Startup creates feed from surplus grocery products, feeds chickens, sells the result

LOUISVILLE — Do Good Foods LLC, a startup company based in Bedminster, New Jersey, but with multiple executives living in the Boulder Valley, has made its first product — Do Good Chicken — available at Super Target stores in the region.

Do Good Foods is a company that makes use of outdated, surplus food from grocery stores to produce chicken feed that is fed to chickens that are then sold at retail.

Do Good Foods is a company begun by the Kamine family, which was featured in Forbes. The family finds a problem and says “we can fix that,” said Sheridan Budin, chief marketing officer for the company. She lives in Louisville.

In this case, the Kamines saw massive food waste in the country — 40% of grocery-store food is not consumed. That means that about $408 billion of grocery store food goes unsold or uneaten, she said.

“Five years ago, they [the family members] started this idea that surplus food, after some has been donated, could be gathered and ‘upcycled,’” she said. “It’s perfectly good for animal food.”

From a processing plant in Pennsylvania, Do Good Foods gathers waste grocery food from a 250-mile radius and processes it into chicken feed. “The goal is to eventually be nationwide to fight food waste and fight climate change,” she said.

The company plans additional plants in Indiana and North Carolina.

Once the feed is produced, the company contracts with small chicken farmers to raise the chickens, and then contracts with small chicken production facilities to ready the meat for sale.

So far, Do Good Foods has contracted with Safeway in the Northeast, along with Target in Colorado, to sell the product. Do Good Chicken has been available since April 22 on the East Coast and about a month later in Colorado.

“Our target consumer is the one who’s on the eco journey,” Budin said. She sees Colorado as “an incredible opportunity” because of interest in environmental issues. 

“This has been a dream come true. We’re a purpose-driven company,” she said. 

Next up for the company: Creating animal feed for other critters in addition to chickens.

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