Event: Women and Capital Salon Luncheon

On February 14, 2019, the MWOMA team convened a group of women chefs, culinary and AgTech entrepreneurs, food media, and investors to discuss the experiences of the women in raising money to start or expand their culinary enterprises. And, in a few cases, raising money to start funds. The chefs were selected in partnership with The James Beard Foundation, which has recently launched a program focused on building culinary women’s business and entrepreneurship skills.

The stories ranged from the experiences of bootstrapping to start one’s first restaurant, quickly partnering with both men and women who were poor choices for not having alignment on operational issues or how money should be spent, to very specific experiences of sitting at a table with investors and what had to be learned over time to become successful in these endeavors.

There was widespread agreement that bias exists when it comes to funding women entrepreneurs and even successful women business owners. One chef/restauranteur recounted an experience with a NYC agency charged with supporting small-business success that came to her with an offer of grant money to help renovate her restaurant. After 10 years the offer was welcome, as the place needed sprucing up and more restaurants had since opened in the neighborhood, making it a more competitive landscape. After an arduous application process she was denied the grant and, rather, offered management training. Understandably insulted by this, as her business is profitable, she quickly calculated that the person giving the training was likely going to be paid the amount of money she needed to renovate.

Another guest had recently started a fund to support new restaurants and culinary enterprises, and after being frustrated by a group of male partners who were not working partners, and ostensibly didn’t understand the intricacies of the restaurant business—which she believes is essential to forming trusted investor relations—she kept one advisor, “the white, 60-something-year-old who was tall, had a commanding voice and 40 years of experience” both operationally and in raising money. The two understand their roles and have a trusted relationship that is helping the fund get off to a successful start. “He trusts me and my decision-making process, and helped me raise money for my first fund, while also sitting with the operators and helping them perfect their operations.”

One woman discussed her recent promotion to CEO in a new, but growing, food manufacturing company, after working for less than a year as the company’s chief business strategist. The company needed to both raise money and be strategic in taking on production for brands that fit its portfolio guidelines and mission. She described that one of the reasons she was asked to fill the CEO role was because she was a “straight shooter” and known for her high integrity. Her observation of the fundraising process before she took over was that “men are much more comfortable being opportunistic, maybe sometimes being a little less than truthful [when raising money],” and that her values of trust and integrity were “a whole cultural shift for our company right now.” 

Another aspect of her challenges were with men who were having a “really hard time reporting to me.” When asked if they were conscious of this being bias, she responded that she wasn’t sure they were aware, and observed that the problem was more acute with some of the less senior staff than her fellow C-suite teammates.

Another woman who had just launched a small fund to invest in restaurants and culinary enterprises has a female partner with a family office, to whom she was very grateful for providing the initial capital to the fund. She noted that they both “lack the network” that men seem to have, that they have to work hard to “find the men who can make the first call for me. I leverage the male network I have, and I push the men I know to introduce me to their friends.” On the other side of the equation her observation is that the women who are pitching them are “not prepared with the language, whereas the guys (their fund is not exclusively devoted to women founders) just come in and they know.” She described this as “mimicking” what they’ve picked up along the way—something that women “can’t, or don’t or won’t, do.”

The second half of the conversation focused on the notion of power—who has it, who doesn’t and where there are overt as well as nuanced, “violations,” as one woman put it, of their power. 

 “Women have to hustle more, but it eventually happens.”

Examples shared included being called by respected food journalists to comment on, in this case, the #MeToo movement and how it was shaking out bad actors in the restaurant community. For this chef, who had not been an employee of anyone else for more than 15 years, was insulted that the journalist thought of her to comment on her potential harassment and not on the prestigious awards she had recently won or the new restaurant she was opening. She felt that she only had value to this journalist “as a potential victim.” 

The James Beard Foundation, with a strong and respected communications platform, is working to shift that dynamic and elevate women’s voices in the media and in the board room for their ideas, values, and sharp business acumen.

A young woman working inside a restaurant and hospitality-focused venture fund described her awareness of her role as a “junior member of the team,” but noted that, as the only woman on that team at the moment, “the conversation around the office is often sexist, even when I’m around, and I see this as potentially spilling over to what happens when entrepreneurs are pitching to them.” She was shy to express her frustrations even within this quick-bonding group, for fear of sounding like she was complaining, and excusing her junior status as contributing to her potentially not “having the place to say anything.”

She immediately received offers of support and encouragement to stay inside, generally agreed as the place to make the most change.

The MWOMA team spearheaded this conversation because of our common mission to foster a better, more sustainable food system. We live in urgent times where we need every entrepreneur and every good idea to have the potential to make it to market. We are betting on women to have many of these.