Fast-growing peanut butter company Good Spread has launched an IndieGoGo campaign with one very specific goal. The goal is to fully treat 1,000 severely malnourished children in Northern Uganda while providing customers with their latest and greatest creations available to purchase through the campaign.
The cure to malnutrition is a peanut butter-based medicine called Mana, a Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) with simple ingredients.
The “Spread the Love” campaign was launched on Valentine’s Day. “But love is way too big for one day, and like peanut butter, the more love you spread, the better it is,” shared the Good Spread team. Since launching, the campaign has raised $11,430 out of their $75,000 goal by 117 backers.
Throughout the year, Good Spread also sells its products online and in stores such as Whole Foods and Amazon in order to use a portion of profits to donate treatments of Mana to malnourished children around the world.
Well known New Orleans entrepreneur Robbie Vitrano is CEO of Good Spread. He has been working alongside the company’s co-founders Alex Cox and Mark Slagle to make a real impact.
Good Spread is a Boulder-based company, so Vitrano splits his time between there and New Orleans. He had been mentoring the company for three years after helping to launch the company out of his work with the non-profit MANA at the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder. In 2016, he stepped in as CEO.
“The IndieGoGo campaign marks the launch of the new products, but more specifically, the next phase for Good Spread and activation of strategy,” Vitrano told Silicon Bayou News.
When asked about the food startup scene in Boulder, Vitrano seemed optimistic. “It’s developing nicely and that development can be accelerated,” Vitrano said. “I’m eager to integrate more of the capabilities in the mature Boulder and NorCal food ecosystem.” And as for New Orleans, he said, “The tools are more readily availably to develop food-based added value companies, benefiting from our international culinary reputation, our food legacy, the deep institutional knowledge of our people, and a growing group of savvy food entrepreneurs.”
Vitrano is also involved in a number of other ventures–some food related, others not. In addition to being a co-founder of The Idea Village and Trumpet locally, he is actively engaged as a board director of the Golding Center for Culinary Medicine, the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute and Grok+Banter. Vitrano serves on the editorial advisory board for NOLA Media Group, works with his partners at PorchJam on the launch of their distillery in MidCity, and was a mentor for Propeller’s food accelerator with Descant Farms, among many other things.
The 9th annual New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (NOEW) is slated for March 19-24, 2017 at its brand new campus at the Contemporary Arts Center. Vitrano is a featured speaker and will be discussing nartual food/product cosumer package good companies. He will be joined by Boulder-based entrepreneurs Brendan Synott (Evol, Bare Naked Granola, Pact organic apparel, Little Secrets) and Jim Moscou (Sir Richard’s).
For more information, check out Good Spread, Vitrano on LinkedIn, and NOEW.
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