March 20, 2025 • 23 mins
Founder Resource Series
Episode Description:
“I think consumers and company leaders are becoming more curious as to what the alternatives are and not just following simple workflows and playbooks. The transparency and the ability to educate around the possibilities— the alternative possibilities of manufacturing and ingredients that are available.” —Riana Lynn
The possibilities for AI-powered innovation in the culinary world are truly exciting. Consumers are now more intrigued than ever about the transformative potential of AI-powered solutions in innovation and nutrition.
This week, we are joined by Riana Lynn, the Founder of Journey Foods, a cutting-edge platform that leverages AI to transform the way companies approach food innovation. With a diverse background spanning VC, chemistry, and entrepreneurship, Riana is at the forefront of driving positive change in the food industry.
Tune in as Justine and Riana discuss the role of AI in revolutionizing food formulation and sourcing, the impact of Journey Foods on companies of all sizes, the importance of transparency and education in the food industry, and more.
Meet Riana:
Riana Lynn, MPH is an entrepreneur, storyteller, and AI consultant dedicated to transforming the global food system through innovative, data-driven solutions as the founder and CEO of Journey Foods. Recognized as a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer and Google Entrepreneur-in-Residence, she has delivered over 230 speaking engagements at prestigious forums worldwide.
As the inventor of the first AI patent for generative recipes and one of the first women with an AI software patent, Riana leads Journey Foods and Journey Labs in setting new industry standards. She combines her focus on creative community building with her commitment to business challenges.
Riana holds degrees and formal training in Biology, Chemistry, Anthropology, Black Studies, Public Health, and Artificial Intelligence from multiple prestigious institutions. Based in Atlanta, she enjoys collecting art, growing fruit trees, and exploring culinary and architectural heritage sites globally.
Connect with NextGen Purpose:
Episode Highlights:
01:24 Bridging the Nutrition Gap with AI
04:57 Food and Chronic Diseases
09:24 AI in Food Innovation
16:19 Journey Foods’ Services and Impact
21:56 Connect with Journey Foods
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justine Reichman: (00:15):
Hello, and welcome to the Essential
Ingredients Podcast. I'm yourhost, Justine. As always, I'm so
pleased to have you all here.We're joined today with VC
Founder Riana Lynn. Riana is theFounder of Journey Foods, a tool
for CPG Founders that promisesto revolutionize recipe
development and sourcing. Youwon't want to miss this one, so
(00:35):
stay tuned.
Welcome to the EssentialIngredients Podcast. I'm so
happy to have you here. What agreat opportunity to hear from a
female Founder, somebody who'san entrepreneur, and also
providing such a great resourceto the community. So Riana,
welcome.
Riana Lynn: (00:50):
Thank you, Justine, so good to be here. I've been
diving into some of your otherrecent episodes, and happy to
have this conversation.
Justine Reichman: (00:59):
Great. I'm so pleased. As an entrepreneur, you
kicked off your own initiative,and dreamt this up. And as you
were mentioning to me before,ever since you were a little
kid, you've been kind of on thisjourney. Excuse me. So just for
those folks so we can geteveryone on the same page, we're
going to talk to you about beingan entrepreneur. We're going to
(01:20):
talk to you about being a femalefounder, and we're going to talk
to you about this resource thatyou built. So before we get into
all of it, can you just leteverybody know what Journey
Foods is?
Riana Lynn: (01:31):
Yeah. So Journey Foods is the modern day
consultant to your foodformulation and supplier worker
needs. When Journey Foods wasfounded right before the
pandemic, we sort of launchedfull time after a couple years
(01:52):
of pilots while I was stillworking in VC. We sought out
first to solve large nutritionissues in rapid pace. So when
you're looking to formulate aproduct based on consumer
nutrition, or allergen, orfunctional needs? It can take
(02:13):
many, many months. And wethought as a team, and just a
background being a scientist,how do we use AI powered science
to accelerate what severalhumans take on a lab and on a
test kitchen to get the perfectrecipe in just minutes or hours.
(02:39):
And so Journey Foods launched asan AI white paper with test
products around fruit snacks,where we wanted to get the
optimal nutrient dense fruitsnack that was free of additives
and food dyes. And I presentedthat at San Francisco Future
(03:02):
Food in March of 2019, spent ayear and a half building the
platform. Now today, we are anAI operational scientist for
nutrition formulations,sustainability formulations, all
paired with supply chaininsights and costs. And so we've
(03:23):
built the world's mostactionable nutrition database
that help companies, that helpscompanies rapidly formulate
their product recipes for the $3trillion package food market, or
they can come in and reformulateproducts that exist today.
Whether that be for a supplychain crunch, or to switch out
(03:44):
their products to be glutenfree, or bring in functional
medicine within their food. Lotsof different scenarios for our
customers today. But our goalhas been, from day one, to
improve the nutrition and thecost for these products, but
save lots of time.
