Food entrepreneurs provide hospital donations to New York
When the coronavirus, or COVID-19, hit New York City in late March, local food entrepreneurs sought to give hospital staff members more healthful options than stale coffee and vending machine meals. A rising entrepreneur with limited experience in the packaged food industry in his hometown, Cole Riley founded the charity organization Founders Give with the goal of gathering supplies and delivering them to medical professionals in the epicenter of the outbreak.
The program has given 47 hospitals access to 1.6 million snacks and beverages from roughly 300 companies in only two months. Small-scale producers of cold-brew coffee and kombucha as well as major enterprises like Kind Healthy Snacks and Chobani are among the participating companies.
Mr. Riley, a former lawyer who founded a yogurt firm (but has since given up on the venture), launched Founders Market last year as a way to highlight the business owners of emerging food brands in New York. Plans were altered when the virus struck.
“I noticed some of these brands and founders I got to know really well were having trouble getting their products into hospitals for donation in the middle of March, specifically on March 20,” Mr. Riley stated. “I reasoned that maybe we would have better luck meeting those minimum requirements, coordinating with loading docks and operations teams, and ultimately getting product into the hands of health care workers if you bring them together, act as a distributor, and approach these hospital systems and individual hospitals as one voice representing X amount of products, X amount of brands.”
He rallied a few brands he was familiar with from a prior initiative, and he was able to secure a truck and warehouse space. As businesses joined to give socks, deodorant, and bed linens, the initiative grew into the biggest food drive in the city, drawing attention from corporations outside of New York and even outside of the food and beverage sector.
“I’ve emerged as the top supplier of beverages and snacks, whether they are donated or not,” Mr. Riley stated. Early in April, hospitals ceased to place orders for standard food orders. Their money was running low. As a result, I’ve emerged as the main supplier of food in numerous facilities.
Founders Give now operates four trucking businesses and two warehouses. All by himself, Mr. Riley manages the business, preparing packing lists and inventory reports, and corresponding with each hospital and brand. He takes care of his own media inquiries as well.
“I get in touch with each brand and their founder directly every night before the next day’s scheduled deliveries to let them know where their product is heading: one pallet to Mount Sinai, forty cases to NYU Langone, six skids to Metropolitan,” he said. Nonprofits don’t engage in that kind of openness.
Early on in the initiative were the creators of Lupii, a line of plant-based snacks made with high-protein lupini beans. Through Founders Market, Mr. Riley was already acquainted with Isabelle Steichen and Alexandra Dempster.
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“In just a few weeks, he not only established the intricate logistics of delivering over a million food products to over 100,000 healthcare workers, but he was also able to tap into the community of small and large CPG businesses,” Ms. Steichen stated. As a recently established plant-based snack company, we see it crucial to help individuals obtain wholesome nourishment throughout this difficult time. Seeing the real effects and images of nurses and physicians clutching Lupii and other food items that support them as they work in the hospitals has been satisfying. We are fully aware of the recipients and purposes of our gifts. It’s a really special project, and working together has been quite fulfilling.
Many have been compelled, often with disastrous results, to modify their plans and adjust to a permanently changed reality as a result of the pandemic. Mr. Riley feels that the virus has given his work elevating small company entrepreneurs new direction and significance.
“I really believe that if you bring this community together as a streamlined nonprofit, we can make a huge impact. There’s an opportunity to take what we’ve been doing in New York with hospitals, expand on it gradually, focus on the CPG brands and founders, and make it as easy as possible to give,” Mr. Riley stated.