May 14, 2021
The “Good Eggs” of Good Eggs — a conversation with Good Eggs CEO Bentley Hall
I had the pleasure to sit down (over Zoom) with Bentley Hall, the CEO of Good Eggs, a start-up aimed at pioneering and revolutionizing the online grocery delivery space, and also our most recent portfolio company in the consumer space. Bentley shared his story, had some great insights about the grocery industry as a whole, and also shared exciting details about Good Eggs, including their goals and values.
Republic Labs is excited to support Good Eggs due to their measured approach towards growth, focus on supporting local producers and creating quality jobs, and involvement in an increasingly growing vertical of online grocery delivery.
Elizabeth: How would you describe Good Eggs in your own words and where you are currently at with it?
Bentley: Good Eggs is a pioneering online grocery marketplace that delivers thoughtfully sourced, peak-quality groceries, innovative service, and good jobs. We are the only company that provides a full bounty of meal kits, groceries, prepared foods, alcohol, and flowers — as well as delivering mindfully sourced, absurdly fresh produce, often within 48 hours of being harvested. Currently, 70% of Good Eggs’ offerings are locally sourced. For context, the average grocer in the US is less than 1% direct and local.
Elizabeth: That’s super cool. Where did the initial inspiration for Good Eggs come from? And I would love to hear a little bit about your personal background and how you got involved?
Bentley: I am a dreamer who does. I love helping purpose driven food and consumer companies scale. I have been doing it for the past 15+ years. I hope to do it for the rest of my life. After spending time with Johnson & Johnson and Clif Bar, I joined the early executive team at Plum Organics. In less than 7 years, Plum grew to become the largest organic baby & kids food company in the US, and was acquired by the Campbell Soup in 2012.
Six years ago, I was living in the UK, my wife and I were about to have our second son, and we moved back to the US. In the city of London, online was 15 to 25% of the overall grocery category. We came back to the US, and it was still 3 to 4% online share. Because of that experience, and all the visible data points from the natural food space, it was pretty clear food had two major tectonic shifts occurring: one toward good food, and one toward online. That was obvious to me, but five years ago, that was not a widely held sentiment. Good Eggs sat right at the intersection of those trends. When you find perfect category timing, and the right company, that overlaps with something you really love — which for me is food — you don’t look for perfection, you leap for opportunity, you roll up your sleeves and you get building.
Elizabeth: That sounds really cool. And I feel like a lot of people consider the US to be such a consumer leader when it comes to ordering things online. So I never knew that we were so behind when it came to online grocery shopping specifically.
Bentley: Yeah. The US often has a US-centric view, but there are so many countries across the globe in this particular category that are way ahead of us.
Elizabeth: For sure. What would you say has been like the biggest challenge with building Good Eggs recently, especially with COVID? Or just overall?
Bentley: Good Eggs has been around for almost a decade and I joined as CEO more than five years ago. The biggest challenge when I first joined was that the business was a turnaround. Good Eggs had scaled back from four markets to one. We had weeks of cash left. That was a challenging period.
With COVID, the speed and magnitude of the shift in consumer behavior has been incredible. We opened a brand new 120,000 square foot warehouse in Oakland a few days before “Stay in Place” went into effect in California in March. That is really good timing for business, but not for our team’s sleep. For the following four or five months, it was non-stop, sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. As an essential service, it felt really important for our customers, our team, and our business to do everything we could to meet that unprecedented demand. And so that was an arduous, but also transformational period.
Elizabeth: Would you say that things are kind of starting to cool down a bit, or is it kind of full steam ahead? Because right now you serve San Fran, and you’re expanding to LA?
Bentley: It is definitely cooler than infinite free demand [laughs]. So yes, it is cooler, but the long term tailwinds are still incredibly strong, and this is just chapter one of a larger shift. Online food and grocery shopping are here to stay.
Elizabeth: What would you say you’re most excited for in the future? What’s new, up and coming and exciting that you can share?
Bentley: The one that I already have shared is expansion — we’ve spent five years building out a reliable, profitable, consistent foundation. Now it is time to accelerate good, customer-centric, multi-region growth. I am excited about that.
If I look beyond that, there’s some very cool things we are doing on the customer experience side. Giving customers more dynamic choice, allowing the site to transform based on who you are. Those are two things, but there’s a lot more coming.
Elizabeth: I imagine you’re planning on expanding outside of California — where are you thinking next?
Bentley: Unlike many people who are trying to be everything to everybody, everywhere, we actually want to just have these deep roots into the top five to eight West Coast Metro markets. So after California, the Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Arizona, and Texas. They’re all west of the Mississippi, but those are all big markets in themselves. That will keep us busy for the next few years, and once that is done, we will unveil larger national and global plans.
Elizabeth: Awesome. And then you mentioned that one of your biggest differentiators is sourcing local. How do you find these people that you work with locally? Is it a really hard process? Or is it something that kind of comes naturally?
Bentley: If you are a peak-quality, high-integrity food producer in the Bay Area, you probably know about Good Eggs. We also have a great buying team, who is always on the hunt for new suppliers. This is natural for us, and very unnatural for the larger national retailers. First, you need to have the right intent, and then you need to back that up with a team and technology tools that makes local sourcing possible at scale.
We’re trying to do that for multiple reasons. For customers, it ensures we give them the best quality. A lot of other retailers aren’t trying to prioritize quality. They’re trying to prioritize low price and durability of food. And so it’s just a different choice. For the business, it lets us turn around our absurdly fresh inventory faster than anyone else. That improves margins and reduces spoilage. And last but not least, it is the right thing to do for our purpose.
Elizabeth: That’s super exciting to hear. I’m from my tiny little farm town, and so people are very gung ho on supporting local. I’ve had plenty of apple picking and potato picking trips, so that’s really awesome to see that you’re capitalizing on that.
Is there anything else that you want to share?
Bentley: The one thing that we didn’t talk about, which is important to us, is good jobs. We have a pretty strong point of view about good jobs for our 700+ people. Most of those are in a fulfillment center, receiving product, picking orders and delivering food. Most food deliveries depend on temporary gig labor. We do the opposite. We pay our team a living wage, provide full benefits, equity and upward mobility. We believe this is a requirement to consistently deliver really high quality service for people.
Republic Labs is the advisor to clients which have invested in Good Eggs, nothing herein should be construed as investment advice.
By Elizabeth Olshanetsky (elizabeth@republiclabs.co) for Republic Labs.