Justine Reichman: (04:03):
Wow. It's huge what you're doing. It's
just huge, and it allows smallerorganizations even to have a
resource that they might nototherwise have the ability to
access. So I have to ask, Iheard you say you were a VC. I
heard you say you were achemist. I mean, your background
is so varied. What drove youspecifically here?
Riana Lynn: (04:26):
The road was, how do I keep innovating in food?
Justine Reichman: (04:28):
That's amazing, and it really resonates
And sometimes, why food? When Iwas studying biology and
nutrition, genetics andchemistry, my goal was to launch
into a career that could solvechronic disease, particularly
diabetes and cancer. Things thatwere facing, my family members.
(04:51):
And the more time I stood incommunity with my family, with
friends, within researchcommunities, I found that the
underlying theme was food.Majority of the world's
malnutrition, whether that beeating too much bad food or
eating too little, and hungerrelated illnesses and chronic
(05:16):
disease. Most of the deathsattributed with chronic disease
are related to food, and Iwanted to be able to solve a
problem to see my grandmotherand my parents live longer.
Truly, that was just like, whatcan I do to help my family live
with me. I'm sure it's going toresonate with so many people on
(05:36):
longer? And then maybe I canlive longer if I have that same
genetic pathway. And then fromthere, you start to realize that
it's not just some familymembers, or a poor family on the
south side of Chicago that's inthe middle of food desert. When
(05:58):
I launched my first food companywith the family member, I
started to see that there werewealthy middle aged white woman
that we're living in some of themost wealthy zip codes in the
country coming to us to solveissues with their gut and with
(06:19):
cancer, and drink fresh and rawfoods, right? And so you see
that this issue, especially inthe United States, has no socio
economic barriers. And it wasthat turning point in grad
school about 15 years ago when Idecided that this is really not
(06:41):
going to change by me getting amaster's in public health and
going to DC, even though I spenttime at the White House and
Department of Health and HumanServices where RFK is trying to
chop that up right now. But Ithought it was really going to
(07:02):
be ME as an entrepreneur andworking with these more private
companies where we were going tosee the most change, or where I
could be a part of the biggestchange here.
(07:24):
so many levels. But as you'resaying this, and I'll just share
this with you, but I created asizzle reel for a docu series
because my mother had cancer,and my mother had ALS. And I saw
all these people, including mymother, go off to places that
were not science backed justbecause of hope, and catching,
(07:44):
and trying to hold on tosomething because they were
scared of Western medicine, orthey were scared of the unknown,
or they're just desperate. Andit inspired me to also create
this platform because I reallywant people to be able to be
inspired and make a choice, amore informed choice for
themselves. And the only way Iknew how to support that
(08:07):
endeavor was to give people theplatform, get the experts and
the people that are in thisworld sharing that information.
Because if you can talk to thesepeople and then they hear your
story, it inspires them tocreate change to make a
difference, and be curious.
Riana Lynn: (08:24):
Yes. The curiosity was important for me. As I
started to dive in and thinkabout the ways we were working
to bring new products to themarket with these consultants
and these manufacturing foodtechnologies, I started to ask
questions like, I want to createa gummy a fruit. These smoothie
(08:45):
cubes, they're not really gummybears, but these smoothie cubes
fruit snacks. And I was asking,how do we get one that looks
just like a white dragon fruit?And they said, you have to
(09:05):
bleach it. You have to add somedioxides and other things to it
to get this lasting white colorthat you probably love in white
jelly beans and other things.And I said, absolutely not.
We're not going to do this. Andso I think that many times, my
curiosity about myself like, amI going to get diabetes at 50
years old? Because everygeneration is getting chronic
(09:26):
disease earlier than ourparents, right? I'm so happy
that you shared that story aboutyour mother because there's
probably been times when you'relooking at your mom trying to
find these decisions and go outto alternative medicine and
thinking to yourself, this couldhappen to me in 15 and 20 years,
right? And so you want to havethe platform here for yourself.
(09:46):
You want to share things thatare happening to your mom, but
you also want to make sure thatpeople understand these
journeys, and you can share yourcuriosity. And I put my
curiosity into building thisdatabase. Into building a team
of scientists and AI engineers.
Justine Reichman: (10:05):
It's amazing. And so as you've built this over
the last few years, what wasyour journey like in terms of,
you went from being a VC to nowbeing an entrepreneur? You're on
different ends of the spectrumhere, right? What was that
journey like for you?
