Impact Hunger With The Soulfull Project

Utilizing their knowledge and resources, food-industry veterans Megan Shea and Chip Heim are tackling food insecurity in America, providing 673,410 servings of hot cereal to more than 200 food banks across the United States since The Soulfull Project launched in August 2016. And they’re just heating up.

OFF AND RUNNING

Megan and Chip named their venture The Soulfull Project and set out to get answers to their questions. Looking back, they didn’t have a handle on the scope of the hunger problem in America in those early days, but they knew they were onto something. They started with the Food Bank of South Jersey, which vigorously embraced the idea and helped them develop their cornerstone product—the Four Grain Blend—which gets donated to the food banks whenever a product is purchased. Since there is a prevalence of diabetes among those facing food insecurity, a Campbell’s chef helped them create a non-GMO cereal that was a blend of whole grains and quinoa, with no sugar added.

Once they had the nuts and bolts arranged and the business plan buttoned up, Megan and Chip prepared to bring the idea to Campbell’s leadership. “We were so nervous that day—we had never presented a business plan. But they said yes immediately. Leadership agreed to fund Soulfull as a new company, but we had to leave our roles at Campbell’s,” Megan says. “So we did, and suddenly we were employed by The Soulfull Project.”

The Soulfull Project became a wholly owned subsidiary of Campbell’s and a Certified B Corporation, a company that has been verified to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

With the support of Campbell’s at their back and the stamp of approval from Certified B Corporation, Megan and Chip set about selling the product itself. Jeremy Hantke, category manager at Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., agreed to meet with The Soulfull Project, and he was enthusiastic about the concept and the product. “He gave us 14 of his stores, all around food banks, to start out,” Megan says.

The project officially launched in August 2016, and Megan and Chip kicked it off with an ambitious endeavor —100 volunteer events in 100 days. “We felt like, if we were going to do this, we had to learn who we were giving to. We decided we were going to prove that you can make a difference. We set up a plan with our giving partners to do every volunteering event they had over that time period,” Megan says. “We would spend the days working, doing everything from cleaning vegetables in a farm field to packing boxes to handing out food to making sandwiches. It was the best way to start a company because we couldn’t even be anxious. We were so focused on the volunteering and getting the work done that it took the focus off us and put it on the people we were helping.”

The 100 days were physically and emotionally draining, but they also brought huge energy and attention to the project, which began with 300 Facebook followers and zoomed to 19,000 by the end of the 100 days. It also gave the duo clearer insight into what food banks are facing and how they creatively solve problems.

For example, the Food Bank of South Jersey partners with the Campbell Soup Company and local peach farmers to produce more than 40,000 jars of Just Peachy Salsa, which are sold at local markets. Just Peachy Salsa is made from undersized and slightly blemished peaches that would otherwise be thrown away, saving about 80,000 pounds of waste and using a portion of the proceeds to benefit the food bank’s hunger-relief program.

After the 100 days, the next part of their mission was clear. They had to visit food banks nationwide to introduce their program, develop cohesive partnerships, and better understand the scope of the problem and the specific issues in particular regions of the country that needed to be addressed with plenty of imagination and elbow grease. In the last 2 years, Megan and Chip have visited more than 90 food banks across the country, which meant being away from their families and traveling to places like St. George, Utah, and Battle Creek, Mich.

In each location, they would volunteer and get to know the food bank for a few days, often taking red eyes back to Philly in time to see their kids off to school or to make soccer games. “We’ve developed more than 200 giving partners around the country, and we’re on a journey to meet as many of them as possible. Visiting and volunteering with them gives us an opportunity to see how different each one of the food banks really is,” Megan says. “The prevalent theme is that every community is struggling with food insecurity, but they all have unique reasons why. It could be because they have a higher percentage of senior citizens or like in Reading, Pa., where so many of the kids are in the free breakfast program.”

PERSONAL TOUCH

Food banks work incredibly hard to meet the needs of the communities in which they are based, paying special attention to the children. Says Megan, “A woman we met who ran a food bank in North Carolina told us about how she was talking to an elementary school principal down there, and they had a series of snow days. On the third day of no school, the principal got a phone call from a child. He asked if there was school tomorrow. The principal said, ‘Why, aren’t you having fun?’ The boy said, ‘I’m hungry.’ And that really makes you rethink what a snow day is, for example.”

These kinds of stories tug at the heartstrings, but it gives Megan and Chip great hope to see the response from both the food banks and community members in addressing these issues. Chip says programs aimed at addressing hunger have gotten savvier about their delivery mechanisms, understanding that the food that goes home with kids is often shared with other family members. Foods have to be light, so kids can carry them, and they need to be transported in nondescript backpacks so the kids don’t worry about being identified as children in need.

Volunteering and working in tandem with the food banks not only introduced Chip and Megan to people they endeavored to help, but it also let them encounter and come to know other volunteers like Sam, whom they met in Newark, NJ, at a mobile pantry. “He was a 24-year-old guy with a huge grin. He told us he had just moved to Cape May, NJ, from Jackson, Miss. That morning, he got on a bus—3 hours away—to volunteer,” Megan says. “I asked him why he did that, and he said, ‘It’s my birthday, and my mom says on your birthday you need to be in service of others.’ He’s someone I won’t forget.”

Despite all the meals they’ve been able to donate to people in need and the interest from grocery stores and consumers in supporting the program, Megan and Chip still battle uncertainty about whether what they’re doing is actually working. A few weeks ago, on their way home from a food bank, they stopped by a kiosk in the B Terminal of the Philadelphia Airport where The Soulfull Project products are sold. “I walked up to one of the people who worked at the store and asked how it was selling. She said, ‘Hmmm, OK.’ We walked away, and we were like, ‘It’s over! This isn’t working; what are we going to do?’ But then we saw it at another kiosk, and we asked again, and this woman said, ‘It sells all the time! People love it, and they love giving back.’”

While they may not be satisfied with the results yet, Megan and Chip are more certain than ever that two people, a good idea, and a willingness to do the heavy lifting can help a lot of people. And that should feed their souls for the foreseeable future.