SXSW: Tech icon works to bring trust, ‘real food’ back

Kimbal Musk was 26 when he and his brother, Elon, sold their first tech company for $300 million. After they founded the startup that later became PayPal, Kimbal went on to culinary school and opened The Kitchen restaurant in Boulder, Colo., in 2004. So how does a tech success who sits on the board of Tesla Motors and SpaceX make it his mission to grow the economies of local communities by improving every part of the food culture? Fast Company’s Amy Farley asked this and many other questions of Musk during the SXSW 2017 session “Kimbal Musk on Trust: The Currency of Our Generation.”

According to Musk, “trust nourishes our bodies, farmers, and the planet.” His goal is to bring that trust back into the food industry but do it in an affordable way. A key part of building trust is to connect the food back to the community. The Kitchen is what Musk calls “neighborhood restaurant,” where the food and drink is from local farmers, ranchers, and purveyors. But as he explained to the SXSW attendees, his goal wasn’t just to buy local food, because “all local isn’t good.” He wanted to support and grow the local food system, which is why he worked with the local Boulder-area farmers on how to scale their businesses to meet the demand of his growing restaurant group and other farm-to-table outposts. Since opening in 2004, Colorado’s local food economy has increased from $4 million to $20 million. “There was almost no organic farming in Colorado when I first started,” said Musk. “Now 155,000 acres of farmland grow organic.”

In a push to “replicate what we did there [in Colorado] throughout the heartland” Musk has opened The Kitchen in Chicago and Memphis, Tenn. In addition, he just launched a new concept called Next Door—a more casual sister restaurant to The Kitchen—in Memphis this January. This project is in what Musk calls the “R&D phase.” His goal for the Next Door concept is to provide “real food” at a very affordable price.

Musk’s passion to drive change in the food system is what led him to co-found The Kitchen Community—a complementary non-profit organization whose mission is to “strengthen communities by accelerating the real food movement at scale.” The Kitchen Community builds Learning Gardens in underserved schools around the United States. The gardens connect kids to real food, increase academic achievement, and drive community engagement. As Musk explained, it is the largest school garden non-profit business in the world. The Kitchen Community has already built 200 Learning Gardens reaching more than 120,000 students every school day, and Musk aims to have 1,000 gardens by 2020.

Through education, economic development, and healthy food accessibility, Musk is helping to grow the real food movement that he is so passionate about. “There’s a seed change going on with consumers,” explain Musk. They don’t trust the food system as it is today, but by working to change the system Musk is hoping to change consumers’ mindsets and behaviors.