Organic To Go
Takes a Fresh Approach

By Kathryn Schuett


The average “lunch hour” is nowhere near an hour these days. In fact, it has dwindled down to an average of 27 minutes. Left with not even a half hour for lunch, the time-crunched consumer is usually at the mercy of the microwave, vending machines or the dreaded fast food drive-through, with organic options relatively few and far between.
Organic To Go, a certified organic retail chain that produces, packages and delivers over 100 different items made with organic ingredients, is on a mission to change this by providing fresh, clean, delicious and convenient food where people work and go to school. They do this in several ways. The first is through their 13 casual retail cafes, located in key areas throughout Seattle, Los Angeles and Orange County, where you can either sit down and enjoy fresh soups, sandwiches and salads or grab one of these from their chilled display case, conveniently pre-packaged and ready to go.

Or, if one of their cafés is not close by, there are 40 other locations throughout their west coast service areas that sell their grab n’ go goodies, including universities, coffee shops, the Los Angeles International Airport and major corporate campuses such as Microsoft and Starbucks. On top of all of this Organic To Go, also called “O To Go,” also caters to over 2000 corporate clients such as 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios and Boeing.

While most start-up businesses might have to work for a decade to see half this growth, almost unbelievably all this has happened in just over two and a half years. And this is just small stuff compared to the growth that is about to happen with their recent decision to become a publicly traded company in February 2007. This success can be chalked up to many things but mainly it comes down to the combination of a great idea in the hands of a guy with impeccable business sense.

“Our success shows that people really want this kind of food,” said Jason Brown, founder and CEO of O To Go. “People with time on their hands can make fresh foods for themselves at home, but when they’re at work or at school, they’re not going to find what we offer anyplace else. And I think the demand for fresh, clean food is only going to increase as we continue to learn more about the importance of organics and good health.”

Fresh Food on the Fly
Organic To Go calls themselves “pioneers of the organic grab n’ go frontier,” and when blazing any trail there is always some important groundwork to put in place. One of the foundations of this system is something Brown calls “a hub and spoke methodology.” In this, the grab n’ go products are produced in a central commissary kitchen between the hours of 3 p.m. and midnight and then distributed to their retail locations every day from 3 to 6 a.m. This unique system combines the efficiency of mass production with the quality and freshness of restaurant prepared foods—a combo that allows O To Go to serve up a solution to consumers’ growing demand for fresh, high quality, convenient meal options.

Brown said that this central distribution idea was inspired by a European café chain, Pret a Manger, which also uses one kitchen to process food for several retail locations. Currently O To Go has two of these industrial kitchens, with one in Seattle that is about 14,000 square feet and another 8000-square-foot facility in the heart of LA that they are practically busting out of due to their growth in the area.

Before it goes to the big kitchen, the creative inspiration for many of the menu items starts with O To Go’s culinary director, Chef Greg Atkinson, a leader in sustainable and organic cooking and famed Seattle Times columnist, who has been praised by Gourmet Magazine, Saveur, The New York Times and many others. These recipes are then taken to the central kitchen where about 30 “team members” work together to bring these inspirations to life—resulting in sandwiches, soups and salads that taste like fine dining but offer the convenience of fast food.

While items such as the crackers, chips and beverages are brought in through their distributor, UNFI, practically all other items are processed by hand each and every day. In the near future, Brown is planning to bring in technology to automate some processes such as packaging or chopping. It is all part of one of Brown’s key strategies to keep the company as vertical as possible. By doing most of the production themselves, and then distributing and retailing the resulting products, they can cut out the middleman, not only allowing them to have more quality control of the product but also giving them the cost cutting advantage they need to offer organic premium food at only a 10 percent premium over average conventional prices.


Brown’s Business Building Basics
Brown has started several successful companies in the natural industry including Custom Nutrition, a company that creates custom supplements for popular diet gurus like Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Barry Sears, the creator of The Zone. He sold this company to Drugstore.com in 2002. Brown has used this entrepreneurial experience to make O To Go successful in many ways. For one, instead of focusing on building the business from scratch, he has been able to grow the business much faster using an “acquisition” strategy.
“We find conventional companies who use conventional ingredients and we turn them into an organic company that uses fresh, clean, organic and natural ingredients,” Brown said. “We pick up the watering holes and a lot of great people.”

In these organic makeovers, Brown keeps the the previous company’s employees and their most popular dishes as well. Their first café conversion was Briazz, a Seattle-based restaurant chain. In this transition they adopted several of their dishes into their own menu including their Basil Chicken Chili Soup and Sante Fe Chicken Chowder.

“We listen to what our customers like and find out statistically what were the best sellers,” he said. “Briazz did a great job with these dishes. We just made them organic.”

