3min chapter

How I Built This with Guy Raz cover image

HIBT Lab! Goodr: Jasmine Crowe-Houston

How I Built This with Guy Raz

CHAPTER

Are You a Waste Company or a Republic Service?

Every company in America now has a sustainability department. People care about not wasting food and making sure that their neighbors have access to food. We typically see a four to 10 X ROI. So if they're paying us $1,000 a month, they are typically donating $4,000 worth of food on a monthly basis. I met with a really big company that just became a client of gooders and they were like, oh, we can never work with you because you're not a nonprofit.

00:00
Speaker 2
Well, let me understand the business model. So essentially you go to a client, right? And you say you're paying somebody to take away this food surplus food anyway. Why don't you pay us and then we'll take it and we will distribute it to nonprofits who will then make sure the people who need the food are fed?
Speaker 1
Exactly. And we charge like almost like a waste company. So a waste company, waste management, Republic services, whichever, they are charging based on volume, how often they're coming out, sometimes how many bins they're picking up. And so that is really the way that we looked at it as well. But our price is based on which vehicle. Because a car is definitely cheaper than sending out a tractor trailer. So we have customers that pay for a number of pickups per month, firm, gooder. So they're either paying for eight pickups, 12 pickups, 20 or 30 pickups on a monthly basis that they can use whenever they have excess
Speaker 2
food. And I guess the difference between you and a waste management service is that they're just going to pick it up and dump it. You guys are going to pick it up, give it to nonprofits and then hand them a slip with their donation credit so they can actually write it up. So it's almost like a rebate. Like they might pay you $100 a month, but they might get a $25 rebate from the donation, a tax credit.
Speaker 1
It's even bigger than that. We typically see a four to 10 X ROI. So if they're paying us $1,000 a month, they are typically donating $4,000 worth of food on a monthly basis. So that, and you know, honestly, guys, that was what I thought most companies would want to do it for like, hey, you want to feed people, you want to get the tax deductions. But honestly, the tides have changed. And now everyone is concerned about ESG's and sustainability. And every company in America now has a sustainability department. I could tell you five years ago, that wasn't the case. I met with a really big company that just became a client of gooders and they were one of those ones that were like, oh, we can never work with you because you're not a nonprofit. And I will tell you this year, they sent a message to our general sales inbox, right? When I was the CEO, graveling it, their foot four years ago and said, hey, like you guys have all these employees, you have 100,000 employees, you've got all these cafeterias, like let us get the food and get it donated. And they literally wrote to us and it said, we are trying to get a handle on our food waste problem. I'd love to talk to somebody about getting this set up. That is what's happening now. When I was talking about this four and five years ago, no one was talking about sustainability. No one was this idea of climate change and it seemed real. We also didn't have a pandemic where we witnessed millions of people experiencing hunger that had never been hungry before. And so the mindset has changed and this matters. This matters to people. People care about not wasting food and making sure that their neighbors have access to food.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode