Building a food company and transitioning to more sustainable agriculture takes time and requires more patient capital with a long-term view. Re:food is part of Gullspång Invest, a Swedish family office that operates with an evergreen structure. This means that they can invest for the long term without posing time constraints. Located in Stockholm and San Francisco, Re:Food invested early in some of the most successful food companies that have come out of the Nordics so far like Oatly and Nick’s. The firm focuses on investing across four themes: alternative proteins & fats, regenerative farming, sustainable supply chains, and healthy diets. In this episode, Re:Food’s Co-Founder Gustaf Brandberg shares the company’s investment thesis, background, and vision for the future food system.
Related Links
💸 3 Nordic investors take on the future of food
🥛 Oatly’s Startup Story with Founder Bjorn Oste
🍦 Nick’s Startup Story with Founder Niclas Luthman
📔 Stockholm Resilience Center on supporting people and the planet
🌆 Sweden FoodTech on Stockholm as a future food city
🌱 Gullspång’s “Food Is Solvable” Report
💲 More interviews with Nordic VCs
🇸🇪 More interviews from Sweden
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Episode Transcript
Analisa Winther, Nordic FoodTech Podcast Host 2:31
Hello Gustaf and welcome to the Nordic FoodTech Podcast. We are sitting live at the Big Meet in Stockholm, a two-day event all about the future of food and you’re investing in the future of food. So, maybe start by introducing who you are and then how you got into food.
Gustaf Brandberg, Gullspång Re:food 2:52
Thank you. So my background is in technology. I founded a software consulting firm and we worked with Spotify, King, iZettle and all the tech unicorns in Stockholm before they were unicorns. The first time we engaged with Spotify they were 10 developers and having seen them grow to global leaders in their niche has been very inspiring. So, when I started out investing with my father and now my two brothers… we are shareholders in Klarna, for example. Then I attended a program at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2014 and I realized how big and I used to say how broken the food system is. Now I tend to say that the food system is very efficient. We transport calories all over the world and in some aspects have built a very impressive system that also creates a lot of damage. But I got interested in food and started doing investments first in a company called Mat.se, which is an online grocery store and then the second investment was in Oatly.