In This Newsletter, We Will Talk About
Met my niece recently, her friend told her that she never eats the school pizza, ‘It makes her stomach hurt.’
I thought to myself, it can't be a case of bad nutrition or individual allergies, but much to my unpleasant surprise, it was, indeed, a case of bad nutrition due to sector constraints. I’d uncovered a $20B lunch system where spoiled milk and rotten fruit aren’t.
If this were a startup pitch, I’d pass in 30 seconds. Three vendors control a $20B school lunch market, repeatedly fail on basic quality, and still hold the contracts.
Parents don’t know, Investors barely look. But the cracks are now obvious, and where entrenched incumbents stumble, there’s a multi-billion-dollar runway for founders who can fix it.
One Weekend and I learnt the uncomfortable truth:
Three companies- Aramark, Sodexo, and Chartwells- control much of what’s on our kids’ lunch trays.
Their record? If they were startups, most investors would have cut the terms long ago.
- Philadelphia cancelled Aramark after its cafeteria deficit grew 72% in one year.
- D.C. schools sued Chartwells for facing supply chain challenges in serving the right meals
- Sodexo paid $20M in settlements for financial irregularities in school meals.
This isn’t an isolated bad quarter. It’s an ecosystem with incentives misaligned from the very thing that matters: feeding children well.
The parent in me is furious. The investor in me sees a gap.
This is a $20 billion market where the incumbents are failing at the basics. And when incumbents fail, innovators have room to run.
- Revolution Foods, started by two moms, now serves 1.5M students weekly with fresh, culturally relevant meals, within the same cost constraints.
- Brigaid puts restaurant chefs in cafeterias, and kids love the style and the food.
- Genuine Foods ditched kickbacks and rebates, built transparent supply chains, and still competes on cost.
Making America Healthy Again Through Innovation!!
Why should you care, whether you’re a parent or not?
Better school food isn’t just a feel-good issue. It affects childhood obesity rates (1 in 5 U.S. kids is obese), academic performance, and local economies. And it’s one of the last big sectors in food that hasn’t seen the wave of tech, data, and service innovation we’ve demanded elsewhere
This isn’t just a crisis, it’s a $20B white space. The same creativity we pour into fitness apps and meal kits has barely touched the place our kids eat lunch every day.
If you’re a founder building in food, supply chain, or healthtech, a VC looking for under-invested categories or an operator who knows how to scale impact, this is your market.
Let’s stop letting the “Big Three” set the menu. Let’s build something better, together.
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