How to Reduce Food Waste and Food Insecurity with Louise Fritjofsson
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Reducing Food Waste Through Your Food Business…
Food waste is a big problem in the United States, but I didn’t realize how big until recording this episode. So many people have food insecurity, and with steadily rising food prices at the grocery store, this likely won’t change any time soon. So, what can we do to alleviate this problem?
In this episode, Louise Fritjofsson, co-founder of Martie online discount grocery store, shares how she is reducing food waste and increasing food accessibility for all, the challenges she faced in starting her business, and how she gets the word out about Martie with marketing.
We also chat about the double standard of women in the entrepreneurial space who get pushback as mothers and CEOs. It’s sad that this is still happening.
Subscribe to the Food Means Business Podcast with Hudson Kitchen founder Djenaba Johnson-Jones to hear the personal stories and “secret ingredients” of abandoning your day job and starting a CPG food business.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
[00:36] Louise’s career trajectory as a founder at a young age
[07:52] Louise shares her road to launching Martie, her online discount grocery store
[11:21] How Louise and her business partner were received in the market as pregnant women and new moms looking for investors
[13:35] The challenges Louise faced in the beginning stages of her business, and how she gets the word out with marketing
[17:36] Where the name Martie comes from, plus how Louise takes care of herself as a parent and business owner
If you want to hear more about fighting food waste and increasing food accessibility, be sure to tune into this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode…
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About Louise Fritjofsson:
Louise Fritjofsson is a mission-driven 4-time founder with 2 exits and a passion for finding the sweet spot of technology improving people’s livelihood. With startups ranging from online grocery, digital marketplaces and adtech, Louise has a footprint in both Europe and the United States. She’s built a broad understanding of the global startup ecosystem and has won awards such as “Entrepreneur of the Year” and listed as one of Europe’s leading female entrepreneurs over her career. Currently, Louise is transforming the problem of food waste into a solution for food insecurity with Martie, the online discount grocer aiming to make good food more accessible.
Connect with Louise Fritjofsson:
Connect with Louise on LinkedIn
Stay Connected with Djenaba Johnson-Jones:
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[00:00:01] Djenaba You are listening to the Food Means Business Podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a CPG food and beverage business. I'm Djenaba Johnson-Jones, former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen. Join our community of fellow food business owners and subject matter experts to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world that's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days. All right, Louise, welcome to the Food Means Business Podcast.
[00:00:34] Louise Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:36] Djenaba Absolutely. So we typically start that your founder, in telling your story from your leap in corporate to entrepreneurship. But I know that you've always been a founder, so I'd love to hear about your career trajectory.
[00:00:47] Louise Yeah, so funny. I love your podcast. And that was one of my things initially. I'm like, Oh, I don't know how to talk about that because I've never done this. I came out of school, you know, when you were like 18, 19, and I went traveling for a bit. I came back and I took a job and I took a job at a startup. And at this point, this is 15, 16 years ago, startups was not cool. It's not a thing. Being a founder wasn't anything that anyone's striving for. And I started working at actually what we would call today was a startup, just a small company, and being there for like six, seven months and just feeling like they have no idea what they're doing. And I'm a big pillar of this team, even though I'm so young, had me thinking maybe I can run and try and do something myself instead of working for someone else. And at that age, you know, taking the leap to doing something yourself is is not as daunting as when you're older. When you're 18 or 19, you can move back to your parents worst case scenario. So I just went for it. I started an e-commerce company at the age of 19 and that was I'm from Sweden, so that's a weird accent when you're like, What is that? So I started out here in not at all, and I ran that for ran that for two years and it was acquired. And then I moved on and I, I saw another gap in the market, which was just, was really hard to advertise digitally at this point. So I started an ad network and I did that for five years and I just sold out last year actually. So I stayed on as board member and owner of the company for a few years after being operational. I have that acquired last year and then I went on from that point to start a peer to peer marketplace. Another problem I saw in the markets that I thought needed solving, and from that point I started a food company, much because I had my first baby six years ago and got really focused on what he ate and should not eat and was thinking a lot about the issues that we had in the food system and wanting to build a big company and soon. So the one company I've just kind of like led to the other, even though they're not necessarily in the same industry or category, I've just seen different problems that have been very interested in trying to fix and solve. So I just never made it to university and I never made it too big or I've just been pushing this founder journey in front of me.
