FoodTech doesn’t fail because the science doesn’t work. It fails because the cost doesn’t work. And cost doesn’t magically improve at scale. “We’ll fix cost later” is the most expensive sentence in FoodTech.

In my first column, I outlined four common failure modes (see picture above) . This second one goes deeper into the one that still surprises me most: cost competitiveness. When I entered the startup world two years ago, I was genuinely taken aback by how many teams “discover” only late in the journey that cost is central to scaling a food business. Coming from Cargill, where cost, yield, and reliability were daily bread-and-butter topics, it was both funny and concerning to see this treated as a new insight. Yet many of the sector’s largest failures trace back to underestimating cost and the supply chain discipline required to achieve it.

Pilot environments are wonderful for innovation: flexible, small, forgiving. They allow scientists and founders to iterate quickly, test hypotheses, and adjust parameters on the fly. But industrial production is the opposite. It is built on stability, repeatability, and tight operational control. It rewards discipline, not creativity.

The cultural shift required to move from “pilot thinking” to “industrial thinking” is one of the biggest transitions in the scale-up journey. In pilots, variability is tolerated. In factories, variability is cost. This is a mindset many founders underestimate — and it shows up brutally in their cost structure.

I will cover the cultural and organisational journey in a separate column.

Many teams talk about unit cost as if it were a simple, isolated number. It isn’t. Unit cost is the result of dozens of decisions across the entire supply chain. It is the output of a system.

If you don’t build that system early — alongside your commercial and R&D plans — you are designing failure.

Typical symptoms of poor early design include:

These are not “late-stage problems.” They are early-stage design flaws that only become visible when volumes increase. By then, they are expensive to fix — or impossible.

Founders often ask when to begin thinking about supply chain design. My answer is always the same: from day one.

If you don’t have line of sight to eventual cost competitiveness of you offering, you are still in the “science” not at business stage. And staying in the science stage too long a common reasons companies fail to scale.

Start with rough assumptions. They will be wrong — that’s fine as long the directional range is ok. What matters is that you begin to understand the shape of your future cost structure. As the company matures, refine the assumptions. As you get real data, update the model. As you learn from pilots, adjust the design.

Cost competitiveness is not a single decision. It is a continuous process.

Getting a product to a customer requires managing every step:

raw materials → manufacturing → packaging → storage → delivery → customer service.

Each step carries cost, risk, and interdependencies. Better raw materials may improve processing but increase cost. Cheaper materials may reduce cost but hurt yield. Faster processes may reduce labour but require more expensive equipment. These trade-offs only make sense when viewed end-to-end.

And remember: supply chains are never linear. They are systems. A change in one part affects several others. This is why “optimising for one Step” — yield, throughput, or ingredient cost — can backfire.

A simple but powerful exercise is mapping your entire chain: Start with the customer (how many, where, which products), then map backwards through delivery, storage, production steps, and raw material sourcing. 

This exercise is almost always an eye-opener. It reveals hidden complexity, unrealistic assumptions, and cost traps that would otherwise appear only when it is too late.

Deep supply chain and operations expertise is rare in early-stage teams. But it is available — fractional roles, advisors, targeted support. There are people who have built and run large-scale food supply chains. Use them.

There is no prize for reinventing what already exists. And you will sleep better at night.

Cost competitiveness isn’t a detail you fix later — it’s the foundation of a scalable food business. Build it early, revisit it often, and treat it with the same seriousness as your science. 

 I also noted writing that this is just scratching the surface. So let us know if you want to hear more about cost competitiveness.

If you need guidance or want to stress-test your assumptions, feel free to reach out:

LinkedIn for general professional conversations, and email for any founder who wants to talk through a specific scaling challenge directly.