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ocial impact has become as ubiquitous to startup strategy as growth hacking in recent years, where it’s now uncommon to come across a company that doesn’t boast a social responsibility initiative. Tracing back to the explosive success of TOMS’s One for One campaign, startups have become conditioned to aligning their mission statement to social good as a way to reach and connect with their audience. Food technology company JUST, Inc. (JUST) is going beyond a social impact focus and pushing the belief that social entrepreneurialism is, in fact, the be-all and end-all of their business. Founded in 2011 by Josh Balk and Josh Tetrick, JUST develops and manufactures plant-based ‘eggs,’ cell-cultured meat, and micronutrients to offer sustainable alternatives to the food industry’s wasteful and unethical production methods. The company also takes a stand against the industry’s overuse of low-quality and processed ingredients and its adverse effect on the health of low-income and underprivileged communities. Ultimately, JUST endeavors to “make 36
JUMPSTART MAGAZINE
Just Another Food Revolution
January 2019
Social entrepreneurialism and China expansion with JUST, Inc. Founder Josh Tetrick
BY MIN CHEN
Tetrick speaking about battling malnutrition in Liberia. Photo courtesy of JUST, Inc.
good food a basic right,” according to Founder Josh Tetrick, who intends to normalize the consumption of nutritious, delicious, and affordable plant-based foods for all, as reflected in the company’s website: www.justforall.com. In interviews, he stresses time and time again that they’re not catering to vegans or leveraging on the middle-class clean-eating trend; rather, they want to overhaul the public’s perception of what constitutes an egg or a chicken. A video from the company’s website sees a group of people sharing a plate of chicken nuggets with an arrow identifying what is assumed to be the name of the now battered and fried bird (Ian). But in the next shot, the viewer sees Ian frolicking happily on a grassy lawn next to the diners, leading them to realize that the chicken nuggets are grown from Ian’s cells. This message is an integral part of JUST’s vision for the future: you don’t need to cause death to create food. The company’s crusade against the behemoth that is the food industry, which is infamously dominated by a handful
