Thursday, October 18, 2018

3:00 - 3:45 PM

Track I: Herscher Hall, Guerin C, Webcast

Food Entrepreneurs, Chef/Food Kit Delivery and Food App Services to the Consumer

Michael Joseph, Co-Founder, Green Chef Corporation (Organic Meal Kit Company - Purchased by HelloFresh)

Jennifer McInnis Fadel, General Manager, Bending Branch Winery, former, Award Winning Food Writer

Nicole Centeno, Founder, Splendid Spoon

Steven Voci, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Appetivo

Sri Sambangi, co-founder, Clorder Online Platform

Moderator - David J. Whelan, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Rebel Labs Inc.

Michael Joseph, founder of Green Chef, Mile High Organics, and Door to Door Organics. Michael has spent most of his career to date creating direct-to-consumer organic food businesses to meet the growing needs of clean food in our modern world. His most recent company, Green Chef, was the first certified organic meal kit company, in addition to pioneering specialized meal kits such as Gluten Free and Ketogenic. He drove Green Chef to >$100m revenue in 2.25 years from zero. Mr. Joseph recently sold Green Chef to HelloFresh, the world's largest meal kit retailer. He is a leader and advocate of transparency in food, and ridding society of toxic chemicals throughout the food value chain. He is currently advising a few entrepreneurs, recuperating from his first rocket-ship company, and sorting through great ideas and people to begin building another great company before too long.

Jennifer McInnis Fadel, General Manager, Bending Branch Winery: Jennifer is responsible for managing the sales and the tasting room, marketing, and wine club teams. She joined Bending Branch Winery in January 2015 from the San Antonio Express-News, where she was Food and Drink Editor of the award-winning Sunday Taste section and reported on the Texas wine industry for six years. She is a Houston native and holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from Texas State University in San Marcos. She serves as Chair of the Texas Hill Country Wineries Marketing Committee, and she is a member of the Culinary Taskforce for Visit San Antonio.

Nicole Centeno is a French Culinary Institute–trained chef and the founder and CEO of Splendid Spoon, the e-commerce business providing holistic wellness solutions for professional men and women. At Boston College, she studied diet therapies as treatment for illness and has taught cooking and nutrition courses at Columbia University. Centeno has cooked in New York City restaurants, managed a catering business and worked in media strategy at Conde Nast. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her two sons, Grover and Caleb. She is the author of Soup Cleanse Cookbook (Rodale, August 2016).

Steven J. Voci - Chief Business Officer, Open Kitchen LLC/Appetivo: Steven serves Open Kitchen LLC/Appetivo in leading all business related matters for the Company.  Steven Voci has worked with innovative founders as a startup executive in disruptive technology, media and digital businesses. Steven’s 20-year career spans early web development & marketing, digital media, technology platforms, data and a recent focus into food tech.  Steven has served Fortune 500 brands to help them navigate digital business, often working with the C-level executives, their business teams and their advertising agencies. Steven’s been a part of five startups that have collective raised more than $70M in funding from angels, VCs and institutions. Steven’s latest venture in collaboration with co-founder and product creator Andre Cook is focused on enabling the on-demand food economy where sellers and buyers connect through discovery digitally.  Open Kitchen LLC and its first product Appetivo aims to empower the food gig economy like Lyft and Airbnb has in their sharing categories.  The early stage company is deploying use cases and applying its technology with partners for On Demand food.  Evolving progressive mobile technology and access, changing food regulations including a new Home Food Law in California, are changing people’s acceptance and adaptation to a peer to peer gig economy are driving demand for new food discovery platforms like Appetivo. In his digital career spanning 22 years, Steven’s startup pedigree is as a founding executive and revenue leader working closely with product and technology. He’s been a part of award winning technology products. He’s collaborated to develop several web and mobile applications in social and mobile media.  He launched the first multi-platform video network and has recently poured his passion for food into the food tech space.

Sri Sambangi, co-founder, Clorder Online Platform: Sri has 20 years of experience in building SAAS applications and also cloud solution provider for Amazon, Microsoft. He closely worked with Corner Stone On Demand (CSOD) founders to build the human capital management products and extensively contributed to build the technology from startup phase to a public company. Sri has an MS in Software Architecture from BITS, Pilani, a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from Andhra University. He is also Certified Project Management Professional and Scrum Master. At the recent Western Expo DTLA, founders Sri Sambangi and Satish Varma were presenters.  The title of their talk was: “Sorting out the CURRENT players in the current online-delivery Game and How to Make the Most of it as a sought-after customer or Making it More than a “necessary Evil” as a Restaurant. In it they explained how the “necessary evil” of online ordering can be a benefit to a restaurant who understands the history of “pick up and delivery” and how they can plug into the high tech portion to brand themselves and increase business. This included  (1) explaining the important points of online ordering history; (2) identifying the current companies in this field; (3) introduced new methods and how CLORDER’s methodology fits into the current field as a combined vertical marketing and online delivery service.

David J. Whelan, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Rebel Labs Inc.: Dave is an advocate of science-based disruption that makes our world a better place. He holds a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is a seasoned startup strategist who is known for building highly successful businesses at the intersection of technology, health, and wellness.  Several hugely important projects owe their success to Dave’s oversight, including the New York Genome Center, which raised $115 million while he served as its Chief Strategy Officer. Dave also helped bring to market one of the first fitness tracking wearables with 24 Hour Fitness.  Nutrition to wearables, genomics to diagnostics, consumer to enterprise — his expertise spans them all. Dave is a celebrated executive that leads his team with precision, yet he is always ready to roll up his sleeves and get things done himself.  A former college radio DJ affectionately known as DJ Whelan around the Labs, Dave is a travel – music - photography aficionado who in his spare time advises NSF-funded startups. He lives in the San Fernando Valley and loves to spend as much time as possible with his wife, two adorable, well-behaved kids, and two adorable, not-so-well-behaved dogs.