Riana Lynn: (10:21):
I think at first, at times, it's challenging. You
leave a nice salary to then haveto create your salary. You have
to pay other people first to getthe product ready and fly all
(10:43):
over the country and world toget money. And so I was starting
to do that quite a bit, andseeking really creative VCs that
understood that AI was going tobe two to three years ahead of
of the AI investment trends.It's a roller coaster, truly,
(11:07):
being an entrepreneur. And thehighs are just so much higher
than what you can get being aVC, I think, being on the
ground, being an operator. Butit comes with challenges to
being a minority woman that saidwe're going to create AI food
(11:28):
scientists five years ago. Andthe food scientists being like,
absolutely not. That's neverpossible, right? You can't
replace us. And I'm just likethis, I'm looking at your
spreadsheets, and it makes somuch sense. I'm seeing what
you're charging otherentrepreneurs, and I don't
understand why there's 200 foodscientists at Beyond Meat to
(11:50):
create a sausage. Those are thethings that I just really didn't
understand, and just clearlydidn't make sense. And for me,
few years later, I think isreally trying to make sense for
people.
Justine Reichman: (12:06):
I think people are getting more
comfortable and familiar with AIand integrating that into how
we're developing things. BecauseI think before, it was a little
scary, and it's still a littlescary for some people. They're
still not sure what role it'sgoing to play, and how reliable
it is, and how much you have totweak it. There's a lot of
unknowns for people, but thepotential is so great. And what
(12:30):
you're creating is so great.It's just a matter of having a
little faith and being open tosomething new, that's what
innovation is about anyway,right?
Riana Lynn: (12:38):
Exactly, exactly. I think that's why we have been so
intent on creating operationaldata supply chain scores, cost
scores, because that's reallydrives people's decisions. They
want to help people eat better.WE as Founders, WE as company
(12:59):
managers and CEOs, or justmanagers of our homes, we want
to eat better. We want the worldto eat better. We want the world
to have less impact onbiodiversity, nature and things.
But at the end of the day, it'slike, can we afford this? Can I
(13:19):
get it? Does it cost me a lot oftime and convenience? And now,
those are questions that we askusually first, and that's what
we started to really focus on2021 and 22 is knowing that
behaviorally, we need to makesure that people understand our
(13:41):
models, at least at JourneyFoods, that cost and supply
chain availability is just asimportant.
Justine Reichman: (13:50):
I also think that it's not about saying, can
we afford this? It's about, howcan we not afford this? How do
we make it work? How do wechoose us, and our future
family, and our next generationsto be able to have the best
possible options accessible tothem? And I think it's through
education, information,transparency and also curiosity.
(14:15):
Without curiosity, people arenot going to better understand
why they should make thatchoice, or how to know that
there are other options.
Riana Lynn: (14:23):
I think consumers now and company leaders are
becoming more curious on whatthe alternatives are, and not
just following simple workflowsand playbooks, but the
transparency and in the abilityto educate around the
possibilities. The alternativepossibilities of manufacturing,
(14:45):
the alternative ingredients thatare available, and how they can
be incorporated into oureveryday grocery and foods?
These are questions that we haveto continue to model. Don't want
to ask ourselves every singleevery that we're running
companies, or that we're goingto the grocery store to shop.
Justine Reichman: (15:08):
And I think that for the end consumers, it's
also different, right? Some endconsumers don't know the answers
to all of those questions, butmake a decision based on what
they hear, partial information.So I think it's important also
for end consumers to be a littlebit more curious, and not just
say, oh, organic is better. Whyis organic better? Here are some
(15:30):
foods that would make it muchbetter without palm oil and with
this thing. Now, maybe they'veheard this, but they don't know
why. Aand I think it's incumbentupon the organizations that are
doing this to really shed someclarity on thi,s and light on
this, and educate on this. And Ithink people are doing that, but
I still think there's so manypeople making decisions blindly.
Riana Lynn: (15:54):
I think when you walk into a grocery store and
it's like, yeah, you get local,right? You get this, this came
from the farmer in the county orthe town over, but everything
else is very confusing. Thecoding on our labels to what
(16:16):
organic is in the US versusother places. How it's managed?
Why it costs so much more? Whatis conventional? What is
process, unprocessed? What isnatural? I mean, these are
questions that we have done.Have good education around, and
answers too. These are thingsthat we're not taught in school,
(16:37):
right? We're just taught ourplate features and that we
should eat sugar sparingly. Andso you try not to eat candy,
then you realize sugars andeverything because we built the
food system around it. So it canbe a challenge if you're not
that curious. But I think morethan ever, consumers have a very
(17:01):
unique time to use social media,to use website traffic and have
downloads, and purchasing powerto push manufacturers and
business owners to be morecreative and more curious around
alternatives. And I think we'recloser than we think, but it
(17:24):
will take some investment ininfrastructure, and these are
things that I think are ripe fordisruption.
Justine Reichman: (17:35):
Oh, I couldn't agree more. I think
people need to just steamrollahead, almost to continue this
progress. Because I think we'reseeing some progress, but I
still think that we need to seemore. So I'm curious. I know
that you said you were inspiredby your family and trying to
solve a problem there, but youcreated this great solution for
(17:57):
all these entrepreneurs. I'mcurious if there's any
statistics that you could showthrough what you've built on the
amount of people you've now beenable to help, serve both to
build their businesses, andcreate a better for you
solution.
