PepsiCo offers £256k to budding food entrepreneurs

The programme, PepsiCo Nutrition Greenhouse, will provide a £21,349 (€25,000) grant to up to eight successful candidates as part of a six-month incubator programme in order to achieve accelerated growth in the market place.

One winning company will be awarded an £85,361 (€100,000) prize to continue its expansion at the end of the programme.

The selected companies will receive funds, as well as the opportunity to partner with PepsiCo experts from brands such as Quaker, Tropicana, Naked and Alvalle.

PepsiCo western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa nutrition vice-president Juan Ignacio Amat said: “We have a tremendous opportunity to use our global scale and resources to influence positive change.​

‘Influence positive change’​

“Our ‘Nutrition Greenhouse’ programme aims to help nurture some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the food and beverage sector.” ​

The programme is designed to help small businesses address issues like business planning, corporate structuring and fundraising.

PepsiCo senior vice-president of global strategy Jim Andrew said the company wanted to collaborate more with smaller food and drink firms.

“We want to connect with entrepreneurs who share our performance with purpose vision to deliver growth in a way that is sensitive to societal needs,” ​said Andrew.

‘Innovative new nutritious products’​

“By working together, and harnessing the best of both of our organisations​, we can put innovative new nutritious products into the shopping baskets of people across Europe.” ​

The programme is open to companies whose brands deliver sales of £1.7M (€2M) or less a year. Applications must be made by May 15 2017.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo is one of a number of leading food companies that joined a pan-European partnership to boost innovation, growth and job creation.​

The initiative from the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), called EIT Food, is operated by a consortium of 50 partners from 13 countries, called FoodConnects, which includes PepsiCo, the University of Cambridge, University of Reading and French foodservice firm Sodexo.