Growing an ethical food business – with Dirty Clean Food

Perth-based Dirty Clean Food is the regenerative food brand of Wide Open Agriculture (ASX: WOA) and is quickly becoming Perth’s leading destination for ethical food. Dirty Clean Food uses technology, innovative farming partnerships, and logistics to reinvent how customers think about and access ethical food.

The company’s focus is to advance regenerative farming in Western Australia, a strategy which has gained traction during COVID, buoyed by increasing interest with recent documentaries on Netflix such as Kiss the Ground, making regenerative farming a talking point in households.

In this session, Dr. Ben Cole and Jay Albany will tell the story of Dirty Clean Food going from concept to $3m+ in revenues in 18 months, the challenges faced, the impact of COVID, and lessons learned as they built the business and attracted financing in the last year.

About Dr. Ben Cole (Managing Director)

With a PhD in environmental engineering, Ben is a social enterprise expert who has extensive international experience as a Grant Manager of market-based, water supply and sanitation projects, totalling up to $30 million. Between 2008 and 2013 he founded, managed and sold a profitable, social enterprise – Karibon – in Vietnam. A genuine start-up from invention through to sales, Ben gained valuable experience in business development and management.

About Jay Albany (General Manager)

Jay Albany is the General Manager of Dirty Clean Food, Wide Open Agriculture’s commercial food brand that is quickly becoming Perth’s ethical food leader. Jay is intensely committed to creating a disruptive channel that directly connects consumers to regeneratively farmed produce in Western Australia. Before joining Wide Open Agriculture, Jay spent the majority of his 20-year career in consumer-facing online start-ups and investment finance in New York, including twice building start-ups from inception to $20mn+ in sales. He is intent on doing the same in Perth. Prior to building Dirty Clean Food, was a senior executive at MaxDelivery.com and co-founded online grocer MyFreshGrocer, an eco-friendly online grocery in New York.

Jay’s passion is using partnerships, logistics, and innovation to build a better network for consumers and businesses to access high-quality food.

Sponsors

Thanks to Ammo Marketing (ammo.marketing), and Beacham Group (beachamgroup.com) for their support of Morning Startup and the Perth startup community! If you need help with marketing and growth or hiring awesome people check them out and tell them Morning Startup sent you!

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