in fashion, I was working in Hudson’s Bay in buying. And around the time that I was pregnant with my daughter, I just started. And it’s not the first time I got the feeling, but it became unbearable. To be in an environment that was very superficial, to be not to not be able to do something that had more purpose, or more meaning. I just I think I craved meaning in my life, and I was lacking that. So I actually decided to do an MBA. So I left the fashion world did MBA thinking that okay, I’ll go to a nonprofit, or something that’s more meaningful. So when General Mills opportunity came across, I convinced myself I’m like, hey, I will be doing food. And food touches everyone. So if I can make a positive difference in food, I think I’m on the right path. And that’s the leap of faith that I took. And I joined General Mills absolutely loved the learning. Like I love the way CPGs really train your mind to business. Very grateful for that. My team was amazing. People were amazing. But, but my role changed. And I started learning a lot more about what was going in the food. And then I started asking questions, and those questions took me aback, or actually, I should say, not getting the right answers to those questions. took me back to where I was, when I was at Hudson’s Bay on hey, I’m not doing anything positive, where I felt I was back and I was lost, that I had lost five years of my life, and I’m back where I was, and I am still not making a positive difference in the world. Sorry about that. And so that was happening on one side on the other side, my daughter was growing up, and I was learning more about what goes into food and I just couldn’t squirt ketchup on my daughter’s food after knowing that a serving of ketchup has the same amount of sugar as a cookie, or make a quick meal for her using a package sauce when I knew those ingredients are going to be bad for her. I think mom guilt in me was much bigger because I grew up in a home. I grew up in India. I grew up in a family where my mom cooked every meal from scratch.

Diana Fryc 12:25 

Yes, me too. I get it.

Richa Gupta 12:30 

Yeah. When you grew up like that ordering a pizza is like oh my god, am I killing my child?

Diana Fryc 12:35 

I know. You feel like you’re going to mom hell or something like that. It’s the worst feeling. I get it. Yeah.

Richa Gupta 12:42 

So I knew there was something I needed to do to get out of that feeling on making myself happy. To be honest, I’m doing Good Food For Good because it makes me happy. It fulfills my soul. It gives me a reason to be. So it’s the combination of the me missing out on not doing something that was meaningful to my own personal problem on, hey, food’s not fulfilling my need, created Good Food For Good. And that’s that, and today are products that are available all across Canada and United States.

Diana Fryc 13:22 

Awesome. I’m curious, because I’ve met many mothers, of course, on the show with littles. Does your daughter get involved in the businesses in any way shape or form?

Richa Gupta 13:35 

She was part of our Dragon’s Den. Dragon’s Den pits. Yeah, she guides me on my TikTok videos. Yeah, I know. And she helps out wherever we can, but she’s not. I don’t think she’s very. Right now she’s 13, she’s not very entrepreneurial-minded yet.

Diana Fryc 14:02

Well, and she might not be right. That might not be her way.

Richa Gupta 14:06

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But she does. She does help us out. Again, yeah, I was telling her I’m like, two years you can be my social media manager. Exactly. This is what you live and breath, do it for money.

Diana Fryc 14:26 

weakness. Oh, that’s wonderful. Now, tell me, the brand has been around for about five years now or longer.

Richa Gupta 14:35 

Little longer, but I didn’t start scaling till 2017. Late 2013 or early 2014 is when launched. I was on stealth mode, being with my daughter was more important at that time.

Diana Fryc 14:51 

Of course. So when did you know you were headed in the right direction with this idea.

Richa Gupta 14:58 

So initially, I was just doing farmers markets again. Another thing I learned from General Mills do lemonade stand, learn as much as you can about your consumer. But that was my goal for first couple of years. That’s what my business plan was that I only do farmers like no retail at all. However, in our second farmers market, I believe there was a buyer from one store, that means store in Toronto York Post or Whole Foods buyer was there. And he’s like, and I had seriously brown paper craft labels on my jars that printed on my home printer. It was like at that time, I was at a stage where I’ll cook. And then I’ll take the product to the market. And I’ll see what people are liking what they’re not liking and change the recipe again next week is cook it again. That’s the space that I was at. He’s like, Oh, no, you should be at Whole Foods. I like I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

Diana Fryc 15:51 

Right. That’s a scary transition. Right?