Riana Lynn: (18:12):
There's several numbers that I can share. So to
date, we've helped over 400companies with formulation, new
formulations or formulations forpackaged products that are
either E commerce or in grocerystores. Some of the small
(18:33):
percentage of them being alsorestaurants and chefs that have
launched packaged products intheir restaurants or chains, as
well as a good percentage ofthose being ingredient suppliers
that are supplying novelingredients, additives and dyes,
(18:55):
natural extracted dyes, to thesemany companies. We have hundreds
of thousands of ingredients,tens of thousands that have been
audited. To date, over 17,000skew recommendations for
improvements. We're now in 18countries. Just launched in our
(19:19):
fourth Asian country last overthe past couple of weeks. We
have saved companies over $12million in recommendations
around cost. I could go on andon with this. Companies range
(19:39):
from pre revenue with a littlebit of money to spend on some
new product, but not as much asyou need for a big time
consultant to multi billiondollar private label, some of
the biggest companies in theworld that we've supported in
innovation.
Justine Reichman: (19:57):
So if you look at that and you say, okay,
you have everything. From smallto large, right? What percentage
of those people might not have,or those organizations might not
have been able to build outwithout a resource like yours
because of lack of funding, orlack of resources?
Riana Lynn: (20:12):
Yeah. Over 18%. And we think that number is going to
grow quite rapidly in the comingmonths and years. There was a
little bit of pull back in 2020because people were scared about
fundraising and logistics, butthings have started to shift up.
Now, there's a little bit ofchange in funding, and so
(20:35):
entrepreneurs are a littlescrappier. They want to spend
less money and get things to themarket faster. So think now that
our data is much more efficient,we've seen a lot more small
companies come for demos andprepare to get in our pipeline.
And we want to continue to lowerthe cost to entry for them. So
(20:56):
the more data we have, the morewe raise money. The more I feel
comfortable with the access tothe platform, the faster we're
going to get more smallcompanies from around the world
to sign up and scale with us.
Justine Reichman: (21:18):
What is the budget for entry?
Riana Lynn: (21:22):
You can enter as little as $60 a year where you
just list a couple ingredientson the platform, and you can get
a dashboard that helps youunderstand what kind of
companies are trying to buy youringredient. That's very basic if
you're just a supplier. Now, ifyou're a CPG company, it starts
(21:43):
at a few hundreds and goes toabout 2800 a year.
Justine Reichman: (21:47):
Wow. But that sounds a lot less expensive and
a lot more accessible than goingto get a chemist, and trying to
get your own, and trying to geteverything built with lots of
minimums, etcetera, to be ableto do this. And time and effort.
Riana Lynn: (22:02):
And even if you want additional services like
test kitchens and otherpathology reports and things, we
have a partner network with bigdiscounts, and we support you
through that as well. So it'sgreat to start with us and then
branch out as you get ready tolaunch. But we do monitoring
(22:22):
over time as well, so you canmonitor for pricing updates, or
know regulatory changes. Maybeone of your ingredients is going
to be banned, or perhapsconsumers are looking for a
change. And I think it's greatto have that long term analysis
as you scale the life cycle ofyour company or a ptoduct.
Justine Reichman: (22:44):
It's amazing to have those resources and to
have that information, it's likeyou have an on demand news
release.
Riana Lynn: (22:50):
Yeah. On demand food scientists, that is really
well read.
Justine Reichman: (22:57):
Yeah. That's amazing. Because I think that
sometimes, we get our news andthen things happen later. But to
be able to get that as freshnews, it allows people to be at
the forefront and to creategreater change based on what the
research is saying so early on.
Riana Lynn: (23:15):
Yes. And I think that we're just going to get
better. Our models are justgoing to get better at
supporting companies here, andwould love to offer discount
code to your listeners.
Justine Reichman: (23:29):
Oh, that would be amazing. Thank you for
that.
Riana Lynn: (23:33):
Suppliers, or CPG founders, or managers, they can
check us out. We have somereally big launches coming up
this year. I don't know,assuming it's gonna be a few
weeks of this launches, butwe're launching packaging AI,
(23:54):
first company to really havepackaging AI recommendations
based on everything from dioxinsin your film, right? That could
be polluting the body too,things that are more based
around structure. We're alsolaunching a large partnership to
(24:15):
get funding through theplatform. So if you have to
increase your inventory, or buynew product, or machinery, we
support in our testing. We'retesting co-underwriting process
so that you can get a loan forthat healthy update to your your
(24:40):
product recipe.
Justine Reichman: (24:43):
Amazing. There's so many resources, and
I'd love to be able to sharethem with the community. Is
there a list you might be ableto include for us to share with
the community?
Riana Lynn: (24:55):
Just check out Journey Foods.
Justine Reichman: (24:58):
Best if we send them to your website.
Riana Lynn: (25:00):
Yes. Send them to our website, journeyfoods.io.
