When 47M people face hunger every day in this country and 38% of our food is thrown away with big environmental consequences, food waste is one of the most tragic stories in our broken food system. But, there’s also an opportunity to do something about this. That’s a big reason we’ve become such fans of Matriark Foods. Matriark is an environmental impact food company that upcycles farm surplus and remnants from large vegetable manufacturing facilities into products we love. Our pantries are stocked with Matriark’s tomato sauces. And in addition to these items you might see on your grocery store shelves, the company also sells into the foodservice and emergency food markets.
Today, we’re chatting with Matriark founder and CEO, Anna Hammond who is navigating the complexities of running a growing food brand, while keeping true to her purpose-driven mission and purpose to feed the world with less waste.
Read more below and shop at Matriark with code BEANS for 15% of your purchase.
Beanstory: You come from the nonprofit world, why did you decide to start a food brand?
Anna Hammond: Founding this business was inspired by a couple of things—one was seeing young people's passion for eating healthy food, yet the limited access they had to affordable ingredients. The farm program at The Sylvia Center, where I was the Executive Director for eight years, had a learning garden, as well as 13 acres in production, and every week there was so much extra produce that couldn’t find a home. Even donation centers didn’t have the storage for people to utilize this food. And the data on the terrifying impact that wasted food has on climate change was starting to be widely published. Seeing all of this extra food, knowing that farmers need extra income, and being painfully aware that the young people we were working with wanted greater access to healthy ingredients, was the tidal wave that pushed me to launch Matriark.
I had the passion to fix something and saw that the problem was fixable. I started my first business after 25 years in the nonprofit world. But everything I learned: developing a rigorous thesis, testing it out small with a little bit of funding; building it, changing it, and bringing along partners who could add value whether strategically or financially, and then going for it, were skills I transferred to start this business.
"I had the passion to fix something and saw that the problem was fixable."
- Anna Hammond
B: You developed a food safe compliance supply chain early on. In what ways did you need to set things up differently to make your business work?
AH: As a founding member of the Upcycled Food Association, Matriark helped define the process for third-party verification of certified upcycled food products. Matriark’s supply chain is where we innovate, disrupt, and manifest the circular systems necessary to mitigate waste at a large scale. Across the US, there are fresh-cut facilities and vegetable processors that, in the aggregate, produce over 19 million tons of usable off-cuts, most of which is sent to landfills. Matriark has worked with these vegetable manufacturers to safely capture and re-classify these perfectly edible offcuts and rejects into shelf-stable food products. That means creating new systems for capture and just-in-time transport, and processing of the ripest, most delicious ingredients. It’s a time-sensitive and complex logistical process that requires cooperation and coordination. We also work with small and mid-scale farmers to purchase their imperfect vegetables for processing. This is logistically even more complex because of the dearth of wash and pack and aggregation—midscale infrastructure is desperately needed.
B: As a sustainably mindful brand, you chose to put your sauces in a Tetrapak versus glass. This might seem contradictory to some - but there’s obviously a good reason. Can you explain what led you to make this decision?
AH: You can fit 9x as many Tetrapak cartons in a truckload as you can with glass. The size and weight reduces the number of trucks on the road, reducing emissions in transit. As with glass, Tetrapak is also recyclable.
B: Are you a bean fan? No pressure here:)
AH: I love beans! I have eaten beans all my life in a million different forms, from my father’s black bean soup to our recent launch of vegetable harvest stew which has 18g of protein from New York grown beans. We are also involved in the Beans is How campaign. Beans are great for the environment and your personal health.
B: Any books, movies, or podcasts that you love and would recommend?
AH: When I was in the first year of developing Matriark, I listened to nearly every single episode of “How I Built This”. I still think about some of the crazy struggles that other successful companies have had in their journeys, and those journeys to success continue to inspire me.
B: What’s a lesson you hope your kids (and grandkids) learn from you?
AH: I hope they learn that life is a series of projects, and that everyone can make a difference and organize and collaborate with others to help make a difference, too.
"Life is a series of projects, and everyone can make a difference and organize and collaborate with others to help make a difference."
- Anna Hammond
B: What do you want people to understand the most about the issues you’re trying to solve?
AH: Food waste is one of the largest contributors of GHGs, and is a completely solvable issue if everyone would commit to reducing food waste in their own homes, and purchasing upcycled products for their homes and institutions.
B: Initially, you were only servicing the foodservice industry. Why did you start there?
AH: Matriark is focused on the urgent need to transform our current food system. Over the last 80 years, with “the speed and greed to market,” we've lost many of the essential aspects of creating greater access to healthy food for all people. So, our efforts are really focused on making healthy food for people, creating more significant economic opportunities for farmers, and diverting waste from landfill. That’s why we decided to target the food service sector first – because it’s where over 50% of meals are eaten in the United States every day, and a corporate cafeteria or college dining hall serves thousands of people per meal. That means a path to the largest and fastest impact. We need to move fast and fix things.
B: We love the name, Matriark. It’s layered with meaning. What does this name represent to you?
AH: Our grandmothers were thrifty, elegant, comforting and strong. They lived through wars and had to stretch meals, so they learned to make a lot out of a little, make it taste good, be filling and nutritious. They lived by the motto “fix it, don’t toss it”. They fixed morsels into meals and there was always room for one more guest at the table. The Ark at the end of the name is a reference to Noah’s ark—a story everyone knows about saving human and animal life from a massive environmental disaster.
Brilliant! Let's be clear - Matriark products taste amazing! So, supporting a brand doing the important and necessary work of changing our food system, feels like a no-brainer. You can find Matriark in grocery stores across the northeast and purchase directly on their website. Use the code BEANS to get a 15% discount when you shop here.