Richa Gupta 15:56 

Exactly. So I was like, Yeah, that’s the consumer we always need the product for but I think I have a long way to go. At that time, my product shelf life was three weeks. Because that’s the only time I had because I was trying to make it no preservatives, nothing. I had to test it week by week to see how long it’ll last. So I did that, because I refused to add even citric acid or sorbic acid, there’s no nothing that’s made in a lab in my food. That was my belief that food should come as close to plant as close to its real form as you can, is the food we as humans need to be eating. So that really elongated our r&d process, week after week, month after month test right out if it is right or not, and me revising recipes based on consumer feedback. So eventually, we launched at Whole Foods and then you know, we tested region by region. So till 2016. End of 2016, I was just doing Ontario. So when we started seeing more interest from other regions, so Ontario is the province that I’m in. It’s the biggest province but we were mostly around GTA is the tool for the first couple of years that was just in GTA, it was doing everything from I was the one who manufactures that, the one who bottles it, the one who carries it to the store, the one who does the bookkeeping, and 2017 we got interest from a national chain. So I had to develop, I just developed scaled-up recipes. We got ours organic certification. And yeah, the rest is history.

Diana Fryc 17:48 

So it was in that moment, when people started, maybe you had retail interest or people from the retail background kind of pulling you. That’s kind of when you were like, Okay, I’m onto something. I’ve got this.

Richa Gupta 18:05 

Yeah, and I think 2015 I was little early on the trend to when we lost the ketchup and barbecue sauce by 2017. It was becoming more and more people were aware of it. It was also growing too. So I think the time was right. Yeah, for me to take the next step and actually get a call manufacturer and a national distributor to start distributing internationally. Yeah.

Diana Fryc 18:35 

I’m curious because sometimes our learnings come from, I’ll call them oopss, or mistakes. And so I’m curious. I’m always curious, like, was there, any one learning experience or lost opportunity or mistake that changed the trajectory of your business? Or maybe the way you lead your business?

Richa Gupta 18:59 

Absolutely. I think every business has several do share. One I can share from early, early days. So because I was testing in farmer’s markets, one of the product that I launched was a line of dips that were high protein, so they were being spaced. So one was chickpeas. One was white beans, one was black beans, but their names were very out of the world. So they were Mumbai mint Wahaca arboles goonyella Sado and there was one Kubuntu which I’m forgetting what the name was, but there were so in other words, they did great in farmer’s market when people could taste and then buy multiple for them. Yeah, go eat it. But the minute I launched them in retail I learned if people from the pockets cannot tell what to do with the product, or what it tastes like, it’s not going to work. I didn’t had the money to educate everyone right? I Right, there’s sampling throughout. So if it doesn’t projects, that’s why we made sure now we stick to pantry staples. We are improving things that already exist versus creating things that no one knows. I would love to create all the new to the world flavors like that’s the most exciting thing for anybody in product development, which I consider myself in product development because I love doing that. Even though I have no food science degree.

Diana Fryc 20:31 

Totally okay.

Richa Gupta 20:34 

Yeah, so that’s the reason we decided to make sure with Good Food For Good for improved pantry, staples. And also, for me sauces, it was important because to be honest, cooking is the best thing we all can do for our health.

Diana Fryc 20:50 

Right? You’re right.

Richa Gupta 20:50

If the simplest and the most important thing you can do for health is cook your own food. And it’s not easy when you have never done it. Right? It’s very complicated, especially if you try and do things from a culture that uses a zillion ingredients that you’re not familiar with. Yes. Like I would never dared to cook a Thai sauce from scratch. And then even if I do, I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the ingredients that I need to make one meal.

Diana Fryc 21:21 

Invest $140 In spices that I’ll use once. If I don’t like it, that’s a commitment. Right?

Richa Gupta 21:29 

Exactly a huge commitment. So that’s where sauces came to be. Yeah, that’s the reason why we really think sauces can really make it easy for people eating healthy. Yeah. Add that flavor right to just because we all need little help. It can be boring sometimes.