You can follow me and ourJourney Foods newsletter - The
Pie for updates. We'll be sureto share this interview there,
and follow up with a discountcode as well.
Justine Reichman: (25:21):
Awesome. We will make sure to follow up with
you so we can throw that in theshow notes for our guests, for
those guests that are tuning intoday. But Riana, thank you so
much for joining us today. It'sso exciting to hear what you're
building and the opportunitiesit's going to be able to provide
for so many people that mightnot otherwise have had that
access to be able to do that.I'm grateful to have had you on
(25:47):
as a resource, and as a femalefounder. And I look forward to
meeting you next week at ExpoWest when we're both there.
Riana Lynn: (25:56):
I look forward to trying out all the snacks, and
hopefully seeing you within theExpo hall. But thank you so
much, Justine, for your time,and for the questions, and for
this platform.
Justine Reichman: (26:10):
Awesome. Thanks so much, Riana, we'll
talk soon,. I want to thank ourguests and our community that
tune in each week, whether it'sto be inspired, or to hear a new
story, or to check out ourresources.
Hello, and welcome to the Essential
Ingredients Podcast. I'm yourhost, Justine. As always, I'm so
pleased to have you all here.We're joined today with VC
Founder Riana Lynn. Riana is theFounder of Journey Foods, a tool
for CPG Founders that promisesto revolutionize recipe
development and sourcing. Youwon't want to miss this one, so
(00:35):
stay tuned.
Welcome to the EssentialIngredients Podcast. I'm so
happy to have you here. What agreat opportunity to hear from a
female Founder, somebody who'san entrepreneur, and also
providing such a great resourceto the community. So Riana,
welcome.
Riana Lynn: (00:50):
Thank you, Justine, so good to be here. I've been
diving into some of your otherrecent episodes, and happy to
have this conversation.
Justine Reichman: (00:59):
Great. I'm so pleased. As an entrepreneur, you
kicked off your own initiative,and dreamt this up. And as you
were mentioning to me before,ever since you were a little
kid, you've been kind of on thisjourney. Excuse me. So just for
those folks so we can geteveryone on the same page, we're
going to talk to you about beingan entrepreneur. We're going to
(01:20):
talk to you about being a femalefounder, and we're going to talk
to you about this resource thatyou built. So before we get into
all of it, can you just leteverybody know what Journey
Foods is?
Riana Lynn: (01:31):
Yeah. So Journey Foods is the modern day
consultant to your foodformulation and supplier worker
needs. When Journey Foods wasfounded right before the
pandemic, we sort of launchedfull time after a couple years
(01:52):
of pilots while I was stillworking in VC. We sought out
first to solve large nutritionissues in rapid pace. So when
you're looking to formulate aproduct based on consumer
nutrition, or allergen, orfunctional needs? It can take
(02:13):
many, many months. And wethought as a team, and just a
background being a scientist,how do we use AI powered science
to accelerate what severalhumans take on a lab and on a
test kitchen to get the perfectrecipe in just minutes or hours.
(02:39):
And so Journey Foods launched asan AI white paper with test
products around fruit snacks,where we wanted to get the
optimal nutrient dense fruitsnack that was free of additives
and food dyes. And I presentedthat at San Francisco Future
(03:02):
Food in March of 2019, spent ayear and a half building the
platform. Now today, we are anAI operational scientist for
nutrition formulations,sustainability formulations, all
paired with supply chaininsights and costs. And so we've
(03:23):
built the world's mostactionable nutrition database
that help companies, that helpscompanies rapidly formulate
their product recipes for the $3trillion package food market, or
they can come in and reformulateproducts that exist today.
Whether that be for a supplychain crunch, or to switch out
(03:44):
their products to be glutenfree, or bring in functional
medicine within their food. Lotsof different scenarios for our
customers today. But our goalhas been, from day one, to
improve the nutrition and thecost for these products, but
save lots of time.
Justine Reichman: (04:03):
Wow. It's huge what you're doing. It's
just huge, and it allows smallerorganizations even to have a
resource that they might nototherwise have the ability to
access. So I have to ask, Iheard you say you were a VC. I
heard you say you were achemist. I mean, your background
is so varied. What drove youspecifically here?
Riana Lynn: (04:26):
The road was, how do I keep innovating in food?
Justine Reichman: (04:28):
That's amazing, and it really resonates
And sometimes, why food? When Iwas studying biology and
nutrition, genetics andchemistry, my goal was to launch
into a career that could solvechronic disease, particularly
diabetes and cancer. Things thatwere facing, my family members.
(04:51):
And the more time I stood incommunity with my family, with
friends, within researchcommunities, I found that the
underlying theme was food.Majority of the world's
malnutrition, whether that beeating too much bad food or
eating too little, and hungerrelated illnesses and chronic
(05:16):
disease. Most of the deathsattributed with chronic disease
are related to food, and Iwanted to be able to solve a
problem to see my grandmotherand my parents live longer.
