Better Food Ventures’ cover photo
Better Food Ventures

Better Food Ventures

Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals

Menlo Park , CA 3,571 followers

Funding Technology Innovators for Positive Impact in Food & Agriculture

About us

Harnessing the power of IT to have a positive impact on our food system. Better Food Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm that is exclusively focused on investing in scalable technologies to transform and improve the food and agriculture sectors. We seek technologies that enable the food and agriculture industries to fully embrace changing market demands including: + Mobile and cloud-based computing + Sensor technologies and “the internet of things” + Robotics, artificial intelligence + Location-identification and image recognition + Massive and real-time data analytics + Collaborative production and consumption and social marketing Visit our portfolio at http://betterfoodventures.com/portfolio/ and follow us at @betterfoodvc. pre-Seed stage investor, Venture Capital, Seed-stage investor, Customer Development, Angel Investor, Product Development, Marketing Strategy, Financing Strategy, Forecasting, Early Enterprise Sales, Contract Negotiations, Networking, and Fundraising

Website
http://betterfoodventures.com/
Industry
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
Company size
2-10 employees
Headquarters
Menlo Park , CA
Type
Privately Held
Founded
2013
Specialties
AgTech , FoodTech, Seed Stage Investor , Venture Capital , Customer Development , Product Development , Financial Strategy, Networking , Agriculture , Food , Positive Impact, Investing, and Restaurant Tech

Locations

Employees at Better Food Ventures

Updates

  • Better Food Ventures reposted this

    She spent 10 years in aerospace before founding one of agriculture’s leading forecasting platforms. Meet Megan Nunes, Founder and CEO of Bountiful. Here’s her story: Megan Nunes grew up in a first generation farming family in California’s Central Valley, Gustine. Her time in Gustine gave her a foundational, firsthand understanding of how crops are grown, how growers make production decisions, and what the land actually looks like behind the data. This background is the thread connecting everything Bountiful does. Before founding Bountiful in 2015, Megan spent 10 years working in aerospace, focusing on remote sensing and defense applications. The skills she learned while working in aerospace: precision, reproducibility, and the ability to extract reliable signal from noisy data at scale, are foundational to Bountiful’s forecasting and intelligence platform. Under her leadership, Bountiful has built one of the largest proprietary specialty crop datasets in agriculture, spanning almonds, pistachios, walnuts, grapes, apples, cherries, and citrus. Combined with Bountiful’s remote sensing, weather pipelines and machine learning forecasts, it powers Bountiful OS. The platform serves large-scale growers, processors, buyers, sellers, and asset managers who use OS to make operational and market decisions across their agricultural supply chains. Megan’s combined experience in Central Valley farming, aerospace remote sensing, and more than a decade of agricultural data and analytics gives her a perspective that bridges the physical realities of farming with large-scale analytical systems. She understands how production data flows through farm operations, how forecasts compare to actual harvests, and how to build systems people can use to make real-time decisions. #InternationalYearOfTheWomanFarmer 

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  • As a very early supporter of Afresh we are very excited with their latest funding round. Our conviction has only deepened over the course of our journey together. The team has conquered one of the toughest challenges in retail—applying real-time AI to fresh categories where shelf lives are short, demand is volatile, and data is notoriously messy. That technical foundation is now successfully scaling across the entire grocery enterprise. In a $10 trillion global industry defined by razor-thin margins, Afresh is fundamentally reshaping the most consequential decisions: what to grow, what to buy, and what to stock. Few categories of AI have this much direct leverage over the physical economy. Congratulations to Matt Schwartz and the entire Afresh team on this milestone. We’re excited for what’s ahead.

    View organization page for Afresh

    14,629 followers

    Grocery is one of the hardest AI problems in the world. It’s also one of the most underserved. Today we're announcing $34M to keep changing that, co-led by Just Climate and HighSage Ventures. Grocery is a $10T industry that runs on thousands of daily decisions about what gets stocked, what gets sold, and what gets thrown away. We started with fresh because it's where the margin for error is smallest — if AI works there, it works anywhere in the store. Where we are now: → 200M+ lbs of food waste prevented → 12,500+ departments across 40 states → 70% YoY growth The grocery industry sits at the center of the global food system. Every decision it makes shapes what's grown, what's eaten, and what's wasted. Afresh is the AI making those decisions better at scale. Next chapter: more decisions, more products, more grocers, less waste. Thank you to all of our investors, our grocery partners, and the team building this.