Diana Fryc 21:48

Yes. Well, and I would agree. I absolutely 100% agree with this concept that people want to explore cuisines? I think the pandemic probably exacerbated that. Because we kind of like, okay, how many times am I going to eat the 12 meals that I’ve made my entire life, and sauces really give an opportunity for the consumer to try something new without the time commitment and the financials, because oftentimes, if you’re trying new cuisine, you’re also trying not just new ingredients, but you’re trying new cooking styles. Oh, I have to do what with this. I don’t know how to do that, or different pacing. And so the sauce is kind of a really nice intro to curious consumer. But I wanted to piggyback off of your naming, product naming situation, because we had a very similar instance, when we worked with Sahale Snacks. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. They’re out of the Northwest. And yeah, when we worked with them, this is years ago now when we worked with them one of our biggest findings, because they had very epicurean flavor profiles, and they were trying to use the naming convention on their products. And the average consumer was like, I don’t know what simberi Cinnamon is and how that’s going to be different than any other cinnamon. So the biggest learning especially with a name like Sahale, which most of most consumers not, from the northwest wouldn’t know how to pronounce that name was to simplify it is going to have to be Sahale Snacks. But if a customer can’t come to a retailer and say or spell it on the internet, if they’re searching for it, you’ve lost that, you’ve lost the opportunity because they won’t know what the expectation is, then they don’t know how to find it. Again, how do you go into a Costco? How do you go into a Whole Foods and ask for something if you don’t know how to pronounce it, or you don’t exactly know what it is so, big learnings there. But what’s amazing is as the general consumer starts to get a little bit more comfortable with new ingredients, add new flavor profiles, which thankfully that’s happening, we can push them a little further and push them and hopefully we can use the General Mills of the world to do the heavy lifting in cuisines over there and kind of helpful a smaller, smaller like I’m already part of the smaller brands, but helped bring the smaller brands that are trying to push the envelope and work together as a collective to kind of grow that experience for the consumer all together. Love it. Yeah. So I’m wondering kind of what milestone or moment in time are you most proud of right now? From where you sit right now? What is the like, yeah, that when we did that thing that was awesome.

Richa Gupta 25:01

When we reached the 1 million donations, we did that, like we were not counting every day kind of thing. But in September, I did the math and be like, we crossed a million. And like, that was the moment I’ve been waiting for, for a long time. So that meant something to me, like I left a marketing career, I definitely would have made good, financially done good in that career. But one thing that I know I wouldn’t have been able to do is donate over a million meals, right? So to really help people who we all can help seriously, it does not take that much to know, to help and to create something that would continue to do that, throughout the life of the business.

Diana Fryc 25:57 

What’s the next threshold or goal that you want to hit? I’m curious.

Richa Gupta 26:04

To be honest, I haven’t. I haven’t thought of the next goal. No, no. I think we just we have a lot of work to do. Education and amplification. about not just about our brand, but overall mindful consumption. So to me, when I would say if I can educate more people about mindful consumption, and the impact their consumption patterns have on the world and their health, then I would say that, made a difference. That’s the biggest thing at this point in the world where we are, that we all need to be mindful of.

Diana Fryc 26:54 

I think waste is getting on the mind of a lot more people now. But particularly we’re in earth month right now. And so that’s kind of Top of Mind, I’m actually writing on a number of issues myself, about recycling and waste, and overconsumption. So it’s very challenging as a CPG brand, to be in this place. Because there’s the tension, you need to make money. You need people to purchase your product to stay in business to feed your family, and all the people that work for you. And at the same time, you don’t want to be contributor, a net negative contributor to the mess that we’re creating. It’s super challenging.

Richa Gupta 27:41 

Very, very, and I’m glad you brought the recycling point, glass thinking that like when we started using like, okay, plastic is an absolute no, no, because of what happens to plastic. The plastic ever produced ever gets recycled. Yes. But with glass, when I read the stats, that didn’t make me that happy either, like, using glass, but only 30% of it was better than plastic. But it’s still only 30%. I mean, there is no reason for us to not be able to recycle more of glass, it’s so much easier to recycle this material, or recycle or use versus plastic. And they still don’t. So a lot of the work that I want to do is focused around that and reducing food waste at home because 43% of food is wasted at home. Yeah, it’s not in the farms. It’s no, it’s what we buy, throw without making it.

Diana Fryc 28:46 

Yeah, it’s crazy to me, because I think some of it is that food is relatively inexpensive for us. In North America in particularly. I mean, we say it’s expensive. But if we look at pricing structures around the world, food is incredibly cheap. And then what we do in order to get it cheap, is we pay labor really cheap. And then we produce so much of it so that we could sell more of it, which is just waste. And I’m like kind of like this it’s a big systems thinking it’s not.