[00:03:10] Djenaba I think that's amazing. Coming out of school, I was like, I wanted to get a job because I wanted to make money so I could take care of myself. And I didn't really think about entrepreneurship. Kind of so scary. And I didn't start my business until eight years ago.
[00:03:23] Louise I think it's like scarier when you're older because then you have expenses.
[00:03:27] Djenaba It's true. It's true. It's like you have a mortgage and a 401k and children and all the things. And it definitely was scary. But actually what for me, it was like I felt more confident in myself, right? And it was easy for me to take a chance. But I also got laid off. And so it was like, what do you do? Do you go back to work for someone else or do you try to do something yourself? So we kind of were like, You only live once. And as long as that kind of backing means, Let's go do this thing. So I.
[00:03:54] Louise Love that. I love it. Good for you. Yeah.
[00:03:58] Djenaba So talk to us about Martie. What is Martie?
[00:04:02] Louise Yeah. So Martie is my new baby. Me and my partner Kari launched Martie about 20 months ago, so we, I think we probably started focusing on what is Martie and how to build a company two and a half years ago. And really the background story is I met Kari, my co-founder, maybe two years before we started Martie, and we found each other and talking about again, I had my first baby a few years earlier, she had a baby at the same age, and it just opened our eyes for nutrition and issues in the food industry. But more so than where we talk, we're like, we're privileged because we have 39 million Americans that are food insecure, 9 million of them are kids. I want to that thing, you know, kids not having access to healthy or even just like food at all because it's so expensive these days, that's like, well, we have enough food to go around. It's going around. That's the issue. And we came to that conclusion really focusing on there's 30 to 40% of foods that go to landfill, even though it's perfectly fine to consume. And on the other side of this, we have all these people really struggling to put food on the table. And then we have a huge gap of people that are not food insecure but just it's expensive to buy food. Right? Right. So we started thinking about that and we started thinking about, you know, other aspects of like the next generation, sustainability being a big part of it. How do we make sure that we are part of building a sustainable future and again, like solving food waste to be a huge, huge part of solving? A future for our kids from an environmental perspective. So we set out to build Martie with just working with vendors, working with food producers, taking on any of their inventory that is, for whatever reason, not making it to the normal retail shelf. So when you think of that number, 30 to 40% of food go to landfill. Even those pretty hard to consume does not mean that it's past best before date. It doesn't mean that it's expired food. But producing food is so tricky and hard for many, many reasons. So few that how long shelf life left still, maybe a purchase order is pulled from Safeway or it's a seasonality product where you don't really know how much you produce or it's a new type of product with a new flavor. There's all these different things that can call for an overflow of products, and there's a lot, unfortunately, way, way too much of it. So we get in and we buy this inventory at about usually 50% discount from normal retail store, and we give that discount to the consumer. So when you come to Martie.com to shop, you find items up to 70% off the majority of our inventory is 50% off. And we work for the big brands that you know, and lots we work with, whether it's, you know, any sort of kind or catalogs, we usually have it all and we where we win is we only do shelf stable products. So we do not do fresh produce. We don't do fresh anything or frozen. So basically middle aisle of the grocery store. So shelf, stable food, household items, health, beauty and pets is really where we can come in and help you save money. And it's cool. You know, when you save money with us, you help save the environment because we're pulling all that inventory into the arms of people and such.
[00:07:17] Djenaba That is amazing that you're able to kind of fill that gap for people. I was actually surprised that 30 to 40% of foods were going into a landfill. It was shocking to me. And then given the fact that, as you mentioned, it's people that are hungry and then food is just expensive, it just doesn't seem to make any sense. So.
[00:07:36] Louise It doesn't and I know.
[00:07:37] Djenaba No sense whatsoever. So, like, I'm so happy that you've, like, found this solution. And then I went on to the website and I was like, Oh, well, this is really great. There's so many brands that I personally buy that I would be able to buy on Martie.com. So that's interesting.
[00:07:49] Louise Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
[00:07:52] Djenaba Sure. So talk about the road to launching Martie. What did you guys do to get to the point where you launched? Martie Dotcom.
