GrubTubs bringing farms back to the city

Recycling food waste into animal feed reduces cost for farmers, however the cost to make the feed often exceeds the value of the feed. Expensive feed-mill equipment, high energy cost to dehydrate, and transportation costs from city to farm prevent this idea from scaling.

Restaurants collect, categorize and sort food waste in 6.5 Gallon returnable containers tagging them with software. This allows us to only use nutritious batches reducing the need for high-tech feed-mills. With your help we can use Machine Learning to improve feed consistency. 

To eliminate the cost of energy we collect used vegetable oils to power our feed-mill and vehicles. Everything we use is recycled with a zero-carbon footprint.

For livestock operations to be situated close to our cities, they must become odor free. By using beneficial insects, manure can be converted into odorless compost within 24 hours and the insects are fed now to chickens.

Small scale farms will continue to decline unless there’s an increase in net farm income. There’s 2 million farms and ranches in the USA, with 95% earning less than $50,000 a year. Net farm income has declined about 50% between 2012-2018. Farmer suicides exceed veteran suicides. In Austin, 6 acres of farmland are lost to real estate development every day and we will no longer have affordable farmland in Travis county by 2025. Of all the food consumed in Austin, less than 0.5% is grown within 150 mile radius. 

For livestock producers feed cost can easily be 60-70% of the total operating costs and even 5 percent savings in feed costs makes a significant impact on net farm income, a 30% discount revitalizes small scale agriculture altogether and provides an attractive profit margin for beginning farmers. 

Large agriculture conglomerates drive down the cost of feed regardless of where it's grown or who grows it. Making it more affordable to cut down rainforest to plant cheap soy, than supporting local pandemic resistant  family farms in America. By giving farmers the ability to grow their own feed, they regain their autonomy from this bottom dollar thinking.

Our GrubTubs are returnable, clean containers dedicated to food waste recovery. GrubTubs can be scanned and tagged giving restaurant management metrics to minimize food waste loss. Our operators use these metrics to optimize recipes for animal feed.

On average 1 truck route collects 7 tons of food waste and 1 ton of used vegetable oil. An algorithm determines which GrubTubs contain optimal feed characteristics for pig feed (+/-5 tons) and which food waste is more suitable for compost (+/- 2 tons). Because the GrubTubs are airtight, we can use all types of trucks and drivers for transport.

Half a ton of used vegetable oil will be used to dehydrate 5 tons of food waste into 1.5 tons of pig feed which feeds 600 pigs/day. Those pigs will produce about 3 tons of manure that is conveyed into an insect incubator.  These incubators reduce the manure into a half ton of compost within 24 hours and produce nutritious insects that chickens love to eat.

The insects auto harvest when fully grown out of the reactor and can be fed to 4,000 chickens as a 1:1 replacement of soymeal in their poultry diet.

5 tons of food waste per day will feed 600 pigs and 4,000 chickens while the compost can fertilize 40 acres of plants. 

A small city of a million people like Austin has enough food waste to support 25 small farmers whom dedicate about 10 acres for livestock and 40+ acres for plants.

GrubTubs sells the farmer the pig feed at a 30% discount to conventional pig feed and baby insects for the incubator. 

In return the farmer grows about $200,000 of pork, $280,000 of organic eggs and 40 acres worth of crops, and saves +$100,000 in feed costs per year, doubling net farm income. This provides incentive for a new generation of farmers to have a respectable income and potentially send their child to the best university in the nation.  

Our solution specifically targets beginning farmers that qualify for USDA FSA Farm Loans up to $1,776,000. This allows them to purchase up to $600,000 in land near a GrubTubs facility and the rest can be used for barns and equipment.

To remain odorless, the piggeries must provide over twice the space per pig as a confined animal feed operation. This reduces the chance of future pandemics as well.

In order to turn food waste into a quality animal feed our business model does three things; eliminates the cost of energy to dehydrate and transport food waste, batches feed inputs using software instead of high-tech feed equipment, and allows beginner farms to operate near cities by reducing odor with our manure management. This small change in food waste recycling creates more resilient supply chains, more food security, and increases livestock production. This creates independence from commodity soy and corn on a minimal amount of land. Can we really expect quality food from farmers if they can’t make 6 figures?

