Hampton Creek’s Entire Board Leaves Except for CEO | Hacker News Reader

Hampton Creek’s Entire Board Leaves Except for CEO

bloomberg.com

37 pointscoloneltcb63 comments

> "Hampton Creek was a young star in Silicon Valley when it began working on an eggless mayonnaise product in 2011... raising more than $220 million since it was founded"

When the bubble bursts, this is going to be one of those companies we point back to, right?

I want to see the pitch deck that convinced investors eggless mayo was work a quarter of a billion bucks.

Why couldn't it be?

    Hellmann’s alone accounted for $401.2 million in sales 
    last year, according to Businessweek — nearly a third of 
    the total $1.3 billion mayo market here.

http://nypost.com/2011/09/17/hellmanns-mayonnaise-americas-b...

Because what can be so hard about "disrupting" a 100 year old brand that is probably the only mayonnaise brand that most Americans could name?

Added: Yes mayo is a big market but the odds of some eggless mayo specialty product capturing a huge chunk of it is... slim.

If you want a great mayonnaise try Duke's.

https://www.dukesmayo.com/

Was about to add this. Seriously people, the south knows Dukes is where it's at.

I didn't realize was such a regional thing :-) We also have Cain's in Massachusetts.

"...probably the only mayonnaise brand that most Americans could name?"

Depends on the region of the country. :-) Hellman's is East Coast, Best Foods is West (same company, basically the same product).

I expect that many could also name Kraft Mayonnaise. Note that Kraft makes both mayonnaise (which has eggs) and Miracle Whip (which doesn't).

Miracle Whip has eggs. Granted it is the sixth ingredient listed while on Hellman's it is the third, but both have eggs.

I'd be looking towards the rest of the $900 million market, a lot of which has to be restaurant sales. Restaurants are notoriously cheap and work on thin margins.

How many people know (or care) what kind of mayo Wendy's, McDonald's, etc. use?

If Hampton Creek can make a product that's comparable on taste and less expensive that market is pretty ripe for the picking.

I know that if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry christmas, but it seems like a goal worth reaching for.

Me too. There has to be more to this story.

Full disclosure: I worked at HC for 8 months about 2.5 years ago

Having seen some of the messaging, the pitch isn't about mayo, it's about better food. Certain kinds of food have a pretty heavy environmental cost, HC and a number of other companies (notably http://impossiblefoods.com , again disclosure, the founder of IF was my co-adviser in grad school) are trying to create a food chain that is more sustainable without compromising taste.

When HC pitched it would go something like this: "How about a world where food tastes better than it does today, is more healthy, all while being radically more sustainable. We've done it with Mayo, invest with us and we'll do it to the rest of the food system."

On its face, not a terrible pitch, especially given that they'd created a product and gotten it on tons of store shelves in short order. There are certainly flaws at HC and in the pitch's promises and whether they were kept. But I think from the viewpoint of investors that pitch makes a lot of sense at least early on. It certainly did to me as someone who ended up working there for a bit.

Edit: typo

"Show me the genius who thought a book store could change the world."

Full disclosure: I worked at HC for almost 2 years. Yes.

So...fallout from the failed coup?

I would love to know.

I'm just hearing of this company today and I consider myself relatively up-to-date with the high level happenings of the industry...what the hell has this company done in the meantime???

Sold their products. You can likely find them on the grocery store shelves right now.

Given that the name of their flagship product is basically a lie, I guess I'm not too surprised that they've allegedly been using other questionable labeling practices.

Mayonnaise is made with eggs. By definition.

Calling an eggless product "Just Mayo" (with a picture of an egg on the label, no less) is like labeling soyburger as "Just Burger" with a picture of a cow.

The FDA made them use a bigger font for "Egg-Free" and make the picture of the egg smaller, but it's still deceptive, IMO.

That seems pedantic. Even Cook's Illustrated for example has published taste testing of "vegan mayonnaise"

I personally would have thought that an eggless mayo thing that tastes good would have made the eggless thing a selling point but I guess not. Presumably they're trying to avoid the reflexive it can't be good if it doesn't have eggs in it.

(Personally I use Hellman's in any case.)

I'm pretty sure the oil is the unhealthy part of mayo, not the egg.

