HOW RICHA GUPTA IS SPREADING THE GOODNESS

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Richa Gupta had all the trappings of success – a good job, good home, good car, good husband and an adorable little baby – but there came a time when she began questioning if this was the purpose of her life.

It started modestly enough, with a parent’s desire to provide good food for her child, but quickly grew into a social enterprise that is making waves.

“I was sick of processed food – yoghurt, bars and cereal that pass for ‘healthy’, but are loaded with sugar,” she says. “We start our days with a cupful of sugar! We take a cookie away from a child but will pour ketchup over potatoes without realizing every tablespoon contains more sugar than a cookie. We are so conscious of the fuel we put in our cars but buy the most unhealthy food and what is food but fuel for our bodies? As a generation, we’ve lost touch with the things that matter, we’ve moved away from basics that were simple and good.”

Gupta was working for a multinational food company at the time and says while she enjoyed her time with them, she realized she was becoming detached. She wasn’t inspired by what she was doing.

“I’d left the fashion industry for the food industry to be part of something good. I did not want to spend my life discussing buttons and colour of fabric, that seemed so superficial. But when I became pregnant, I wondered if this was it, if this was life. So there was no one specific a-ha! moment, but every step of my journey was leading me towards what I am doing today.”

She did her MBA at Schulich and wanted to work in a non-profit. She was also hugely inspired by Toms Shoes’ buy one-give one business model.

“That was just so enlightening. I wanted to do something like that. Something that makes a difference in your life, in the consumer’s life and in the life of someone else was the trifecta I was searching for.”

She quit her job in August 2013 and launched Good Food For Good the following month.

“With no previous business experience, and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t inherit the business gene!” she says with a laugh. “I did this because I believed it was possible to make food products with no sugar, no preservatives, no additives, and also help feed someone else.”

Growth was slow the first year as she built up a steady clientele at farmers’ markets.

“I believed I can make a difference, but I didn’t know if I could make it work. So it was a lot of try and test. Do people like it spicy, or tangy or sweet? The feedback helped create the product line. These were not answers to hypothetical questions but people voting with their dollars. If someone bought a bottle and came back for more, I knew I was on the right track. Talking to people, understanding their need, that experience was priceless.”

Gupta’s focus was on cooking sauces. A woman asked if she could create a ketchup with no sugar and she came up with one that is sweetened with a single date. It is one that became their daughter Rhea’s favourite.

“She wasn’t a ketchup eater, but she loves ours!” exults Gupta. “I feel I’ve done a good job, because for a kid, healthy means nothing. An adult might compromise on taste for the sake of health, but for a kid, it’s all about taste.”

At one of the farmers’ markets, a representative from Whole Foods showed interest in her sauces. This was when she was still at what she describes as her “craft paper labels and one week shelf life stage” but she took the leap of faith.

Today, the Good Food For Good range is available in 1500 stores across Canada and in 200 in California. And for every bottle of sauce sold, Gupta donates a meal to a person in need. They’d donated over 250,000 meals by year-end last year, working with Akshay Patra Foundation in India and with food banks in Canada and California.

Her goal is to serve one million meals by the end of 2020.

A $70,000 donation from Desjardin’s GoodSpark program during her Dragon’s Den pitch will help achieve this.

It is a validation of their work and also a huge help in raising awareness about their products that are competing with big names that are seen as the standard in their category and with organizations that have no shortage of funds.

“We need to make some noise and to do that, we need the money. The folks at Desjardin are very kind, generous and helpful. They are really nice people! When unexpected things like this happen, one realizes that the world is still a good place where people are invested in helping one another.”

They also received two offers on Dragon’s Den and were in discussions with one at the time of this interview.

Gupta looks back at the early days when it was just her in the kitchen, cooking, tasting, experimenting.

“I had a rental commercial kitchen. I would cook, pack and sell at the farmers’ markets. Fun days! Then I hired a chef to help me.”

Now they have a four-member team, with the actual cooking and packaging done at co-packers in Niagara and Hamilton.

Their personal savings and a $15,000 loan from Futurpreneurs that she paid off in a year funded the venture.

“My husband had a decent job and was super supportive, so I could afford to take the risk. We had to change our lifestyle a bit, but I wasn’t worrying about how we would feed our family. That said, in business, there are always concerns. Once you have it up and running, you’re thinking about the next level. So worries and concerns do creep in. But as a neighbour of mine says, we are the stories we tell ourselves. You need to surround yourself with reminders about why you are doing this. I have a folder with emails from people and their feedback guides me.”

In the last 52-week period, their sales figures stood at $800,000.

It helped that they didn’t have to fight for shelf space for their niche, in-demand product line. There’s a growing segment of people who want to take care of their body and the keto, paleo and whole 30 trends helped them ride the wave. Their vegan butter chicken sauce, for instance, is creamed with hemp and is low in calories, sugar and fat.

Which is not to say there are no challenges.

“A lot of people think I can make this, let me market it,” says Gupta. “But that’s not why I started it. I’m not in it to find a salary replacement, The purpose was to make a difference. It was to meet a need.

“It’s not that we don’t grow enough food, but that there’s so much wastage, basically due to a lack of infrastructure. When I was growing up in India, food was prepared from freshly-sourced ingredients. Now here, and increasingly in India, too, things are packaged, there are expiry dates. Everything that is not sold by the best-before date is garbaged.

“The solution has to come holistically, consumerism can’t be the prime way to run an economy.”

Gupta left India for the US in 2003. There, she volunteered with the non-profit Dress for Success. In 2004, she visited Vancouver with her husband Prashant Dube and the two fell in love with the place. “It was so breathtakingly beautiful, the people were so nice.”

They moved to Canada from California in 2005, and came up against the lack of Canadian experience barriers that most newcomers continue to face.

“Experience elsewhere is not valued,” says Gupta. “I’d worked as a designer and also a buyer for designers, but when that didn’t help me land a job, I applied for an entry level job at Hudson’s Bay. The person interviewing me said he was going to hire me as a sales manager instead. He’s been my champion ever since, recommending me for the Future Executives Program at the Bay.”

Prashant, with an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business and a tech background, worked in the technology sector for a few years and now the two work together.

“No one can have the same intent for your business or your best interests at heart like family,” asserts Gupta.

Does working with a spouse complicate things a little with no clear demarcation between work and home?

“I really don’t get this whole work-life balance thing – it’s all life!” responds Gupta. “The 9-5 concept is so industrial age. You work until 5 when you shut shop and go home. You don’t ask an artist to put down his brushes because it’s five o’clock. Entrepreneurship is creative. It’s not rigid. I can watch my daughter Rhea’s concert at 3 and then work until 11 at night. When you’re creating something, it doesn’t feel like work.

She tells those who dream of entrepreneurship to stop thinking somebody has it all figured out.

“Just go for it. Everything I’ve done, I’ve just followed my gut. This idea got me so excited that not to give it a try would have been a waste of my time on the planet.

“Find a way. If it doesn’t make you happy, try something else.

“Take a risk. From the outside, I had everything, but I was not happy. Now I don’t have the fancy stuff, but I love waking up and doing what I do. I’m just so content. This life that I’ve built around me is my true self.”

Future plans include further growth and feeding more people. She also hopes to set up their own foundation and sponsor similar projects so more people are helped. Her heart is also set on opening a school for the really underprivileged kids in India.

“We can’t change the lives of everyone, but even if we can help a few and they can help others who in turn help a few more... together we can work towards breaking the cycle of poverty. We can be a force for good.”