Truly, that was just like, whatcan I do to help my family live
with me. I'm sure it's going toresonate with so many people on
(05:36):
longer? And then maybe I canlive longer if I have that same
genetic pathway. And then fromthere, you start to realize that
it's not just some familymembers, or a poor family on the
south side of Chicago that's inthe middle of food desert. When
(05:58):
I launched my first food companywith the family member, I
started to see that there werewealthy middle aged white woman
that we're living in some of themost wealthy zip codes in the
country coming to us to solveissues with their gut and with
(06:19):
cancer, and drink fresh and rawfoods, right? And so you see
that this issue, especially inthe United States, has no socio
economic barriers. And it wasthat turning point in grad
school about 15 years ago when Idecided that this is really not
(06:41):
going to change by me getting amaster's in public health and
going to DC, even though I spenttime at the White House and
Department of Health and HumanServices where RFK is trying to
chop that up right now. But Ithought it was really going to
(07:02):
be ME as an entrepreneur andworking with these more private
companies where we were going tosee the most change, or where I
could be a part of the biggestchange here.
(07:24):
so many levels. But as you'resaying this, and I'll just share
this with you, but I created asizzle reel for a docu series
because my mother had cancer,and my mother had ALS. And I saw
all these people, including mymother, go off to places that
were not science backed justbecause of hope, and catching,
(07:44):
and trying to hold on tosomething because they were
scared of Western medicine, orthey were scared of the unknown,
or they're just desperate. Andit inspired me to also create
this platform because I reallywant people to be able to be
inspired and make a choice, amore informed choice for
themselves. And the only way Iknew how to support that
(08:07):
endeavor was to give people theplatform, get the experts and
the people that are in thisworld sharing that information.
Because if you can talk to thesepeople and then they hear your
story, it inspires them tocreate change to make a
difference, and be curious.
Riana Lynn: (08:24):
Yes. The curiosity was important for me. As I
started to dive in and thinkabout the ways we were working
to bring new products to themarket with these consultants
and these manufacturing foodtechnologies, I started to ask
questions like, I want to createa gummy a fruit. These smoothie
(08:45):
cubes, they're not really gummybears, but these smoothie cubes
fruit snacks. And I was asking,how do we get one that looks
just like a white dragon fruit?And they said, you have to
(09:05):
bleach it. You have to add somedioxides and other things to it
to get this lasting white colorthat you probably love in white
jelly beans and other things.And I said, absolutely not.
We're not going to do this. Andso I think that many times, my
curiosity about myself like, amI going to get diabetes at 50
years old? Because everygeneration is getting chronic
(09:26):
disease earlier than ourparents, right? I'm so happy
that you shared that story aboutyour mother because there's
probably been times when you'relooking at your mom trying to
find these decisions and go outto alternative medicine and
thinking to yourself, this couldhappen to me in 15 and 20 years,
right? And so you want to havethe platform here for yourself.
(09:46):
You want to share things thatare happening to your mom, but
you also want to make sure thatpeople understand these
journeys, and you can share yourcuriosity. And I put my
curiosity into building thisdatabase. Into building a team
of scientists and AI engineers.
Justine Reichman: (10:05):
It's amazing. And so as you've built this over
the last few years, what wasyour journey like in terms of,
you went from being a VC to nowbeing an entrepreneur? You're on
different ends of the spectrumhere, right? What was that
journey like for you?
Riana Lynn: (10:21):
I think at first, at times, it's challenging. You
leave a nice salary to then haveto create your salary. You have
to pay other people first to getthe product ready and fly all
(10:43):
over the country and world toget money. And so I was starting
to do that quite a bit, andseeking really creative VCs that
understood that AI was going tobe two to three years ahead of
of the AI investment trends.It's a roller coaster, truly,
(11:07):
being an entrepreneur. And thehighs are just so much higher
than what you can get being aVC, I think, being on the
ground, being an operator. Butit comes with challenges to
being a minority woman that saidwe're going to create AI food
(11:28):
scientists five years ago. Andthe food scientists being like,
absolutely not. That's neverpossible, right? You can't
replace us. And I'm just likethis, I'm looking at your
spreadsheets, and it makes somuch sense. I'm seeing what
you're charging otherentrepreneurs, and I don't
understand why there's 200 foodscientists at Beyond Meat to
(11:50):
create a sausage. Those are thethings that I just really didn't
understand, and just clearlydidn't make sense. And for me,
few years later, I think isreally trying to make sense for
people.
Justine Reichman: (12:06):
I think people are getting more
comfortable and familiar with AIand integrating that into how
we're developing things. BecauseI think before, it was a little
scary, and it's still a littlescary for some people. They're
still not sure what role it'sgoing to play, and how reliable
it is, and how much you have totweak it. There's a lot of
unknowns for people, but thepotential is so great. And what
(12:30):
you're creating is so great.It's just a matter of having a
little faith and being open tosomething new, that's what
innovation is about anyway,right?