[00:08:00] Louise Yeah. So we we were both highly pregnant with our second kid, both me and my co-founder, Kari, when we decided to start Martie and I will say at one point, my friends and our husbands are like, You're crazy with what you're doing. So you wait a little bit. But when your heart calls for starting a new company, I think you need to go for it. So we knew that we were both having babies that summer. This was in December, January, when we decided this is the business idea that we need to go after. And we both were due with our second baby that summer. So we said, let's just take these six months and plan out like let's learn everything we can on this industry, our competitors, let's build the website, let's spend time with the branding and just the feel of the company and think about like, what culture do we want to build? What are you supposed to feel when you arrive as as a consumer? So we took those six months, and I think my co-founder, will tell you one of my superpowers is to find people to talk to that I can learn from. So I probably spent, you know, two months straight just talking to everyone under the sun. Might have been a former founder or a former employee or an investor or a board member of any online grocery of any liquidations store, anything that like fell into the categories where we were trying to get in a win to just figure out what's the secret sauce? What have you done that didn't work? Where did you fail? Where do you think we can win? We also started probing investors that we think could be interested in this business model. We knew we were not fundraising now, but getting them the story early and getting their feedback. Who has an appetite for this? Does anyone have an appetite? When is the right time? What have they seen in the market? Is a very good way for you to also digest where the market is and where it's at, because we knew from the beginning we would need external financing to support this business first few years. And then again we spent a ton of time just building out everything we could from making vendor relationships, making sure that vendors were ready to work with us when we were ready to launch, building the e-commerce experience and testing that out and sending that forward just UX testing, user experience testing, are we doing the right thing? And then again, like a ton of time on the brand because we think brands win today and it's very important that you have a relationship with the customer, not just as as we have vendors, but it's important that you feel like you're shopping with Martie and we have a relationship with you. So those six months were super fun, right? Like that initial, like finding out what you're going to do and what your identity and who could you learn from type around you. During this process, we also found our initial five employees from just talking to people, figuring out who really excited about what you're doing and how could they fit on the team comes naturally when you're out and just learning from people. And that's the most amazing employees, right? People that you reach out to to learn from. If you can hire people that you learned from, like half the battle was won, right? Yes. So we did all of that. And then I had my baby and then when she was four weeks. So we actually closed our financing round basically with Kari in the hospital, having her baby. But then we were kind of like ready to go. And then, yeah, we brought onboard the people that we knew we needed and, and we, we kind of like sent the agreements with the vendors that we had already built a relationship with at this point. And we were off to the races.
[00:11:21] Djenaba So I have two children and they're just a part of kind of life and kind of what happens. And so you all, you know, being pregnant and trying to raise money, did you receive any pushback from that? Because I was up like as a mom when you had a deadline, right? Like you're having a baby at a certain point like that, was it right, Like you were able to prioritize what you needed to do to kind of get done. So you just talk about a little bit about how you all were received in the market.
[00:11:44] Louise Yeah, it was an interesting time because this is also still COVID, which means that most meetings, if not all meetings, was done over video, which means that you wouldn't necessarily see that we're pregnant initially. So that was like a very interesting thing for me and my clients. Like figure out like, what do we tell people in this process? Sort of by the way, I here's also my baby. Here is an interesting thing to kind of like figure out when in the process we do we talk about this. We did have some some pushback from people, which is kind of like great to know, because then we also know that's not the investor that we want to work with. And then, you know, the investors that get onboard with us also saw it as our superpower. If you're crazy enough to be like, give me my money, I'm going to start this company and run for it. When you're baby's 4 weeks old, they're like, yes, you're going to you're going to get ultra thin for this company, which is 100%. Right. Right. And like, that's how you look at it. So at the end, it was like a way for us to make sure that we got investors on board, that we vibe with and where we are on the same page with how life works and who we are as individuals and on the other side as well. So we definitely had some really weird and awkward conversations, but that just made us very sure that we never, ever wanted to get involved with those investors.
[00:13:03] Djenaba It's so interesting. Like it's, you know, 2023 and people are still having the same conversations, even about pregnant women. And you especially with all of your experience like you just having a baby just was like you having a baby. That's what people do. So it just didn't make any sense that you were having to defend that to someone.
