Interview: Kimberly Smith of Copia, Redistributing Businesses' Surplus Food
Kimberly Smith is the CEO of Copia, a data-driven “donation engine” enterprise that redistributes surplus food from businesses to community aid organizations.
Yay, a financial disclosure! This is a sponsored post for The Weekly Anthropocene, thanks to Jason Ingle of Third Nature Investments (who we interviewed last year) and his work to support plant-based food and textile companies.
A lightly edited transcript of this exclusive interview follows. This writer’s questions and remarks are in bold, Ms. Smith’s responses are in regular type. Bold italics are clarifications and extra information added after the interview.
All non-captioned images are courtesy of Copia.
Could you tell me what Copia is and what it does?
Copia's mission is to help businesses redistribute high-quality surplus to people in need. In doing so, they are able to help their neighbors, improve profitability, and reduce emissions all within one simple application. So we make it as easy as possible to redistribute surplus to our neighbors in need.
At Copia, we're driven by a powerful mission to transform surplus into sustenance for those who need it most. By harnessing the potential of technology, we empower businesses to make a meaningful impact on their communities, their bottom line, and the environment. With our user-friendly platform, we're simplifying the process of redistributing surplus, ensuring that no good food goes to waste.
Excellent. And what does that look like in practice? You guys built the software and you also do deliveries, is that correct?
We look at hunger as a logistics problem. There's more than enough surplus. There's three times more food than there are mouths to feed. This is not a scarcity issue, it’s a matter of logistics. Copia has the technical infrastructure to be able to facilitate donations and create operational efficiencies for organizations. That’s important because it’s actually quite cumbersome and complex to be able to facilitate a donation on your own, especially at scale.
Copia provides our customers with sophisticated matching to nonprofits. We understand exactly what it is that a business has to donate and where it’s best fit, through our nonprofit demand signaling, because the last thing that we want is more “donation dumping.” We want that food to be delivered to the right nonprofit and also delivered with dignity.
Copia handles the logistics, the back-end reporting, the liability, and the transfer of ownership, etc. We then provide robust data to celebrate the positive impact made, whether that’s calculating enhanced tax deductions businesses recieve, the number of meals fed, the communities served, the CO2e emissions reduced, water saved, etc. We organize all of this to take the burden off both our donating businesses and our nonprofit recipients.
At our core, we're a technology service that provides both logistics and data.
Can you tell the story of how you started?
Copia's roots were planted in 2015 in the Bay Area, with the goal of realizing that there's more than enough and that we can feed our neighbors in need. We started as a grassroots effort and we are now proudly a Public Benefit Corporation. It was a manual process for many, many years because, if you’ve ever donated you know, it’s a laborious process. In 2020, we ushered in new leadership with a fresh new mindset, and we were able to successfully reconfigure our solution to be tech-forward. By doing so we made the entire process more efficient and scalable. We’re proud to be the first donation technology with national reach and scale.
What are the milestones that have defined the rise of Copia lately?
Oh, gosh. Well, there’s been so many over the years. I remember when we got to a point where we were helping donate a million meals a year, that was a big milestone for us. When we turned on our automated system and had a business sign up in one day and within three hours they were actually donating surplus food to their community, that was a big ‘aha, we’ve got something here’ moment. I’m just so proud of our team, we really try to celebrate all the little wins, too!
That's amazing.
We've had incredible external recognition. We were recognized in 2023 as a Fast Company ‘Most Innovative Company in Social Good’–wonderful external validation for the need for our company and the good that we're doing. As well as–which I'm personally most proud of–we were recognized as an Inc. ‘Best Place to Work’ company based on the feedback and testimonials from our team. Personally, it's wonderful to be able to do so much good in this world, and to know that we have like-minded individuals at our organization, all rowing in the same direction…it’s an incredible feeling.
And then more of a big impact milestone… I'd say is the passing of various legislation, like the Food Donation Improvement Act, which I had the honor of supporting on Capitol Hill a few years back, and also California SB 1383. SB 1383 is a statewide mandate that has been rolling out for several years now. Starting this past January, in 2024, both Tier 1 and Tier 2 waste generators are required to donate their surplus food as well as recycle their organics. And so for us, this is an incredible validation and tailwind to support our efforts, and we're really excited about the commitment that these businesses are making, not just the ones on their own accord, but now others that are being introduced to the triple bottom line benefit it provides.