Riana Lynn: (12:38):
Exactly, exactly. I think that's why we have been so
intent on creating operationaldata supply chain scores, cost
scores, because that's reallydrives people's decisions. They
want to help people eat better.WE as Founders, WE as company
(12:59):
managers and CEOs, or justmanagers of our homes, we want
to eat better. We want the worldto eat better. We want the world
to have less impact onbiodiversity, nature and things.
But at the end of the day, it'slike, can we afford this? Can I
(13:19):
get it? Does it cost me a lot oftime and convenience? And now,
those are questions that we askusually first, and that's what
we started to really focus on2021 and 22 is knowing that
behaviorally, we need to makesure that people understand our
(13:41):
models, at least at JourneyFoods, that cost and supply
chain availability is just asimportant.
Justine Reichman: (13:50):
I also think that it's not about saying, can
we afford this? It's about, howcan we not afford this? How do
we make it work? How do wechoose us, and our future
family, and our next generationsto be able to have the best
possible options accessible tothem? And I think it's through
education, information,transparency and also curiosity.
(14:15):
Without curiosity, people arenot going to better understand
why they should make thatchoice, or how to know that
there are other options.
Riana Lynn: (14:23):
I think consumers now and company leaders are
becoming more curious on whatthe alternatives are, and not
just following simple workflowsand playbooks, but the
transparency and in the abilityto educate around the
possibilities. The alternativepossibilities of manufacturing,
(14:45):
the alternative ingredients thatare available, and how they can
be incorporated into oureveryday grocery and foods?
These are questions that we haveto continue to model. Don't want
to ask ourselves every singleevery that we're running
companies, or that we're goingto the grocery store to shop.
Justine Reichman: (15:08):
And I think that for the end consumers, it's
also different, right? Some endconsumers don't know the answers
to all of those questions, butmake a decision based on what
they hear, partial information.So I think it's important also
for end consumers to be a littlebit more curious, and not just
say, oh, organic is better. Whyis organic better? Here are some
(15:30):
foods that would make it muchbetter without palm oil and with
this thing. Now, maybe they'veheard this, but they don't know
why. Aand I think it's incumbentupon the organizations that are
doing this to really shed someclarity on thi,s and light on
this, and educate on this. And Ithink people are doing that, but
I still think there's so manypeople making decisions blindly.
Riana Lynn: (15:54):
I think when you walk into a grocery store and
it's like, yeah, you get local,right? You get this, this came
from the farmer in the county orthe town over, but everything
else is very confusing. Thecoding on our labels to what
(16:16):
organic is in the US versusother places. How it's managed?
Why it costs so much more? Whatis conventional? What is
process, unprocessed? What isnatural? I mean, these are
questions that we have done.Have good education around, and
answers too. These are thingsthat we're not taught in school,
(16:37):
right? We're just taught ourplate features and that we
should eat sugar sparingly. Andso you try not to eat candy,
then you realize sugars andeverything because we built the
food system around it. So it canbe a challenge if you're not
that curious. But I think morethan ever, consumers have a very
(17:01):
unique time to use social media,to use website traffic and have
downloads, and purchasing powerto push manufacturers and
business owners to be morecreative and more curious around
alternatives. And I think we'recloser than we think, but it
(17:24):
will take some investment ininfrastructure, and these are
things that I think are ripe fordisruption.
Justine Reichman: (17:35):
Oh, I couldn't agree more. I think
people need to just steamrollahead, almost to continue this
progress. Because I think we'reseeing some progress, but I
still think that we need to seemore. So I'm curious. I know
that you said you were inspiredby your family and trying to
solve a problem there, but youcreated this great solution for
(17:57):
all these entrepreneurs. I'mcurious if there's any
statistics that you could showthrough what you've built on the
amount of people you've now beenable to help, serve both to
build their businesses, andcreate a better for you
solution.
Riana Lynn: (18:12):
There's several numbers that I can share. So to
date, we've helped over 400companies with formulation, new
formulations or formulations forpackaged products that are
either E commerce or in grocerystores. Some of the small
(18:33):
percentage of them being alsorestaurants and chefs that have
launched packaged products intheir restaurants or chains, as
well as a good percentage ofthose being ingredient suppliers
that are supplying novelingredients, additives and dyes,
(18:55):
natural extracted dyes, to thesemany companies. We have hundreds
of thousands of ingredients,tens of thousands that have been
audited. To date, over 17,000skew recommendations for
improvements. We're now in 18countries. Just launched in our
(19:19):
fourth Asian country last overthe past couple of weeks. We
have saved companies over $12million in recommendations
around cost. I could go on andon with this. Companies range
(19:39):
from pre revenue with a littlebit of money to spend on some
new product, but not as much asyou need for a big time
consultant to multi billiondollar private label, some of
the biggest companies in theworld that we've supported in
innovation.