I'm not sure either are unhealthy in reasonable quantities. But historically there was the eggs=cholesterol and cholesterol=bad thing. And there are vegans.

And people who just want a lower environmental impact...

"Pedantic" is useful when trying to decipher marketing.

I agree with your parent. "Just Mayo" sounds like.. just mayonnaise. It should be called a made-up term like "Vayo: the vegan mayonnaise" or similar.

But you're still calling it mayonnaise there, which is what the GP objected to and the parent called pedantry. If "mayonnaise" can't refer to vegan products, we can't use the term "vegan mayonnaise" — but of course that's even more confusing because any other term fails to describe what the product is. But if vegan products can describe themselves as mayonnaise so long as they clarify they're not egg-based, then why isn't Just Mayo labeling itself as "egg-free" on the front of the container enough? Does it just need to be more prominent?

Yeah, if it was more prominent that would be better. "Vegan $NOUN" implies, from my perspective, to taste like $NOUN while being Vegan.

"Just Mayonnaise" implies to me, "This is just mayonnaise". The egg-free should be more prominent and "just" shouldn't be in the title. "Just $NOUN" usually means "This and only this without anything added (or, as I infer, removed or replaced).

> If "mayonnaise" can't refer to vegan products, we can't use the term "vegan mayonnaise"

Which is fine; “vegan mayonnaise-flavored spread” would be accurate and in line with how other food products which are distinct from but designed to emulate a pre-existing food product category have been labelled for many years.

“Vegan mayonnaise” is no more coherent a label than “vegan pork”.

We do this very inconsistently. For example, we don't force this sort of term-avoidance on turkey bacon, turkey hot dogs, turkey burgers, goat cheese, gluten-free bread, white chocolate, root beer, herbal tea, etc, even though those things contain different components that are standard for those kinds of food — because we recognize that they are essentially the same thing, just with modification (hence the modifiers like "goat" before "cheese").

Given that Just Mayo looks like mayonnaise, tastes like mayonnaise and is substitutable for mayonnaise in every common use case, I don't see why you see this as an important difference. In programming terms, it duck-types as mayonnaise and conforms to the Mayonnaise interface. Forcing a different term because of an invisible quirk of manufacturing seems like splitting hairs.

Incidentally, the word "just" in their product names refers to the adjective related to "justice," not the term meaning "only." There is a note on the product explaining this.

(Edited to remove a comparison because I forgot people hate comparisons.)

The definition of mayonaisse explicitly includes the use of egg yolk.

The definition of egg does not include the color of its shell.

The definition of "washing machine" in 1800 would have mentioned hand-washing — are modern washing machines deceptive? The thing is, eggless mayo is readily identifiable as mayo, and even reputable food publications categorize it this way. I would posit that this definition of mayo based on the way it is traditionally made is flawed, as it fails to include things that are recognizably mayo.

Full disclosure: 2.5y ago I worked at HC for 8m

You're right that the FDA definition of mayonnaise requires egg. This comes from depression-era laws where people were passing fraudulent products off as the real thing. I think those laws still matter, but kind of miss the point here.

As a different way to look at it, imagine a sort of food Turing Test. If it looks like the thing, it behaves like the thing in every meaningful way, and its taste is indistinguishable from the thing, is it not the thing? Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's an interesting question worth exploring.

We better solve this fast. A lot of omnivorous people are quick to denounce vegan meat substitutes as fake. As in fraudulent kind of fake. This happens when people complain about how Taco Bell uses fake meat (i.e. soy) in their beef tacos for example.

> You're right that the FDA definition of mayonnaise requires egg.

Wikipedia says "Mayonnaise is a thick, creamy dressing often used as a condiment. It is a stable emulsion of oil, egg yolk, and either vinegar or lemon juice, with many options for embellishment with other herbs and spices." Random House says "a thick dressing of egg yolks, vinegar or lemon juice, oil, and seasonings, used for salads, sandwiches, vegetable dishes, etc." Oxford Learner's Dictionary says "a thick cold white sauce made from eggs, oil and vinegar, used to add flavour to sandwiches, salads, etc.". Merriam-Webster says "a dressing made chiefly of egg yolks, vegetable oils, and vinegar or lemon juice". Oxford dictionary says "A thick creamy dressing consisting of egg yolks beaten with oil and vinegar and seasoned."

