If you were told your cooking was good enough to serve as the foundation for a multi-million dollar company, would you rent a commercial kitchen in Queens and start selling frozen meals over the weekend? If your answer is “No,” that’s the difference between you and Daily Harvest CEO Rachel Drori.
Drori decided that she was going to take on the side project in 2015, years before millions of social-distanced apartment dwellers flirted with the thought of starting a business out of boredom. After shelling out $25,000 (NIS 84,000) of her own savings for the kitchen and materials, it took Drori only two months to quit her day job, due to the growing influx of hungry customers interested in her unique and delicious meal offerings.
Several years and over $100 million (NIS 337 million) in funding later (including several investments from celebrities such as Bobby Flay and Gwyneth Paltrow), Drori is the head of a frozen food giant, serving thousands every day, with over 100 different recipes.
Drori’s company has also impacted the way that many of its farmers operate their businesses, going so far as to help fund their transition to organic growing – typically a very time and cost intensive process.
“I created Daily Harvest to reimagine how food can nourish both humanity and the planet. We make it easy to eat more sustainably sourced fruits and vegetables, and the bigger we grow, the more good we can do.”
Rachel Drori
“I created Daily Harvest to reimagine how food can nourish both humanity and the planet. We make it easy to eat more sustainably sourced fruits and vegetables, and the bigger we grow, the more good we can do,” Drori said in an interview with Forbes. “We are laying the foundation for a better future.”
What confidence and know-how can accomplish
Despite a recent series of layoffs and a food poisoning debacle that led to several hospitalizations, Daily Harvest is still representative of what can come of a little confidence and a lot of know-how. As Drori once put it: “We’re reimagining what a packaged food company can look like.”