TL;DR: Three months ago, I outlined a path to ultra-low-cost, nutritionally complete meals. Since then, the project has moved into professional R&D and institutional pilots. My thinking has updated: rather than hard-locking a commodity price upfront, we’re sequencing toward it via a cross-subsidy model that can sustain scale and resilience.
My earlier framing emphasized a fixed $1/day ($0.33/meal) target for everyone. I now think that anchoring on any single number this early, whether $0.33, $0.50, or something else, is a mistake.
The right objective is not the lowest imaginable sticker price, but a price that most people can afford comfortably in their local context, while allowing the system to reliably subsidize whatever gap remains for those who cannot.
Rather than compromising the product to meet a least-common-denominator price, we’re pursuing a tiered model.
This is not philanthropy bolted on to a business. It is one system: shared manufacturing, different pricing, unified impact.
The near-term path is executable as-is. The long-term ceiling, however, depends on whether the operating system is world-class.
I’m therefore interested in connecting with a peer-level operational partner, someone who finds satisfaction in building durable supply chains, pricing architectures, and P&Ls, and who wants to apply that skill to a long-horizon public-good machine rather than a marginal product improvement.
This is not a call for volunteers or advisors. It’s about architectural leverage.
If this model works, it will be copied. Left to default market forces, the outcome is predictable: optimization for margin over access. The goal is to design a system whose incentives resist that drift before scale locks it in.
If this resonates, I have a short private brief describing the partnership shape and principles. I’m happy to share it with interested parties or with anyone making introductions.
This sits at the intersection of:
The aim is a system that works both in normal markets and when the normal world stops.
