I am currently fundraising for a profitable plant-based business and would like to speak with any investors who may be interested in an interesting opportunity tht sits ourside of traditional search. This is an early-stage business that has profitable unit economics and is well-poised for scale with limitied capital required. In under 3 months, the business was working across 3 retailers with $600,000 of annualized revenue. I am a Booth MBA with experience in search and decided to take a slightly different approach to entrepreneurship. We have some search investors, family offices, and a VC firm involved in the $1.5 million round.

Deck & Materials:

At Earthi we're building a plant-based grab and go business specifically for Flexitarians -- the 60% of the US that still consumes meat but wants to eat more plant-based. 90% of Flexitarians are currently unsatisfied with their existing plant-based options as they are often overlooked (which is shocking considering the Vegan population makes up only .5% of the US population). As a result, we’ve reverse engineered recipes that meet the needs of Flexitarians (healthy, approachable, flavorful, accessible) and are building a brand that they love. We are working with a chef who was recently nominated for a James Beard Award, who also has experience across Michelin star restaurants as well as a nutritionist who is a NYT best-seller.
Operational Model The key to Earthi's business model is a "Hub & Spoke" -- through which we produce our meals in a centralized kitchen, and sell our food through small "Micro Retail '' locations that are heavily branded and only ~500 sqft. These locations require very minimal buildout costs and do not have on premise kitchens.
Progress to Date While at Chicago Booth we launched an Earthi pilot to prove demand and to demonstrate feasibility. This included hiring and training a local chef to reproduce our recipes, creating sustainable packaging, locating a production facility, and marketing our bowls to local consumers. We sold bowls through 3 retail stores (a gym, a cafe, and a grocery store) as well as through corporate catering and D2C through various pickups. We saw significant appetite for the product, with $570,000 of annualized revenue ($190,000 per retail store). We also achieved an average customer rating on the food of 9/10 and 36% of customers re-purchased over limited sales periods.
Funding With Earthi's momentum, we entered the Chicago Booth New Venture Challenge (one of the top ranked accelerator programs in the nation) and was selected as a finalist. In the finals (June 2022), Earthi won 1st place in The People's Choice Award and was one of the top funded businesses from the "demo day" -- with investments from VCs, family offices, professors, and angels. We are currently raising the rest of our $1.5M SAFE.