[00:13:20] Louise No, I mean, my husband wouldn't have to even figure out, like, think of when to mention he's having a baby, Right? So nobody would.
[00:13:27] Djenaba Nobody would ever ask him that question. And he might mention it in passing to someone. They'd say, congratulations. They'd move on with the conversation. Right. For right now, very different. So you got financing and you hired your initial employees and kind of got started. Can you talk a little bit about like what it was like to launch Martie.com, kind of some challenges that you faced?
[00:13:46] Louise Every part of a startup's lifecycle is like so dreamy when you look back, right? So whenever you ask, you have something that was two years ago, I'm like, Oh, I was the best time. And then when you were like, Oh God, it's hard. So I now live in Los Angeles. My co-founder does as well, but I was in San Francisco. We had our first warehouse outside of San Francisco. It was kind of a three field, but it was also us being in there and like helping pack boxes, like making things work. As we launched and we got a ton more orders than what we expected. We grew 100% a month of the month and the first six months and this warehouse was not necessarily equipped which is there. We had no idea what what our order volume would be. So it was like a mayhem of six months initially where we were just like scraping everything we could get in terms of like buying inventory. And it of course, at this point we don't really know what inventory moves, what does the consumer need or want? How much do we push on prices? So our buying is a lot more sophisticated today. We have honestly, of course, a lot better partners and more of them, and we can pick and choose differently. So it was a wild time from a purchasing perspective, but it was also a wild time from just like a lot of time in the warehouse being there. It helped the warehouse get boxes out and we kept getting flooded with like big sales days and falling behind schedule. So it was a lot of that just learning the business from a very deep operational standpoint. What happens when we get X orders a day that is three times as much as we're currently used to? And how do we circumvent that with better planning around marketing and deals and filling up staff at the warehouse? So it was just a wild ride like as it should be with startups when you launch. There were a lot of big learnings in a short period of time.
[00:15:31] Djenaba So I saw that you have your warehouses now in Texas. Is that right?
[00:15:36] Louise Yeah. The Texas warehouse is our third warehouse. We just opened that in April. And what's really cool with our Texas warehouse, it's a very big so we can grow our you can't quite significantly and we can grow how many unit that we get so we can cover a lot more states and with a central location we can ship to more states. So we're currently live at 34 states. And just two months ago we were live in 11. Wow. So we've had quite the expansion in the last few weeks. Yeah, it's really yeah, it's a fun time for us. And before end of Q3 here, we will be shipping nationwide.
[00:16:08] Djenaba Which is amazing for us. That's amazing. How do you get the word out about Martie? How are you marketing the business?
[00:16:15] Louise Yeah, so it's it's a great question. Marketing like there is no silver bullet. I would say that anyone who's like hiring a growth marketer is like grow quickly, but it's just you need to edit and test a ton of things. We did grow quite significantly through using Meta in our first couple of months. This is before. I don't know how much, you know, like Meta changed the algorithm about a year and a half ago. It affects every startup significantly. It works really well for the big companies. They basically just like optimized for the big corps. So with this shift that didn't work for us, we needed to rethink it. And at this point we had quite a significant, you know, customer group. So we really did the work at trying to figure out how do we get Martie fans to share the word of Martie. And we figured out, what do you like to share? What's needed for you to share? How do we build a Refer a friend program? So that's a huge engine for what we do. In addition to this, honestly, it's pretty cool because PR is a big piece of the puzzle for us. And of course, we live in a world where everyone talks about how expensive grocery is. Any PR piece that we're going to get is talking about how cheaply you can buy groceries with Martie. So that's actually become a very big component of what's important for us and how to get our story and our word out.
[00:17:36] Djenaba That's amazing. Oh, let me ask you this, too. Why Martie? Why Martie, the name Martie for the business. Can you talk about it?