Most of our technical solutions are improvements of existing technologies that we have combined in a working model. 

• We use off the shelf RFID chips to make our GrubTubs smart so we can control feed quality without purchasing a high-tech rendering facility or feed mill, 
• We use standard dehydrating equipment modified to run on vegetable oil instead of natural gas, 
• we halved the cost of black soldier fly production by doing it in small modular containers that can be placed at any farm. Centralized insect rearing facilities require an investment of about $2,000-$4,000/ton of annual output. Our equipment placed at an existing farm costs $500/ton and if approved by NRCS could be financed by small farmers with government guaranteed debt, not equity. We also simplified the technology to run on low grade food waste (low protein content) or manure that can be frequently cleaned out using a tractor.

The true innovation is in bringing all these smaller solutions together so the transportation, energy cost, and equipment cost remains affordable.

Also, we filed a crucial patent application for a coating that has to be applied to the recycled plastic containers to prevent the GrubTubs from smelling after 20 uses. This is a crucial material science solution borrowed from the automobile industry and in a novel way applied to the trash industry. Once odors impregnate the micropores of plastic, our GrubTubs would have to be discarded. With this coating, they now last over 200 uses and are much easier to clean.

1. New Technology Hardware: Aerated Black Soldier Fly Incubator
   From 2013-2016 we developed a Black Soldier Fly Incubator that is aerated and operates efficiently in about 50 centimeters of substrate. This is revolutionary in the insect rearing field as most insects are grown in trays. Something not possible in a farm or industrial setting where labor cost is high. It works better with manure than with food waste and is cheaper to build and manage. Hence we pivoted our idea of using food waste to feed insects directly to first feeding dehydrated food waste to pigs and then feeding the manure of the pigs to the insects. This eliminates a tremendous amount of complexity in using food waste directly. A lot of this discovery is protected by confidentiality and is needing patenting.
2. Business Model Innovation:
   collect used vegetable oils in the same container, with the same pickup vehicle so we can power our Anco Dehydrator Feed Mill, container cleaning equipment, and fuel our vehicles. Currently: used vegetable oil is picked up with a $200,000 vacuum truck and compost with a $200,000 trash truck and both use CDL drivers. We use regular box trucks ($80,000) and non-CDL drivers. For every GreaseTub of Used Vegetable Oil we collect, we can dehydrate 13 GrubTubs of Food Waste.
3. Existing technology: using machine learning to categorize food waste content per container so we can optimize BOTH logistics AND animal feed formulations. 
4. Ancestral Technology (Korea): INOCULATED DEEP LITTER SYSTEM for odorless piggery

1. Confidential Novel Technology:
   In this video we have black soldier fly eating through 25 centimeters of substrate when they typically operate within 2-3 centimeters of substrate. 
   https://bit.ly/2zFItcf 
   We cannot disclose more details of this system publicly.
2. New Application of Existing Technology: 
   1. We currently purify the vegetable oil and make biodiesel using a BioPro 380 and run a diesel 60kW generator to power our farm. We launched this service in Feb 2020 and have over 10 customers giving us used vegetable oil.
   2. A food waste dehydrator is currently operating near Las Vegas similar to the design we want to purchase (https://bit.ly/2zKuQbW). This piece of equipment costs about $400,000, $1,200,000 fully installed.
   3. However, we wish to use a system like Winnow's to collect data of food waste at the restaurant level so we can intelligently sort the nutrient profile of our food waste into nutrient-rich for animal feed and nutrient-poor for compost or insect production. Otherwise, making a high quality animal feed requires more sophisticated dehydration equipment and will cost upwards of $3 million dollars.
3. Existing Example: Winnow https://youtu.be/SQ8CvT25_Dg
4. Ancestral Technology: INOCULATED DEEP LITTER SYSTEM
   This piggery is approved by NRCS and can be funded by Agricultural loans for beginning and existing farmers using the USDA Farm Service Agency. Continued funding through existing agricultural programs is a very important resource to continue scaling and impact for our farmers and GrubTubs ability to expand without materially diluting current investors.

