Looking Outside Food with Purpose: Moritz Everding, Social Entrepreneur

In this episode of Looking Outside, we speak with someone crazy enough to think one company can make a difference, social entrepreneur Moritz Everding. Moritz founded food start up SOCHILI to act on his vision of creating food with purpose.

Combining his love of spice, his experience in business innovation and his passion for positive social change, Moritz created his business from Germany with far reaching impact into sub-Saharan Africa. On this episode, Moritz speaks to his conviction that a profitable business idea, whether by someone inside a big corporation, or an entrepreneur, can and should be pressure tested against social, ethical and environmental standards.

With his business model, Moritz balances the desire to make a big difference, in this case to 600 million people living without access to electricity, with the long term sustainability behind a small but growing product idea. He shares how his business was created to give back, visibly and transparently, directly to the farmers who supply the chilies for his hot sauce, most self-evidently in that for every bottle sold, the company is able to give first time access for its farmers to electricity for one day.

Jo and Mo also discuss the distinction between a profitable social enterprise and an NGO and that it’s still the responsibility of the start ups, who are often much more severely critiqued for their social, ethical and sustainability initiatives, to not act like charities, but to live by the standards of social consumerism in giving people more of what they want. In this case, a delicious, great looking, functionally-smart product that also ticks the socially-responsible boxes. It’s no easy feat but Moritz believes it is possible, and is motivated in encouraging more food businesses to go the same way.

Moritz’ belief that profit and purpose can go hand in hand also inspired him to start his Purpose Projects podcast where he gets to research a variety of topics changing the global food landscape, speaking directly to the social entrepreneurs working to make it happen. Social consumerism is the way of the future, Moritz says, and he is a living and breathing example of it.

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To look outside, Moritz started a testing community. He asks community members, who all have varied perspectives that touch on the 17 SDGs, to pressure test (and taste test) the product against his impact model. Moritz says it's easy to get stuck in one lane, only listening to reaffirming positive feedback. To get outside his comfort zones, he seeks honest and varied perspectives from this community.

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• Find out more about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): sdgs.un.org/goals
• Listen to the Seth Goldman episode mentioned on Activism
• Listen to Moritz' own podcast, the Purpose Projects Podcast (in German)

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Moritz Everding is Founder & Managing Director of SOCHILI. Crazy about impact, crazy about hot sauces - Moritz is a social entrepreneur and advocate of purpose in the business world. As founder of the food start-up SOCHILI, he proves that social impact can also be tasty and spicy. With every single 'SOCHILI good hot sauce' the business empowers farmers in the Global South in the truest sense of the word: 1 hot sauce = 1 day of electricity.

• Connect with Moritz on LinkedIn
• Find out more about SOCHILI @ sochili.com
• Order some SOCHILI sauces (EU only)
• DM Moritz to stock or order from the US
• Follow SOCHILI on Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok
• Listen to the Purpose Podcast (in German)

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Looking Outside is a podcast dedicated to exploring fresh perspectives of familiar business topics. The show is hosted by its creator, Joanna Lepore, consumer goods innovator and futurist at McDonald's. Find out more at looking-outside.com.

Connect with Jo and join the Looking Outside community on LinkedIn.

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All views are that of the host and guests and don’t necessarily reflect those of their employers. Copyright 2023.

OBOY & Midnight Daydream music features in Episode 42.