[00:17:41] Louise Jesus Christ naming this company took us like two months. I swear to God, I spent more time naming Martie than my actual babies. So, no, we had a big exercise because you also gave us those six months, we fully dove in. And but when it came down to is like, listen, we need something that is like personal and. On and you can make it just something to to relate to. And we started thinking, what is that? Maybe it's like a person's name. Could it be like Penny? Were you thinking, SMartie Penny is saving money? And then all of a sudden we got into Mart? Cause you go through Grocery Mart, we're not using that word, but it actually is a mart. And then yeah, and then we started talking about, like, our illustration, like, well worth could be Martie is we're working Martie into our story, telling a lot more and then completely transparent I could buy the domain Martie.com which getting domains is really hard.
[00:18:33] Djenaba It's so challenging.
[00:18:34] Louise Oh my goodness I can get so that kind of like we had a lot of good contenders but with that domain I was like, we don't have to do get X or paid that, you know? Right. That's on it.
[00:18:45] Djenaba So now it's such a great name in that it's really catchy and fun. So yeah, I love it.
[00:18:51] Louise So yeah now we yeah we enjoy it for sure. We're having fun with it.
[00:18:57] Djenaba You know you're obviously a parent and a busy business owner and talk a little bit about how you take care of yourself. I feel like entrepreneurs, we're just kind of working a lot and you having had several companies you probably have gotten really good at good at it.
[00:19:12] Louise Yeah. Yeah. And so it's interesting because I have it helps when you're very interested in healthy food and moving and working out. So I've always been very interested and enjoyed running and just working out. So running for me is a kind of like meditation. So that just normally happens whenever I feel stressed, whenever I feel anxious, whenever I feel like needing to break an hour of my day to just go for a run because I know that will help me work better going forward. So that kind of like happens naturally. And then I do have, when I feel very overwhelmed, I do have a meditation practice and that kind of like comes and goes. It's something that I add in when I feel like I really need it. So I will say I wish I was like I always meditate and every day and which is not true. So it happens when I feel like I really need it. But yeah, now changes with workload.
[00:20:17] Djenaba So we at Hudson Kitchen have what we call Moneyball that we bring when we're celebrating something. It could be like their paycheck or it could be someone bringing out a new retail partner. And I'm wondering, what are you celebrating right now? It could be personal or professional.
[00:20:31] Louise So, yeah, on a professional level, we do have a lot to celebrate. As you can hear, we just launched a bunch of new markets and with any startup you don't expand unless you see unit economics working. So of course, like us taking on more markets and flexing our footprint really is a sign of unit economics and starting to make sense, which for my industry is really hard. So I'm really proud over the work that we've done this year, making sure that we have positive unit economics and can continue expanding as a business so that that in itself is a great thing. We also do have a lot of new phenomenal like vendor partners that were signing on, and then I just hired two new team members on my team and getting kind of the people to trust you and join you on your journey is the most important thing and something that I'm always really, really proud over when someone trust us to join us on this journey.
[00:21:25] Djenaba That's awesome. I think it's really important because like you're essentially a small business because we not having a ton of employees and having somebody come in and kind of help you with your baby.
[00:21:35] Louise Exactly. Is really.
[00:21:37] Djenaba Really important. That's great. Yeah.
[00:21:39] Louise And competition for like talented people out there is, rough, you know, so.
[00:21:43] Djenaba To me, it means they really are kind of bought into you and your partner and that company itself, they believe in the mission and that's really important. So Louise, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it and wanted to please let everybody know where they can find out about Martie and also about you.
[00:22:01] Louise Yeah, I mean, Martie, go check us out on Martie.com for sure. For socials we have a pretty fun social accounts check us out. Martiefoods is on Instagram and TikTok and LinkedIn and wherever you get your social feed. And then I'm not so active on Twitter anymore but come find me and follow me on LinkedIn. That's usually my my best kind of way of sharing thoughts and industry recaps and Martie news and just search for Fritjofsson and I think I'm the only person with that name and you'll find me.
[00:22:35] Djenaba Awesome, thank you so much.
[00:22:36] Louise Thank you.
[00:22:38] Djenaba The Food Means Business podcast was produced by Hudson Kitchen. It is recorded at the studio at Carney Point and mixed and edited by Wild Home Podcasting. Our theme song is by Damien de Sands, and I'm your host, Djenaba Johnson-Jones. Follow Hudson Kitchen on Instagram at thehudsonktchen and to get Food Business Bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at thehudsonkitchen.com/newsletter. Listen, follow and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Until next time.