Richa Gupta 29:24

It’s a systemic problem. I totally agree. And it’s not just the manufacturer producing more and wasting it. It’s we as consumers buying more than what we can eat and then wasting, right like not doing meal plan, buying things and not making them and thinking oh, no, today I’m feeling like eating out and once in a while, that’s fine, but figuring out treating the amount of effort that goes in like if anybody has ever worked in a farm. They know what it takes to grow anything or you have a kitchen garden. That would tell you the effort it takes to grow those tomatoes and those carrots and especially organic, right, you’re doing everything by hand. Like when I just started this business, I went to an organic farm and to help the farmer we were buying garlic from and he’s like, yeah, you can hold the leads. And I didn’t even know where it pointing me it was hard. On me it was painful. It was sweaty. And then we call organic food expensive. I have never seen an organic farmer, drive a Mercedes. And we call organic food expensive to work so freakin hard. They work so hard, its job. It’s like our farmers need to be front and center like the people need to be educated where and how their income becomes food that perhaps might change their thinking on the cheap food. It’s worth throwing, like I try and take my daughter to farms to teach her how it’s grown. Like we just went to a date farm when that two weeks ago. Date they called date growth. Wrong word site. But it was fascinating to learn how they’re grown. Like I was mind blown. They had to manually take pollen from male date plants and manually put it on female date plans. No, seriously, manually by hand. I was blown away. I thought that was bees. That’s what bees do.

Diana Fryc 31:51

Wow. Oh,

Richa Gupta 31:52

yeah. Yeah. So it’s just knowing that what it takes to get that nice juicy date?

Diana Fryc 31:57

Yes. Exactly the way you want it. Exactly.

Richa Gupta 32:01

Yeah. And a whole date. A lot of work a lot of work. Oh, my goodness, I need to talk to farmers they need to see and then things will change. Things will change.

Diana Fryc 32:16

Yes. Well, I and then in addition to the cheap food then on the recycling and creating kind of a closed-loop system. And I was at a packaging summit in February. And we talked about the fact that the biggest challenge, the two biggest challenges that we have on the closed-loop system, and you might have seen this already is number one, most of our packaging is mixed materials. And consumers do a lot of waste cycling, because we create this thing we call it recyclable, but it’s not. And then it gets tossed out. Then secondly, the conversion the muse like you got a whole industry. The collection from the curb to a reuse is broken. And there’s inconsistencies and I that I feel like that’s the easiest thing to fix. that I feel is the easiest thing is to fix this. How do we fix from the house through the reuse cycle? Again, like anybody listening here, this it an engineer and innovator? The opportunity for growth is right there. Totally. I mean, just right.

Richa Gupta 33:30

TerraCycle is trying to do something, but it’s still very complicated. It’s still a very complicated and a very expensive, a process and I am not sure why governments like they are doing this anyways. Why can’t we they join hands make one single process. This is how this is done in all municipalities. Yeah.

Diana Fryc 33:55 

Super challenging. I’ll send you after we’re done with this. I’m going to send you some information. Even in Europe, where you countries where you get fined or rewarded for recycling, the maximum recycling, I believe it’s either in Germany or Sweden at 80%.

Richa Gupta 34:14 

That’s, that’s incredible. I think you’re going to be reinstated percent. It’ll be incredible.

Diana Fryc 34:21

Well they get fined. I mean, Americans are not keen on being fined or rewarded. They just want to be able to do or North Americans Canadians, I think are a little bit more rule followers than Americans are? No, not so much. Well, I can keep that fallacy in my head. In any case, I’ll send you the information. It’s pretty striking like the countries that have incredible structures, government structures or municipality structures have a higher participation rate, and therefore they have less issues and there’s a huge revenue structure behind it as well. Because the more recycling there is, the more there is stuff to do. And that’s why I’m like there’s an opportunity there that I think that as a culture North Americans are not really paying attention to, because waste isn’t sexy, but I think pretty soon, waste is going to have to be dealt with because there’s nowhere for it to go.

Richa Gupta 35:24 

I agree. I agree. Again, the whole thing we all live in one planet, I don’t know why we forget. Yes, we are divided by boundaries. But that does not change the planet. Right? Yeah. China, like we’ll just pack it and send it to China.

Diana Fryc 35:42 

They don’t want it anymore. I feel like as North Americans in particular, I don’t mean to pick on myself, because I am a North American myself. We kind of behave like teenagers, you go into a teenager’s room and there’s crap all over the floor, because mom’s going to clean it up. That’s what I feel like is happening right now. And eventually we’ll grow out of our teens and get into a headspace where a little bit more respectful of what needs to be done. But that’s my soapbox.

Richa Gupta 35:42

Yeah, I think we can talk for hours.

Diana Fryc 35:56 

For hours on that.