  • Better Food Ventures reposted this

    View organization page for Agscent

    2,051 followers

    AI can already see, hear, read and speak. Now researchers are teaching it to smell. Agscent's work on cow pregnancy and bovine repiratory disease has been included in this great piece on decoding natures scent signatures with AI by Brett Berk, The Wall Street Journal. Working in partnership with NASA Technology Transfer Program, Dairy Farmers of America and others we are moving towards bringing our e-nose product to market. "Agscent, an Australian company that has an exclusive license to use NASA’s scent technology in agriculture, is focusing on bovine pregnancy testing. Right now, such tests typically require very invasive physical exams. The company says its product, which works solely with bovine breath samples, has detected gestation with 94% accuracy in lab tests. It hopes to have the product available commercially by the end of the year." Dr Bronwyn Darlington Darren Price Andrea Ranzoni Emily Barrelle Aakash Gupta Choudhury Daniela Carnovale Ashley Sweeting Chloe Stewart Warren Bingham Alexandra (Cubbage) McCuistion Dan Kullot Matt Musselman Alicia (. https://lnkd.in/gGmHctfe

  • Better Food Ventures reposted this

    A message from Rob’s colleagues… We are heartbroken to share the passing of our dear friend, partner, mentor — Rob Trice. Rob passed away on February 19, 2026 after a brief illness while traveling for work in Europe. He was the driving force behind Better Food Ventures, The Mixing Bowl, and COSSAF, where he worked tirelessly to strengthen our food and agriculture system. In 2013, Rob saw the opportunity to use digital technology to improve the agrifood value chain. He pursued that vision wearing many hats: venture investor, ecosystem builder, advisor, board member, thought leader, and partner in innovation. In those roles, his efforts spanned from idea hacks with small gatherings of farmers and ranchers, to investing in more than 25 founders with bold ideas, to speaking in front of large international audiences at World AgriTech in San Francisco or Fruit Logistica in Berlin. Rob believed that the world was a complex place. He had the ability to see both the high-level vision and the detailed steps required to enact change. But most importantly – he was pragmatic, often stating that to effect change we had to “crawl, walk, then run”, and that incremental change was better than taking no action at all. Rob was impatient; he did not want to change the world in 2050, he wanted to have impact now. One of his favorite quotes was from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 speech Citizenship in a Republic, “It is not the critic who counts…the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again…who spends himself in a worthy cause…” Rob was always in the arena. To know Rob was to know there was not a microphone he didn’t love. He always had an insightful perspective to voice, and questions to ask that pushed others to think deeper. He had serious intentions, but didn’t take himself too seriously. He could be silly (and loved his own creative acronyms), always laughing with a mischievous smile! Rob was warm, compassionate, and gregarious — a person whose presence brought people together. Rob’s legacy will continue through all the start-ups he backed, the community networks he nurtured, and the ideas he fostered. But most importantly, it lives on in all of us who had the gift of knowing him for far too brief a time. We extend our deepest condolences to Rob’s wife, family, friends, and loved ones. We are grateful for his life, his leadership, and his friendship. The world is better because he was here. To honor Rob, we invite you to share remembrances for his wife and family. Please email RememberingRob@mixingbowlhub.com with memories and photos (feel free to share this with others). Plans for a celebration of Rob’s life will be announced by the family in due course. Rest in peace, Rob. You’ll forever be missed. Thank you for everything. Michael Rose, Chris Taylor, Katie Grimble, Wendy Millet

  • Better Food Ventures reposted this

    We’re hiring!

    View organization page for Agscent

    2,051 followers

    🐄 AgTech is growing… and so are we!   We're looking for an AI/ML Data Scientist to join our team and help shape the future of livestock diagnostics.   If you're passionate about applying cutting-edge machine learning to real-world problems, and want your work to have genuine impact on agricultural productivity and climate outcomes, this role is for you.   You'll work with proprietary sensor technology, unique datasets, and a mission-driven team. You'll also have the opportunity to building an end-to-end machine learning and data science pipeline, from data ingestion and feature engineering through to model deployment and performance monitoring.    The details: 📍 Sydney- or Canberra-based location 🚀 Mission-driven team 🌱 Real-world impact   Sound like you or someone you know? We'd love to hear from you! If you're ready to jump into an exciting, meaningful role, apply via the link below:   https://lnkd.in/gFf2McVW   #AgTech #MachineLearning #DataScience #AI #Hiring #Agriculture #Sustainability #WeAreHiring Dr Bronwyn Darlington Andrea Ranzoni Aakash Gupta Choudhury Ashley Sweeting Darren Price Daniela Carnovale Emily Barrelle Chloe Stewart Warren Bingham Alan Hoppe