Who's definition of mayonnaise doesn't involve eggs? How would you even define it except by mentioning eggs?

You could just replace "egg yolk" with "egg yolk or a similar substitute" — this is actually what many "optionally vegan" recipes do. I mean, the Wikipedia page for cake also mentions eggs — are cakes made without egg considered not to be real cakes either?

From the consumers perspective, a definition centered around the production process is not very useful. One could try to define it by the measurable attributes of the final product.

"From the consumers perspective, a definition centered around the production process is not very useful. "

According to this viewpoint, it would be okay to label Kool-Aid and orange Fanta as "fruit juice". No.

Sure, but you're missing the larger question. If presented 2 dishes, one is traditional mayonnaise and the other is HC mayonnaise. If you can't tell the difference in how they behave/taste/whatever, are they not both effectively mayonnaise?

I'm not arguing that you're wrong about what mayonnaise is, I'm adding a wrinkle to the concept of defining a food product.

I don't have much of a dog in this fight, I personally care that it "does what it says on the tin" rather than fits a dictionary or other definition. That said I understand the counterpoint, I just think it's not quite as black-or-white.

Not if mayonnaise is defined--as it currently seems to be--as a product with egg in it.

That's sort of the crux of the matter, when we say "mayo" we mean the thing with egg in it, not anything that resembles the thing with egg in it.

If you'd like to say, "let's stop defining mayo as the thing with egg in it," then maybe that's a discussion worth having, but it's a different issue than just, "can't we call this other thing that isn't mayo, mayo?"

That seems like a valid way for the world, society, and our language to work. But it's not how they currently work.

There are a ton of laws that govern how you label food, many of them explicitly passed to stop the exact thing you're suggesting. And these laws both stem from and reinforce a strong cultural/linguistic assumption that if you say "noun" you mean a noun, and if you say "adjective noun" you mean a noun that differs from normal examples of that noun by some specific characteristics.

Hence, we have "vegan cheese", "turkey bacon", "butter with canola oil", "non-dairy creamer", "vege burgers", "sugar-free cola", and a host of other examples. When a company (now owned by Unilever) went to launch a low cost spread they believed tasted just like butter onto the market, they didn't call it "Super Butter", they called it "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!".

Or if you prefer, flip it around: Hampton Creek has gone to some lengths to brand their vegan mayo in such a way that it looks as much like normal, non-vegan mayo as possible; so much so that they've ended up in disputes with the FDA and been forced to modify their packaging. It would have been cheaper and easier for them to have just said "vegan mayo" and called it a day, but they didn't. Why? Well, probably in part because they believe that some customers would choose to not buy "vegan mayo" if given a choice. Packaging that exists merely to deceive consumers is problematic, even if the consumer's in question are trying to make misguided or short sighted decisions.

(This is highly analogous to the ongoing debate about GMO labelling. Producers of GMO ingredients say that food containing them is indistinguishable from food that does not, so no label is or should be required. But many customers, rightly or wrongly, would rather avoid GMO foods. It's not clear to me what the right decision there is, but I don't think it's correct to pretend there can't be a valid debate.)

Before mobile phones were invented, no definition of the phone did include:

- can be carried in your pocket - are wireless - have high-resolution screens - are supercomputers, by standards of 1984 - can send video just as easily as voice

Some words describe function, not a list of ingredients.

Some words change meaning over time.

Sometimes the thing described changes drastically, like bananas http://www.businessinsider.com/banana-fruit-changes-history-...

We didn't create a new word to describe iPhone.

Just Mayo has more in common, functionally speaking, with egg-based mayonnaise than iPhone has with rotary phone or Tesla with Ford's Model T.

An iPhone can make a phone call. Therefore it is a phone. Things that do the same things as iPhones without the phone functionality are called iPods.

"Just Mayo has more in common, functionally speaking, with egg-based mayonnaise"

Mustard, catsup, ranch dressing, and many other condiments also have a lot in common with mayonnaise functionally. That doesn't make them mayonnaise.

Who's definition of mayonnaise doesn't involve eggs? How would you even define it except by mentioning eggs?

I agree that mayonnaise should be defined by the ingredients, but I bet a majority of people who eat mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip thinking it is mayonnaise) don't know it is made from egg yolks. For those people the definition would be a white creamy spread that goes on bologna sandwiches. Their definition is external (taste, look), not based on the ingredients.