Justine Reichman: (19:57):
So if you look at that and you say, okay,
you have everything. From smallto large, right? What percentage
of those people might not have,or those organizations might not
have been able to build outwithout a resource like yours
because of lack of funding, orlack of resources?
Riana Lynn: (20:12):
Yeah. Over 18%. And we think that number is going to
grow quite rapidly in the comingmonths and years. There was a
little bit of pull back in 2020because people were scared about
fundraising and logistics, butthings have started to shift up.
Now, there's a little bit ofchange in funding, and so
(20:35):
entrepreneurs are a littlescrappier. They want to spend
less money and get things to themarket faster. So think now that
our data is much more efficient,we've seen a lot more small
companies come for demos andprepare to get in our pipeline.
And we want to continue to lowerthe cost to entry for them. So
(20:56):
the more data we have, the morewe raise money. The more I feel
comfortable with the access tothe platform, the faster we're
going to get more smallcompanies from around the world
to sign up and scale with us.
Justine Reichman: (21:18):
What is the budget for entry?
Riana Lynn: (21:22):
You can enter as little as $60 a year where you
just list a couple ingredientson the platform, and you can get
a dashboard that helps youunderstand what kind of
companies are trying to buy youringredient. That's very basic if
you're just a supplier. Now, ifyou're a CPG company, it starts
(21:43):
at a few hundreds and goes toabout 2800 a year.
Justine Reichman: (21:47):
Wow. But that sounds a lot less expensive and
a lot more accessible than goingto get a chemist, and trying to
get your own, and trying to geteverything built with lots of
minimums, etcetera, to be ableto do this. And time and effort.
Riana Lynn: (22:02):
And even if you want additional services like
test kitchens and otherpathology reports and things, we
have a partner network with bigdiscounts, and we support you
through that as well. So it'sgreat to start with us and then
branch out as you get ready tolaunch. But we do monitoring
(22:22):
over time as well, so you canmonitor for pricing updates, or
know regulatory changes. Maybeone of your ingredients is going
to be banned, or perhapsconsumers are looking for a
change. And I think it's greatto have that long term analysis
as you scale the life cycle ofyour company or a ptoduct.
Justine Reichman: (22:44):
It's amazing to have those resources and to
have that information, it's likeyou have an on demand news
release.
Riana Lynn: (22:50):
Yeah. On demand food scientists, that is really
well read.
Justine Reichman: (22:57):
Yeah. That's amazing. Because I think that
sometimes, we get our news andthen things happen later. But to
be able to get that as freshnews, it allows people to be at
the forefront and to creategreater change based on what the
research is saying so early on.
Riana Lynn: (23:15):
Yes. And I think that we're just going to get
better. Our models are justgoing to get better at
supporting companies here, andwould love to offer discount
code to your listeners.
Justine Reichman: (23:29):
Oh, that would be amazing. Thank you for
that.
Riana Lynn: (23:33):
Suppliers, or CPG founders, or managers, they can
check us out. We have somereally big launches coming up
this year. I don't know,assuming it's gonna be a few
weeks of this launches, butwe're launching packaging AI,
(23:54):
first company to really havepackaging AI recommendations
based on everything from dioxinsin your film, right? That could
be polluting the body too,things that are more based
around structure. We're alsolaunching a large partnership to
(24:15):
get funding through theplatform. So if you have to
increase your inventory, or buynew product, or machinery, we
support in our testing. We'retesting co-underwriting process
so that you can get a loan forthat healthy update to your your
(24:40):
product recipe.
Justine Reichman: (24:43):
Amazing. There's so many resources, and
I'd love to be able to sharethem with the community. Is
there a list you might be ableto include for us to share with
the community?
Riana Lynn: (24:55):
Just check out Journey Foods.
Justine Reichman: (24:58):
Best if we send them to your website.
Riana Lynn: (25:00):
Yes. Send them to our website, journeyfoods.io.
You can follow me and ourJourney Foods newsletter - The
Pie for updates. We'll be sureto share this interview there,
and follow up with a discountcode as well.
Justine Reichman: (25:21):
Awesome. We will make sure to follow up with
you so we can throw that in theshow notes for our guests, for
those guests that are tuning intoday. But Riana, thank you so
much for joining us today. It'sso exciting to hear what you're
building and the opportunitiesit's going to be able to provide
for so many people that mightnot otherwise have had that
access to be able to do that.I'm grateful to have had you on
(25:47):
as a resource, and as a femalefounder. And I look forward to
meeting you next week at ExpoWest when we're both there.
Riana Lynn: (25:56):
I look forward to trying out all the snacks, and
hopefully seeing you within theExpo hall. But thank you so
much, Justine, for your time,and for the questions, and for
this platform.
Justine Reichman: (26:10):
Awesome. Thanks so much, Riana, we'll
talk soon,. I want to thank ourguests and our community that
tune in each week, whether it'sto be inspired, or to hear a new
story, or to check out ourresources.
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