Spectacular, spectacular.
I've seen some contradictory statistics on food waste. What are some of the overall in-house sort of major guidelines that you guys use to describe to people the scope and scale of the problem of food waste in America?
There’s approximately $428 billion annual loss from wasting food in the U.S. An estimated 33% of all food in the U.S. goes to waste! Each year in the U.S., around 145 billion meals worth of food goes unsold or uneaten, most of it ending up in landfills where it emits methane. And as I'm sure you're very familiar with, that’s a greenhouse gas that is far more potent than CO2, so it's a major contributor to climate change. This is a real problem!
How do you make your connections? Do you just put yourself out there and people come to you? Or do you actively seek out partners? If a bunch of businesses sign up in one area, do you seek out nonprofits to complement them? I'm sure you have huge network effects now and you get tons of people coming in, but how do you get that ball rolling, especially when you expand into new regions?
We have been very successful without a sales team. It's been really remarkable.
Businesses are interested for many reasons, whether the businesses are committing as an organization to reducing their emissions, whether they see the need for supporting the local communities in which they operate, whether they see the value in enhancing their tax deduction, or in supporting what their customers are about–pick any reason and they’re jumping on board.
Also, to that last point, we're finding now that the younger generations are putting their wallets where their values are, and if businesses are more aligned with their customer values, there is a connection there. A donation program is a simple way for a business to be able to give back to those communities and reflect those values.
So, back to your original question, fortunately, everything is word of mouth.
And then from a demand side, we believe that the business or the nonprofits that are doing the incredible work in the communities deserve the resources and tools to continue to do that. So we want to continue to support them. What we've been building out is a matching algorithm, understanding nonprofit needs so that they're getting exactly what they need when they need it.
What is your profitability model, exactly? Do businesses pay to be part of this program because they earn it back in tax deductions? Obviously the social value is paramount and really obvious, but how do you sustain the business?
You get it! That enhanced tax deduction is so meaningful especially today when costs are going up across the board, and waste and surplus are both factors that can be controlled. So just to quickly run you through some of the economics here.
If you're a corporation, when you throw away $100 worth of food, you write off a loss of $100 on your P&L [profit and loss statement]. Also, losing the opportunity to feed your neighbors, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. However, if you choose to donate instead, because of enhanced tax deductions through the PATH Act, you can instead write off up to $200, basically doubling that tax deduction. Now you're reducing your costs just by doing the right thing. As for Copia’s costs, it’s pretty intuitive, we charge a subscription and a service fee for a scalable, efficient, and consistent program and that business should not only be able to cover Copia's costs from their enhanced tax deduction, but a donation program through Copia should be a profitable one for their bottom line.
Excellent. I kind of assumed it had something to do with tax law, but thank you very much for spelling it out. That is great to know.
So assume that someone's reading this and they are a business or a nonprofit. How can they start connecting with Copia? I'm guessing the answer is go to gocopia.com. But just so people know what to expect, what is your onboarding process?
Yeah, that's exactly it. It's very simple. If you're a 501c3 nonprofit, go to gocopia.com and you're able to fill out a profile indicating your needs and easily validate your organization through your EIN. If you need food, we want to find food for you.
That is spectacular.
Sam, you are so positive!
That’s what I'm trying to do with my writing! Imagine, like, a four-quadrant chart with the axes “big-small” and “negative-positive” In internet news, there’s tons and tons of big and small negative stuff, from war to local crime, but almost all the positive stuff is in the “small-positive” quadrant, like a story about a cute kitten being rescued. I'm trying to write about “big-positive,” big scalable stuff that genuinely makes the world better. Like, renewable energy, wildlife conservation, companies like yours.
You know what? I love that. I think that that is fantastic. These problems can be solved.
Absolutely. The world is already so much better than it was in 1850. And we have the potential to continue making a much better world.
That's what we believe, at Copia. How do we expect everyone to be able to lean in and think about their neighbors when they're trying to find their next meal? You can't ask someone to be able to lean in and think about others while they have basic survival needs. If we can literally put food on their plates, how much does that open up for a community to come together and think about something bigger and broader?
What does a day in the life look like, at Copia? What is crosses your desk on a random Tuesday?