That's basically a "No True Scotsman" argument against innovation and doing better by the environment.

I almost bought their stuff once. The bottle looked nice, and I was looking for mayo. I was not looking to experiment, so buying their stuff would a a case of me buying something because it pretends to be something else. I want things to be called what they are. They could have called it "I don't believe it's not mayo" or something but they decided to try to trap people. I would feel cheated even if it does taste like mayo, I don't want vegan mayo in my chicken salad.

"Behaves like the thing in every meaningful way" needs to include nutrition -- and even then, sometimes where it came from and how it was made are also part of what it is. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d'origine_contr%C3...)

The nutrition, for mayonnaise, is "all fat with a tiny smidgen of protein"... not so hard to replicate.

I've never seen an appellation applied to mayonnaise, have you?

"All fat with a tiny smidgen of protein" is an interesting way of describing egg yolks and olive oil. (Not saying that Helleman's is anything more than soybean oil and 3% egg solids, though.)

That's what the nutrition label for mayonnaise says, yes. It also says what kinds of fat. I didn't make this up, the FDA/Congress did.

This is why you can buy other spreads which are similar, but are not called "mayonnaise."

This is why you can buy margerine and other butter substitutes under names other than "butter".

This is why you can receive entertaining fantasy fiction on Fox but not have it called New... never mind.

That it is just as awful as real mayo isn't a great defense for putting a picture of an egg on the packaging.

> You're right that the FDA definition of mayonnaise requires egg. This comes from depression-era laws where people were passing fraudulent products off as the real thing. I think those laws still matter, but kind of miss the point her

It comes from companies like HC still trying to lie on the labels.

I think another great issue in this saga is the part played by the National Egg Board. This is a publicly funded organization whose mission is to promote the use, sale, and consumption of eggs; i.e. the "incredible edible egg" campaign. The National Egg Board is supposed to be neutral - after all it's publicly funded - but instead it was actively trying to thwart Hampton Creek, and use its position to damage sales.

Checkoff boards can be very interesting when they get involved in approving one company over another.

Full Disclosure: I love Just Mayo, but don't buy it because it's a bit pricey.

Yep, just like the dairy lobby fights against "almond milk", "soy milk", "rice milk", etc.

I understand why these lobbies are doing what they do, but the end result is that customers may not get full information and products that are better (defined as healthier, lower environmental impact, or otherwise) may not survive. I'm certainly not saying that was the case with HC, but as we enter this period of "food disruption" we have to be cognizant of the possibility.

I think the product tastes great. If I recall it had a good shelf life too. I'd buy it over real mayo dollar for dollar. Unfortunately I'd been buying it from Target who is discontinuing it.

I rather liked their mayo (I grabbed it at semi-random off the shelf once).

Was saddened to hear allegations that they were doing weird buyback stuff in grocery stores.

But this isn't a red flag to me, it's the refs walking off the field. Curious how others read it.

> it's the refs walking off the field

To stay with the sports analogy theme, doesn't that typically indicate game over?

I guess it would depend on the rules of the sport. In soccer/football, the game can't continue without the refs, but just because there are no refs doesn't mean the game is over. Sometimes they'll leave the field in protest of player or coach behavior. There's nothing a ref can do if a player refuses a penalty that was assigned to them, so they'll typically leave the field until the player accepts that he's been penalized.

So in this situation, the board leaving would be a strong indicator that they're protesting the actions of the company or of the CEO. There's nothing saying they can't come back if the situation changes, or the company can forfeit the game and then it's all over.

At least under FIFA bylaws, once a player refuses to leave the field in a timely manner it's the obligation of the Referee to gather their associates and depart the field, ending the match.

There have been at least some situations exactly like I described[1]. I'll admit I don't know all of the rules of the game so I can't describe what might have been different in this situation.

[1] https://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2016/02/21/bayer-leverkusen...

Apparently there are allegations of them selling tainted food [0]... Target removed them from their shelves last month. I'm disappointed to hear about it as they're my goto mayonnaise brand, but there are now many "eggless" alternatives on the market now.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-22/target-be...

they were never the refs -- CEO has controlled the board's vote since 2015

I love their products, especially Just Mayo. This is not a good sign.

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