Briazz was the first of three companies that O To Go has converted to organic. Vinaigrettes, an LA catering company, was acquired in November of 2006 and then most recently, in March of 2007, O To Go purchased Jackrabbit, a Seattle-based catering company.

Another business strategy that is set to continue the company’s growth was Brown’s decision to take O To Go public in February of this year. This decision alone has given them $11 million in investment capital, which they plan to use to branch out into more markets across the United States.

“This provided the capital we need to grow,” Brown said. “We also believed that our company, which serves white collar workers, would do well as a public entity. The same ones who eat it will invest in it. Going public was always an integral part of the plan.”

To support and help guide this growth, Brown also built a board of directors that is packed with not only savvy business types, but also a superstar lineup of pioneers of the organic world such as Peter Meehan, the CEO and co-founder of Newman’s Own Organics; Dave Smith, co-founder of Smith & Hawken garden tools and an executive/consultant for Diamond Organics, Seeds of Change and the organic flower company Organic Bouquet; and S.M. “Hass” Hassan, who sits on the board of Whole Foods and Izzy Beverages and was the CEO of Alfalfa’s Market, the president of Wild Oats Market and the founder of Fresh & Wild, the UK’s leading retailer of organic foods.

Spreading the Organic (To Go) Message
While O To Go is enjoying the benefits from the growing awareness and popularity of organic, they also take every opportunity to communicate the value of organic to their customers. One of the ways they do this is with signage throughout their retail locations that details where their food comes from. “We talk about how we visit the family farms where we get our organic ingredients,” said Wendy Tenenberg, the company’s VP of marketing. “This helps people understand that we’re interested in knowing where our food comes from and we are conveying this to our customers so that they can be knowledgeable and have that connection too.”

They also have an e-newsletter that goes out to over 20,000 people, offering everything from recipes and facts about organic to stories about the farms that supply their produce. The editor of this newsletter is none other than Dave Smith, founder of Smith & Hawkens and O To Go board member.

In order to encourage trial within the corporate sector, O To Go hosts “Lunch and Learns,” where they offer a free lunch to those who are responsible for ordering food for corporate executives, giving them a chance to taste and learn about organic foods.

Within the community, they also have incorporated some creative tactics including garnering some unofficial celebrity endorsements by providing goodie bags for the celebrities at last year’s American Music Awards. “It was not expensive, just the cost of food, and with a smaller budget you do what you can to get out in front of people,” said Tenenberg.

Another celebrity of sorts is O To Go’s crowd-pleasing mascot, “Apple Girl,” who dances around and hands out organic apple slices at events. One could say a dancing apple symbolizes the vitality of eating organic or, as Tenenberg put it, “maybe she just brings out the kid in us. Like at Disneyland when you see the characters—you can’t help but smile.”

Commitment to Organic and the Environment
O to Go’s commitment to organic goes farther than just communication. The fact that they went though the process to become a certified organic retailer shows a level of dedication beyond that of most retailers. While all retailers who sell organic products are required to abide by NOP handling standards, retailers are not currently required to be certified. There is a growing trend today, however, for organic retailers to undergo voluntary certification to further their credibility and show their dedication to organic. This is primarily a handling certification which can include processing, as with O To Go.

“Organic To Go is committed to organic. We try to use as much organic as possible and we are always looking for ways to be able to use more,” Brown said.

In terms of product, O To Go goes through thousands of pounds of organic produce a month, 2000 pounds of organic cheese, 250 gallons of organic milk and about 1000 pounds a month of organic beef, which together with all their other organic offerings makes up around 70 to 80 percent of O to Go’s menu.

O To Go has often improvised in order to use what is available organically. When green leaf became a problem, they substituted organic mixed baby greens on all their salads. This winter the shortages of all the fruit varieties was challenging, but instead of going the conventional route, they created an organic fruit salad that used a percentage of organic frozen berries and mango to keep their customers happy and their products appealing.

Their commitment to organic also encompasses sustainability and the environment. O To Go uses 100 percent biodegradable bags for its bagged lunches, plates made from biodegradable sugar cane and many of its containers are made from corn-based PLA “plastics.” In their Seattle location, they buy green energy and they have recycle bins outside of all their locations in LA and Orange County. Much of the furniture in their retail locations comes from recycled upholstery or sustainable resources like bamboo. They are also planning to convert company cars to hybrids.

“We are building this company with a real sense of integrity and purpose,” says Brown. “I see Organic To Go making healthy, clean food available to many people who might otherwise not have an organic choice. I am proud of the difference I see Organic To Go making and I look forward to continuing to grow our positive impact.”

Kathryn Schuett is the editor of Organic Processing Magazine. She can be reached at kat@organicprocessing.com.