Well, my proverbial desk is a moving one. Sometimes its in my office, sometimes at the dining room table, sometimes in the shower, and I see it all. Its the absolute joy of my role getting to support my team, our partners, both the donating and receiving ones, our investors, my industry peers and so on. I never have the same day twice.
We're a lean and scrappy team, said every CEO ever! But we operate very efficiently and we wear a lot of different hats.
And some of our core values–I'm going on a bit of a tangent, but it brings it back.
Go for it.
Okay, so culture is ever evolving because it changes with every new person that comes on board. As it should, because everyone brings unique experiences and perspectives. But our core values should stay the same. We operate off of three core values, which are a sense of gratitude, servant leadership, and ‘strong opinions loosely held.’ We all lean in to support one another in a lot of different capacities, and those core values show up in everything that we're doing.
So getting back to it, it doesn't matter what day of the week, anything and everything happens and we are all working together.
We'll be talking about product enhancements. We're talking with local nonprofits and jurisdictions for legislation and how to be able to support their communities. We talk with businesses to understand what their tax incentives look like or how to create operational efficiencies in the back of the house.
It literally runs the gamut every single day.
Do you ever get out there on the ground to see Copia food meals being distributed? It must feel great to be able to see that that difference you're making.
Yes! It’s so rewarding to see how our service works in the real world. Because again, our goal is to make it as easy as possible. We have an incredible volunteer program, “Copia Cares”, within our organization where we get together a couple of times a year. We’re 100% remote but this quarterly effort allows those in close proximity to get together go in and serve the nonprofits that are part of our community. This gives us the chance to really sit down and understand first hand where their challenges are, what impact they're having in the community, and what services beyond just feeding their communities they are offering. It's really, really important that we touch and feel our own service to understand how to improve.
That's really great! What else would you like to share about Copia?
Well, something that I think would be helpful is to kind of understand where we sit in this ecosystem. So when we look at the supply chain, a lot of businesses are getting smarter about mitigating waste or reducing waste further upstream. I think that that's really important, and we're doing that through data.
As a business, if you cannot sell your product, you might go the route of liquidation at a reduced rate. And then the inevitable next step, because it's just the easiest one, is to go directly to waste. And so what we're trying to do at Copia is shine a light on a segment in the supply chain that sits between that liquidation stage and that waste stage to eliminate unnecessary waste that sits further downstream and in our landfills. What we're trying to do is realize a new segment that really hasn't existed in a structured way.
We are also excited to formally announce our partnership with Rite Aid, our first national pharmacy retailer. Integrating into their technology systems and store operations has been such a blast to work on. They’re already making a meaningful impact in all of the communities their currently donating from. Talk about scale!
Also, we are now announcing our ability to redistribute more than just food, like over-the-counter medicine, household products, and the essentials that so many people need. We’re excited because food is the hardest to tackle, obviously because of its perishable nature. But since we've solved this, there's no reason that we can't expand beyond food to other items as well. Household goods, you know, like hygiene products that are sometimes inaccessible because of the cost. If we can do this, I think that we solve a massive problem and through reverse logistics, create a new segment in the supply chain.
Absolutely. That sounds spectacular. And that also sounds like you are developing a really vital link in the huge techno-capital societal system that we live in. You're hooking up a wasteful output to a place that's really needing that exact same thing as an input. There is just fundamentally a deep common-sense logic to this. A lot of the modern economy would be really, really hard to explain to someone from just a couple generations ago. Try to explain web advertising for a software product to someone from the 1800s, right? It sounds like fantasies on moonbeams on fairy tales. But moving excess food to people that need food would be understandable in the Paleolithic. It is just a basic human need that you're really actualizing. And that, I think, is really, really good for society as a whole.
I'm so glad that Jason reached out. I think you're doing incredible work. I believe that we can make the world better.
I absolutely agree, yeah. Positive incrementalism has given us what is already by far the best society for the ordinary person in history, on metrics like child death rates and malnutrition and stuff like that. We absolutely are making progress and can make much more. There's been an astonishing amount of progress on the clean energy revolution in the last three or four years, for example, and it's barely been covered because the world is distracted by a lot of things.
Thank you. It was really a pleasure, Sam.
Kimberly, thank you so much.
Have a lovely day.
I remember your interview with Jason last summer. Both his outfit and Kimberly's are trying to help people and make this a better world..they deserve our support. Thanks for giving us both complementary interviews!