A Female-Led Revolution In Food Design By Simple Mills

One of her favorite things about entrepreneurship, says Katlin Smith, Founder and CEO of better-for-you baked goods company Simple Mills “is that there’s always a new problem to be had, always a new thing to learn.”

Smith left a successful consulting career in 2014 to start Simple Mills as a way to “harness the power of food to benefit people and planetary health,” she says. “As a consultant, I had gotten bored because I felt like I’d figured out the equation,” says Smith. “The thing is, when you’re an entrepreneur, you never figure out the equation. The only equation is just learn, learn, learn, learn, learn because the company’s continuously evolving.”

“In the early days, things were a lot more fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. You have to move so quickly, and you have to be a jack of all trades, you have to do every single little thing, which means that you have less time to devote to each of those things and fewer resources. And you don’t have the smartest people, like we do today, to answer some of those questions and solve some of those problems. And so, in the early days, it just feels like a lot of adrenaline and a lot of cortisol.”

Nowadays, those stress hormones still flow — but for different reasons. Now, it’s about staying on top and staying true while scaling into the mainstream.

A Revolutionary Journey

Like most in the space, Smith cleaned up her diet first. She removed most of the processed food, and a lot of the sugar: “And it was just really amazing to me how much my health transformed as a result.”

Smith had been a biology and business double major in college, which continued to drive her curiosity about the profound impact food could exert on the human body — and what decisions we all made along the way that led to food undermining the Earth.

“You look around and you see all of these places where people aren’t getting to live their lives to the fullest because of the decisions that we’ve made with our food.”

“And that inspired me to think about how we could help change what people are eating. How do we help change our food industry?” Smith ultimately landed on the idea that by building companies that “do it differently,” we could collectively achieve different outcomes. “We founded Simple Mills with that vision: Make food with impact.”

Today, the Chicago-based company, which specializes in crackers, cookies, snack bars, and baking mixes, still uses only whole-food ingredients with nothing artificial. It’s the #1 natural baking mix brand; the #1 natural cracker brand; and the #1 natural cookie brand, with distribution in about 30,000 natural and mainstream stores nationwide.

Each of its products reflects another step in Simple Mills’ journey to continuously revolutionize food design, says Smith. The company, she says, intends to advance regenerative agriculture principles, elevate farmers, empower eaters, and inspire others so that “our food system can nourish people and our planet now and for generations to come.”

Its revolution is measured in improved soil health, biodiversity, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased carbon sequestration. Of the latter outcome, Smith asks: “what is a tree? What is a plant? They are sequestered carbon and nitrogen!”

Invested in Good Health

In 2014, Smith raised $1.2 million in early-stage VC funding. Smith points out research regarding the disproportionately low funding for female-founded companies in the VC space. “When we were raising our first round, I happened to be at the University of Chicago at Booth where they had this course on fundraising, and so I got exposed to all of these potential investors.”

Says Smith, “My advice for other women founders is to think about how they’re going to build that network, to talk to other women founders, getting exposed to potential investors, because you’re going to need to meet with probably more than your male counterparts. And I did. Oh, my gosh, I was meeting with probably seven or eight different potential investors every single day for months to try and find our first investors.”

In 2019, PitchBook valued Simple Mills at $180+ million, making it the most valuable female-led startup in Illinois.

A Next-Generation Food Company

How do you feed the upcoming generation of consumers differently from the last? At Simple Mills, says Smith, it starts with synthesizing the most nutrient-dense snacks and other foods with agricultural practices that benefit the economic health of farming communities and the environmental health of the planet. It’s about direct contracts with farmers, partnerships that provide financial incentives for adopting regenerative agriculture practices, as well as purchase-guarantees for the crops.

“It has been one of the most amazing things to watch over the past 10 years, seeing this industry transform,” says Smith. “Ten years ago, you had conventional stores like Walmart, Kroger, Safeway. And you had natural food stores such as Whole Foods, Sprouts, and the independent natural food stores. Today [the natural food] movement has [reached] broader America. You talk about Walmart bringing natural items into not just the natural set, but into the main line. And you simultaneously see the eaters across the country changing the way that they’re eating.”

“And this has been just so exciting to watch,” says Smith. “But I think what’s been a real point of magic is that the products out there have transformed during this time. A big part of our vision is to make these products more accessible to broader audiences. And a big part of that is taste. So delivering on those wonderful qualities of natural food, and at the same time not making people compromise on how great something’s going to taste. Or, as we like to say at Simple Mills, we develop products that taste great in the moment, and also nourish you for the long term.”