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  • Exciting milestone for Local Line! 🎉 By joining Sysco Marketplace, Local Line is enabling chefs coast-to-coast to discover and source directly from local farms and specialty producers. This partnership scales the reach of local food while keeping the process simple for the people who grow it. Better Food Ventures is proud to support the Local Line team as they continue to transform the food supply chain! Full details here: https://lnkd.in/egs4diHz Michael Rose #Startups Rob Trice #AgTech Sysco #LocalFood #SupplyChainInnovation Cole Jones

  • Better Food Ventures reposted this

    At Four Growers, Inc., our team is the heart of our company and the driving force behind every milestone we reach. Their dedication is the reason we can stand on stage and accept two major honors from the 2026 FANUC Authorized System Integrator conference: Innovative System of the Year and Outstanding Growth. The "Innovative System of the Year" award recognizes the impact of our AI-enabled harvesting robots and the tangible value they bring to our customers. Our technology helps growers meet the demands of a changing market by helping them manage labor challenges, stabilize harvest consistency, and operate more efficiently. These awards directly reflect a monumental year for our team and validate our mission to push the boundaries of what’s possible in ag-tech. From launching our first commercial fleet in the Netherlands to expanding our footprint into Australia, our team has met every technical and logistical challenge. This is a win for every engineer, developer, technician, and teammate at Four Growers. 👏 Thank you to our incredible team for being the engine of our success, and to FANUC America Corporation for their continued partnership! See our robots in action here: https://lnkd.in/gG6W8SdA

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  • Great to see the following Matthew Hoffman, PhD at RESERVOIR shout-out on Better Food Ventures' portfolio company Beagle Technology Inc. https://lnkd.in/gcnUCHnw Rob Trice #robotics Michael Rose #Farming Chris Taylor #agtech

    There were ~550,000 bearing acres of winegrapes in California last year. (Thanks California Association of Winegrape Growers for the stat). All of those acres get pruned in winter when vines are dormant. Majority of those acres are pruned by hand. This is one of several labor need spikes in winegrape. UCANR estimates growers spend about $400-500 per acre per year on pruning of established vineyard. I got in the field today w Beagle Technology Inc., a RESERVOIR member, to see one of their precision pre-pruner models in action. Some growers say pre-pruning increases skilled hand labor productivity by 10-30%. Yang Fang does a great job of integrating AI-enabled tech w mechanization, and he’s booking demos now. George Zhuang, did I get my facts correct? Danny Bernstein Ricky Stephens Craig Ledbetter Ben Palone

  • We are pleased to see the UC Davis CLEAR Center working with Agscent’s per cow GHG and liveweight measurement tools. Thank you for sharing Ashley Sweeting. Rob Trice Michael Rose

    It was a pleasure to discuss the opportunities to improve livestock productivity and decrease their climate footrpint with Afroza Akter, Ph.D., Paulo de Meo Filho, and Charles Brooke at University of California, Davis and to learn more about the wonderful work they are doing to improve productivity and efficiency. I am thrilled to be working with Ermias Kebreab, DSc, and his team at UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences where they are using the Agscent x Optiweigh methane and liveweight monitoing system to evaluate the efficacy of novel new technologies. Dr Bronwyn Darlington Daniela Carnovale Darren Price Aakash Gupta Choudhury Emily Barrelle Andrea Ranzoni Bill Mitchell Henry Mitchell Sam Salway Noushin Nasiri Matthias Hess Barrett Olafson Fernanda C. Ferreira Magdalena Masello Robin Malik Frank Mitloehner Joe Proudman

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  • Better Food Ventures reposted this

    View organization page for Afresh

    14,629 followers

    Stater Bros. Markets is expanding its partnership with Afresh to unify fresh inventory decisions from stores to distribution centers. Following strong results using Afresh’s AI-powered Fresh Replenishment in produce, Stater Bros. is scaling the platform into additional fresh departments and extending that same intelligence upstream with DC Forecast. Together, this creates a more connected approach to fresh inventory — linking real store demand directly to buying decisions at the distribution center. Fresh categories are complex by nature: perishable items, frequent ordering, promotions, and constant variability. Traditional forecasting tools weren’t built for that reality. Afresh’s AI is purpose-built for fresh, helping retailers adapt in real time, reduce waste, improve availability, and operate with greater confidence across the fresh supply chain. We’re proud to partner with the Stater Bros. team as they continue to modernize fresh operations and deliver fresher food to their communities. https://lnkd.in/dRTfUaxc

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