Bite For What's Right !
Bite Society is a vegan food-activism project 🌱
We're mission-driven with 2 simple goals:
1 - Lower prices and make vegan mainstream to reach more folks
2 - Inspire and
help other vegan projects & founders
We promise to give our all to make kinder options the default, and change the world for the better 💗
How did Bite Society get started?
A long time vegan, our founder Simon was thinking about how to have more impact in his activism: to help animals and encourage alternatives to animal agriculture. Being from a startup background (in technology) he decided to bootstrap this new project, applying concepts from the open source software movement. ie- to run lean and openly to lower the cost of vegan goods, and be a transparent case study to help others be successful with their vegan projects. To (literally) hear the journey right from day one, check out our podcast.
Simon (with help from the lil bub) at an early taste test
So how does the lower prices thing work?
Vegan foods shouldn't just be only for the affluent. Or just for vegans.
They should be for everyone.
We need to be able to compete with animal products, not only in taste and convenience, but also in price.
So we try hard to keep costs as low as is possible:
- Minimal salaries & expenses
- No full time sales force
- No fancy office (we work from home)
- No ad or sponsorship budgets
- Use co-packers with economies of scale
- Avoid expensive ingredients (eg hazelnuts)
- Have good relationships with aligned distributors
- No investors or dividends to pay
- Zero profit model
The costs we save we pass on to our distributor partners in the form of lower wholesale prices, which translates to lower "shelf" prices for the public.
Zero profit?
We target our wholesale prices to be be able to cover our costs of production, operation and incremental expansion.
In short - as low margins as we can go, so that we sell as affordably as possible to our retail and food service partners. That's why our chocolates end up being more competitively priced on shelves.
In the future if we ever have excess funds at the end of the year, they'll be donated to animal / vegan charities.
No ad budget?
We're fortunate to have you - our amazing "bitetribe". You are our community who helps spread the word - to shops, to friends, family and online, and we appreciate every single bit of support we get! If you'd like to help check out our volunteer page
Inspire other projects?
We can't do this alone.
The world needs thousands of passionate people working to change things for the better.
So the best way we can think of to help is through sharing and inspiring the community to start and grow their own vegan projects.
That means sharing as much as we can on our own case study as well as highlighting others on our Vegan Startup Podcast.
For more, take a look at our transparency page and also our blog and social feeds, and if you'd like specific advice check out our Helping Each Other page
Ethics
We're pleased to have Michael Dello-Iacovo volunteer as our ethics advisor, for times we want to discuss difficult ethical decisions and moral dilemmas.
Michael was previously the CEO of Effective Altruism Australia and manages the Morality is Hard podcast. Michael has dedicated his life to giving back and making the world a better place for all. To that end, in 2016 he pledged to donate all of his income above $45,000 each year to the most effective charities and causes.
Can I get involved?
If you like what you hear, and want to help out in some way, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us an email earthlings@bitesociety.com and let's chat!
