Fora Foods

aidan-andrew.jpg

Listen Now

Eat For The Planet is available on the following platforms

About Aidan Altman and Andrew McClure

Aidan and Andrew met at the University of Michigan and soon moved to Chicago together after graduating in 2015. Andrew began working in food M&A at Houlihan Lokey and Aidan went on to launch his first food startup brand. Being highly involved in the food world, they both began to care more and more about sustainable food systems. This led them to go vegan just over a year ago. They realized the most pressing cause of global warming results directly from the factory farms developed to fit our outmoded industrial animal agriculture model. They began to feel they had an incredible opportunity (maybe even a burden) to couple their respective backgrounds to bring a new product to market that could help in the collective mission to fundamentally shift the paradigm in how we view food through a more sustainable lens. And so, their first product, FabaButter, was born. They believe that, by providing the first ever delicious 1:1 replacer to dairy-butter, and leveraging our respective networks in the food industry to launch at mass scale, they have an opportunity to truly make a difference.

Since then, Fora has received Michelin-starred chef endorsements, won a Sofi Award, and will soon close a seed round fundraising to launch FabaButter nationally in summer of 2018.

Why You Should Listen

FabaButter is made using aquafaba, also known as the starchy water that comes in cans of chickpeas, and is palm oil free – two traits that set their product ahead of many butter alternatives out on the market. 

In this conversation, we talk about:

  • What motivated Andrew and Aidan to start a food company.

  • What they learned from other existing butter substitutes to help guide their own ingredient list and marketing decisions.

  • The struggles of launching a food start-up and what they are doing to build their brand from the ground up.

  • Consumer behaviors and how they hope to create a product that is a one-to-one substitute for dairy.

  • How Fora will stay original in the face of an increasingly saturated dairy-alternative sector.

  • Marketing tips and advice they have picked up so far along their journey.

People/Companies/Resources Mentioned in This Episode