If you attended the two-day Food+Enterprise conference at the old Pfizer building this past weekend, you might have walked away feeling like starting a new food company is a cinch.
First off, the summit was held at one of the city’s burgeoning local maker hubs. Williamsburg’s Pfizer building is wall-to-wall with small brands, some newer and some that are more established, including Farm to People, Happy Valley Meat, Kopi Trading Co., People’s Pops and Brooklyn Soda Works. Additionally, many of the events were on the same floor as Brooklyn FoodWorks, the newly opened food business incubator.
In 2010, just prior to the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti, American shoe and apparel company announced it would plant 5m trees on the widely deforested and impoverished island. After the earthquake hit, Timberland’s then CEO, Jeff Swartz, visited the country and was faced with two options: pivot to support the massive earthquake recovery, or keep the focus on planting trees.
Read More