Matriark Foods

Matriark upcycles imperfect vegetables collected from farmers and fresh-cut vegetable remnants from food service providers into broth concentrates. The company has also signed with food waste redistribution apps like Hungry Harvest to receive imperfect produce that can be upcycled. The company was founded by Anna Hammond, who received a grant in 2018 from Ricolab (an independent innovation laboratory, a part of Rico, a Swiss SME) to begin its research on upcycled vegetable broth concentrates.

The company officially began in 2020, commercializing its upcycled products which included broth concentrates and purees (umami and carrot). The company claims that 1 carton of its concentrate saves nearly 1 pound of vegetable waste from going to landfill.

Matriark targets individual consumers as well as large scale food companies who might want to bulk purchase these products. While the company mainly targeted food service companies, the launch of the product during the pandemic and lockdown resulted in the company looking up to hospitals and food rescue organisations to purchase its products. Matriark claims to be also focusing on signing up with schools, hospitals, and other institutions which have cafeterias. Individual consumers are able to purchase the retail size via food redistribution apps like Hungry Harvest and Imperfect Foods. In November 2020, Matriark partnered with Table to Table (redistributes food waste to those in need) to run a nimble processing facility, which will allow surplus to be redirected directly to the facility and then the product to be distributed directly to food banks and city service meal providers. In May 2021, the company was selected amongst the 145 applicants for Kroger’s Zero Hunger Innovation Fund (second cohort) and received seed funding of USD100,000.