Richa Gupta 36:16

Maybe we need to do we need to get some leaders in the room who really care about these things. And perhaps we can brainstorm and come up with a solution for different backgrounds, right. Like, I only know what I know, like, the other side, I don’t know, municipality side as much as well. And there was a lot of work that needs to be done.

Diana Fryc 36:37

Agreed. Well, I have a couple more questions before, I need to let you go. But I am curious. We’ve been talking about a lot of things, systemic things, business things, leadership things. What advice do you find yourself giving other founder, owner, entrepreneurs, when they come to you and they want to start a business or they’re struggling within their business unit even, what are you telling them?

Richa Gupta 37:05 

I think, one, and it’s not a very popular advice, but it is what it is. I see entrepreneurs as warriors. I think every day, we need to pour firefighters every day if they are not ready to fight fires or solve problems, we are not doing our job. That’s our job as entrepreneur to create. Like, if it was easy, then everybody would be doing it. If it was easy, but if there are problems, that’s your job to tackle that problem. Yes, there will be problems like who told you that entrepreneur life was easy? Just wear that warrior outfit or whatever makes you feel like one and then go tackle it. There is a solution to every problem that comes you just need to find an answer and that’s my little spiel tough love girl.

Diana Fryc 38:02

Tough love. We need it sometimes. Right? What is next for Good Food For Good? Or what’s next for you? What’s on the horizon?

Richa Gupta 38:16

So as I said, there’s so much work that needs to be done. Right. So for Good Food For Good as a brand, we still have a lot of ground to cover we have only scratched the surface. In US and Canada. With our sauces, we’ve been able to avoid sugar worth 17 million cookies from diets of Americans. But Americans eat billions of cookies, or sugar worth billions of cookies. And I’m not against like sugar as a food group or as like desserts are bad. There’s a place for everything. Right. Like I like my dessert. But I like my sugar and my dessert. When I’m craving sugar, I would rather keep my six teaspoon that WHO says for my dessert. I don’t want to have it for breakfast lunch and dinner. And I think there’s so much work we need to do on that side. There’s so much work that needs to be done on making plant-based more holistic and not just highly processed version of meat. And again, so much work that needs to be done on making a difference in fight against hunger.

Diana Fryc 39:40

Yes, wonderful. Well, there’s a couple of last questions I like to ask everybody. And the first one is are there any women leaders or rising stars out there in our industry or not that you would like to elevate or simply admire for the work that they’re doing right now and why?

Richa Gupta 40:00

Absolutely, Shelby. I would say Shelby Taylor from Chickapea pasta I don’t know if you’ve spoken to her. She’s also a fellow B Corp Canadian, incredible story on how she’s building her company. They are really really revolutionizing the pasta segment. Her pasta is made with two ingredients, chickpeas, and lentils, all certified organic, and they give back to the community as well. Like doing all the right things that are needed to be done to be a force for good. Save a lot of admiration for her. And single-handedly she’s building this while she’s a mom of two little kids. So I’m super proud of what she has done in her products that are also available across North America, US and Canada, even in hospital. So great story, like she would be another person I would highly recommend if you want to invite for podcasts. Learn from her every day.

Diana Fryc 41:00

Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you. And well this is I guess my overlap, any brands or food trends that you have your eye on and why?

Richa Gupta 41:13 

I would say plant based to boito where people see plants as plants appealing, not plants that look like meat appealing. Whatever to cook like the renaissance of cooking, and I hope what people have learned during COVID, it stays because it’s serious. It will make such a big difference in our health, in the planet’s health, when you buy ingredients versus buying, always buying packaged things and just microwaving eating it. There’s a lot. Yeah, those two things I should say not one, you asked for one, I gave you two.

Diana Fryc 41:59 

That’s okay. That’s totally okay. My goodness. Well, we have been listening talking with Richa Gupta, president of Good Food For Good. Richa, where can people learn more about you and your company your brand?

Richa Gupta 42:19

Absolutely. You can follow our journey on goodfoodforgood.ca or any social media channels just use Good Food For Good as the username or whatever it’s called, handle.

Diana Fryc 42:35 

Well, I have to ask your daughter.

Richa Gupta 42:37 

Yeah, she knows the lingo.

Diana Fryc 42:43

Okay, well thank you so much for your time today. I have been just thrilled to talk to you and learn a little bit more about your journey and excited to see what’s next for you. And I want to thank our listeners for their time today. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. Otherwise, have a great rest of your day and we’ll catch you next time on the Gooder Podcast.

Outro 43:15

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