• Activities
  • GrubTubs 
    • collects food waste, sorts it to make pig feed and compost
    • collects vegetable oil to power equipment and vehicles
    • raises and sells baby insects to bio-convert manure into chicken feed
    • trains beginning farmers and helps them get government financing 
    • transports animal feed and baby insects to independent farmers
    • Optional: Transport food from farmers back to restaurants.
  • Farmers
    • Grows pigs, chickens, and manages manure with insects, and applies compost to 40-100 acres for plant production.
  • Restaurants
    • Collect and categorize food waste and vegetable oil
• immediate outputs 
  • Farmers no longer have to collect food waste or cook food waste at their own farm
  • Farmers don't have to become entomologist to use insects to manage manure and feed their chickens.
  • Farmers make a 6 figure income just because they are close to an urban area and utilize waste to feed and fertilize their farm.
• longer-term outcomes

  
  

  • Farmers grow their farm from 600 pigs to a few thousand or 20-30 new farmers emerge in a certain region.

Evidence:

When asked a pig farmer in Hawai'i what he would do if we could half the price of his feed cost and he no longer had to pick up food waste from hotels, he responded that he immediately would double his pig farm in size within the first year. Same reaction observed in Texas

When talking to chefs and restaurants in Austin, their number one request is if we could also bring food back from our farmers.

Pre-covid we had over 200 restaurants who paid us to take their food waste, and we just launched our used vegetable oil program with 5 customers and expanded to 10 during covid.

Pre-Covid we were working with Westfold Farms. They were able to scale from a few hundred birds to a few thousand birds and obtain Beginning Farmer loans with USDA Farm Service Agency.

In 5 years we expect to be in 20 cities and servicing over 20,000 restaurants, supporting about 600 to 1,000 farmers. This will provide income and employment for an estimated 6000-8000 people with our company combined with the farms we serve.

Within the next year:

1. Increase food waste collection from 9 tons a day (precovid) to 18 tons a day by signing up new restaurant customers
2. Raise 2 million in venture capital to 
   1. build a $1.2 million zero-carbon animal feed-mill, 
   2. a baby insect breading facility capable of handling 3 tons of manure a day, 
   3. develop our IoT, ML and AI platform to sort the GrubTubs to improve feed quality and pilot in 10 restaurants 
   4. Provide our chefs with a food audit report daily and track declines in food waste
3. Apply for $1.7 million in loans as a beginning farmer to build a 600 hog and 4000 bird operation near Austin and start construction
4. Partner with an existing Recycling operator in Austin

Within Next 5 years:

1. Expand to Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Orlando, New York, Hawai'i and major metropolitan areas in CA and OR
2. Create 6,000 Jobs
3. Process over 5 million tons of food waste a year

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Regulatory help

No clear regulatory model for if what we do is legal (FDA/USDA/EPA landscape is complex) and lots of opposition from existing landfill and used vegetable oil collectors when we enter a city. Topics of concern are in feed production and manure management.

Get NRCS approval on our piggery and manure management system so farmers can get our equipment financed with agricultural loans.

Investments

• Need a 2 Million series seed
• Anticipate about 40 million in two additional equity rounds

Software and hardware knowhow

• Want to perfect an uber like logistics model that automates GrubTubs collection
• Create hardware for camera and scales to develop ML and AI data collection at the restaurant side
• Categorize, measure and build server infrastructure for IoT, ML and AI to become the largest data collector of food waste in the world.

Work with regulatory entities proactively to introduce our model and understand the regulations.

Build out executive team and advisory board for future funding rounds and detailed business plan made to scale and match return expectations with impact investors.

Hire software talent in AI, ML, IoT and ride share logistics to farm the backbone of our operation.

