- Kate Farms offers alternative plant-based feeding tube formulas and nutritional shakes.
- The founders, Richard and Michelle Laver, created the formula to help their daughter battle cerebral palsy.
- Kate Farms’ products are available in over 600 US hospitals and covered by Medicaid.
In 2011, Kate Farms cofounders Richard and Michelle Laver spent countless hours in hospitals watching their daughter Kate, a cerebral palsy patient, struggle to keep down traditional formula via a feeding tube due to its synthetic ingredients.
Out of desperation, the Lavers opted to explore plant-based options to see if it would result in a change in Kate’s ability to digest food.
With the help of dieticians and doctors, the Lavers experimented with different ingredients until they were able to create a liquid that Kate could digest. And an added bonus: The family could eat the same blend as well so they could all share and have dinner together.
In their blend, the Lavers used non-GMO and allergen-free ingredients such as organic yellow pea protein and soluble fiber.
That mixture would become Kate Farms’ present feeding tube formula, which can be ingested as a nutritional shake or administered directly into a patient’s feeding tube.
Kate Farms’ initial goal was to develop a plant-based, nutritional formula for feeding tubes. But the company has also started offering nutritional shakes for children and adults.
Kate Farms
To date, the company has raised $100 million in venture capital funding. Earlier this year, it raised a $60 million Series B round led by Goldman Sachs with participation from Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Main Street Advisors.
Like the Lavers, Kate Farms chairman and CEO Brett Matthews’ connection to the company is deeply personal. He watched as his son, Skyler, battled an autoimmune condition that acted like chronic
pneumonia
.To combat the illness, the Matthews family went to a naturopathic clinic, which uses natural remedies and therapies to help the body heal itself.
That’s where the family used a plant-based diet to battle Skyler’s chronic illness.
“The major part of his healing was clean nutrition to build up his immune system. We really learned about the power of food to heal,” Matthews said.
Matthews and the Lavers both lived in the same community and he happened to learn that they needed help scaling Kate Farms. He initially joined the company’s board and then became its CEO in 2014. With Matthews’ extensive leadership and healthcare experience as a former assistant brand manager in Procter & Gamble’s healthcare division and then CEO of his startup, Imagitas, he has expanded the company’s business model from a direct-to-consumer product to also making them available in hospitals.
Kate Farms’ products were initially only available to purchase on the company’s website. But Matthews was able to get contracts with hospitals and also have the company’s products covered by health insurance. Patients have the option to request Kate Farms’ feeding tube formula instead of the traditional offerings.
Kate Farms’ feeding tube formulas and nutritional shakes are now available in over 600 US hospitals and home care companies. The products are also covered by private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and WIC programs.
“Building a business that does good things for people, was sort of like the collective guidelines that we established amongst ourselves and that’s really what we’ve been doing over the past five-six years or so,” Matthews said.
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