Unique Capabilities
Unique capabilities for a school meals program
Stock Pot Malden is the point of convergence of three unique capabilities relevant to school meals: kitchen infrastructure and institutional solidity, innovative economic model to attract talented chefs and think tank/food advocacy.
- Kitchen infrastructure and institutional solidity: we raise money from socially-minded private investors and use that money to sign long-term leases for local commercial kitchens where our school meals are produced in partnership with neighboring food entrepreneurs. We currently operate out of eight different kitchens of various sizes, from 1,000 square feet up to 10,000 square feet. While the food is hyper-local, Stock Pot Malden in aggregate provides the financial, legal and institutional credibility required by landlords, vendors and clients in order to deliver a large quantity of prepared meals at highly competitive prices.
- Innovative economic model to attract talented chefs: we believe the transformation of the school meals business occurs one market at a time if/when local talented chefs can be given access to their local school market. Our role is to make this connection happen by helping local food entrepreneurs overcome the obstacles involved. These obstacles are typically kitchen-related, financial resources-, regulation-, or business education-related. We set up a shared profit model with each partner where they remain fully independent on their core business, with the joint school projects we organize with them acting as the foundation for their growth.
- Think tank and food advocacy. Francis Gouillart, CEO of Stock Pot Malden, heads a think tank whose purpose is to lead major stakeholders in the food chain toward adopting a more transparent economic system. We are unapologetically militant about transforming the quality of the school meals business. While there are obvious low-hanging fruit in improving the quality of meals for school kids, there are also numerous hidden issues buried in the way the USDA and DESE regulates the school kids market, in the uncompetitive behavior of some incumbents, or in the way municipalities appropriate federal money earmarked for food toward other uses. These are complex issues requiring research that aims to lead (over time) to new policies and will require the intervention of local and national elected officials. Francis has long been a globally recognized management consultant to many large corporations, and a public speaker who has been published in Harvard Business Review, the Stanford Social Innovation Review and has written multiple books on ecosystem co-creation. He is passionate about upgrading the quality of school food by replacing industrial “Big Food”, low-quality meals by enabling a community of local food entrepreneurs who prepare high quality, culturally appropriate meals that kids want to eat.
Our Food Entrepreneurs are key
Stockpot Malden Food Entrepreneurs, called “Partners in Residence”, are active players in our school meals program. Stock Pot Malden itself is not a MWBE, but it houses several minority- or women-owned businesses that will participate in the delivery of this program:
- Farm Girl owned by Lorena Lorenzet, a young Brazilian female entrepreneur and mother of two kids,
- Freakin’ Puerto Rican Fusion Food, owned by Puerto-Rican entrepreneur Edwin Rivera,
- Signature Kitchen, owned by Haitian entrepreneur Marline Amédée
- El Pez Dorado, owned by Dominican entrepreneur Yaniry Espinal.
None of them would have been big enough individually to deliver at the scale required by most school meals program, but put together, and with the support of the Stock Pot Malden platform, they were able to participate in the program.
Our Experience:
During the pandemic, Stock Pot Malden has delivered more than 4 million prepared meals for school-age kids in Massachusetts, in partnership with its member-tenants. The program started in Chelsea and moved to 10 other cities after that (Local Lunchbox program).
- We have delivered more than 3 million prepared meals to Chelsea, New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell, Brockton and Taunton over the year-and-a-half of the pandemic as part of the Local Lunchbox program.
- We have served more than 25 distribution points as part of this program.
- We have received high marks for the quality of our program from Governor Baker and Congresswoman/Deemocratic Whip of the House Katherine Clark who both visited us when we passed the 1 million meals mark. We have been featured on ABC’s Good Morning America program.