N/A

• Last year we had a team of 21
• Due to automation we have been able to reduce that to 11 people.
• Due to covid-19 we cut essential employees back to 5

Current Team:

• Full-time farm workers: 3 salaried
• Full time Customers Sales and Support: 1 Salaried
• Full time Founder: Salaried
• Contractors:
  • Mechanic
  • Mechanical Engineer
  • Electrical Engineer

Full Time Positions Open:

• Executive: Chief of Staff
• Mechanical Engineer leads to COO
• Farm Supervisor
• Machine Learning, AI software engineer leads to CIO
• Time Entomologist
• Business Development
• Marketing Intern

Outsourced: 

• App Developer, 
• Part Time CFO,
• Logistics Ride Share Developer, 
• Part Time Regulatory Consultant

Based in Austin, we have access to excellent technical and professional networks for Machine Learning, Robotics Automation, Artificial Intelligence. We are part of MassChallenge Texas, Capital Factory, University of Texas.

Having worked over the years with Texas A&M's Department of Entomology, we have access to the leading scientist in Black Soldier Fly and want to join a National Science Foundation Center for Insects as Food & Feed to address industry wide research topics.

We also work with various farm and feed consultants ranging from heritage and pastured poultry experts to organic feed mill owners and partake in various local farm to table programs.

Founder, Robert Olivier, invented the BioPod™ insect composter in 2008 and received USDA SBIR funding to develop a farm unit to make poultry feed and co-authored a peer reviewed paper.

• City of Austin: 
  • Universal Recycling Ordinance is monumental in getting restaurants to recycle food waste
  • Office of Sustainability has a full time Food Policy Expert who envisions that over 1% of food eaten in Austin must be grown in Austin
• Texas A&M: Discuss Insect breeding and rearing technologies, and will test a future poultry digestibility study
• Texas State Chemist: Approves all Commercial Animal Feed in Texas
• Anco Eaglin Manufactures the dehydration equipment. 

GrubTubs is a for-profit agricultural operation that supports animal production by using food waste.

We offer restaurant a subscription service to pick up their food waste and used vegetable oil. By understanding their food waste metrics (using ML and AI) restaurants will save thousands of dollars per year purchasing less food that they waste the most. This is the main incentive why restaurants want to categorize their waste. Restaurants that collect food waste in GrubTubs divert 3 times more food waste from landfill than compost companies.

Once we build out our rendering facility we will make and sell feed for our own farm and adjacent farmers. Our own farm, will have the new odorless piggery model operational and we will hire young aspiring farmers to manage the operation and help them get financing. Our own farm is both a production, R&D, and teaching farm.

At our farm we will also have an insect hatchery to breed baby insect for our insect reactors. Hatchlings will be sold on a subscription basis and delivered frequently. Eventually the hatcheries and insect reactors will be monitored using IoT sensors by GrubTubs. The extra labor cost to make his own feed, is negated by the low cost of our subscription and the benefit of not having to manage manure.

For regulatory reason the pig feed has to be rendered by GrubTubs, but the insects that are grown to consume pig manure have to be grown and consumed on the same farm that feeds the chickens.

We want to partner with some of your partners and would like help with positioning our ideas for impact investment funders.

We want to fund and create hardware for camera and scales to develop ML and AI data collection at the restaurant side and become the largest data collector of food waste in the world

We currently don't have the experts for all the software for ML and AI due to covid and need advice on how to build that team and advisory board

We want to explore great marketing and messaging angles for investors and customers

1. Uber for Logistics and Ride Share expertise
2. Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research to address regulatory and food safety concerns
3. Kroger has an incredible food waste initiative with ReFed.
4. Prepare to meet impact investors and do a road show, gain advice from Closed Loop Partners, KSF Impact how to pitch to impact investors effectively. 
5. Emerson Collective: Develop a rural agricultural program to find new beginning farmers in CA and Hawaii when we expand out of Texas

We have a tremendous opportunity in AI and ML categorizing food waste that has barely been done. Our impact on food waste can be tremendous and save the restaurant industry burdened by high costs.

We need guidance in picking the hardware camera and scale and server configuration when processing images by ML and AI and then connect that with sensor outputs from the feed mill.

Also need to create an app for food waste breakdowns for chefs so they can minimize food waste by purchasing less of what they throw out.

With our solution food waste from cities and food producers become a circular system again.

it's a crime that we are slashing and burning rainforests to grow cheap soy and corn. We want to expand to every major metropolitan area and solve the food waste on both the restaurant side and what is still wasted elevates local live stock producers.