FoodTech loves science, storytelling, and capital. But one critical capability remains consistently absent — and it is costing startups dearly: supply chain and operations expertise.

In my last column, I wrote about cost competitiveness and why failing to understand it early creates structural weaknesses that are almost impossible to fix later. This month, I want to go deeper into why this happens. The short answer: the ecosystem simply lacks people who know how to build and run a real scaled Food supply chain.

When I began engaging with StartLife, meeting founders, and speaking with VC partners, I quickly noticed something surprising: I was often the only person in the room with deep supply chain experience. At first, I thought it was coincidence. It wasn’t.

I analysed backgrounds across thousands of individuals in the ecosystem — founders, CEOs, VCs, boards, accelerators — and the data confirmed the pattern. The number of Individuals with deep Supply Chain and operations expertise is minimal.

The numbers are striking:

I also analysed 16,000 FoodTech publications in the past 12 Months— only 3% covered supply chain, scaling, or operations. Almost none were written by people who have actually scaled a food production business.

This gap is not academic. It is damaging, and many failures trace back to it.

When supply chain expertise enters too late, the same issues appear:

These are not “bad luck.” They are symptoms of a lack of Focus early on.

The good news: this gap can be fixed when addressed early in a Start up.

The challenge: the blind spots in the ecosystems, at board level and the lack of Supply Chain focus in accelerator programs are structural and not easy to change.

Over the last 18 months, I’ve worked closely with a good number of start ups in different development phases. In every case, raising the supply chain expertise level created significant benefits and improved the chances of success.

Think about bringing in partial supply chain resources early. Even a “smaller amount of expertise” can set up critical basics.

A good example is Perfat Technologies. I encouraged them to bring in partial supply chain leadership early. This helped them set up procurement, connect to suppliers, establish comanufacturing, and build the base processes for customer orders. They are now ready to deliver their products.

At this stage, you need a professional supply chain and operations organisation:

I supported Max and Sara, the founders from Planet A Foods in building this structure. It created a strong foundation for growth and a successful development of their business.

There are people out there who have built and run strong food production businesses. FoodTech innovation carries plenty of risk in technology, finance, and commercialisation — there is no need to add risk in supply chain. The only real risk is not hiring the people who know how to do it. You can also get targeted guidance from experts like me to point you in the right direction.

Boards routinely make multimillioneuro decisions on manufacturing, supply chain, and cost competitiveness sometimes without anyone in the room who has ever built or scaled a physical food production system.

I have spoken to many VC partners about this gap. Most agree. A few take actions.

VCs could significantly increase success and return rates if they addressed this blind spot. My recommendations:

The story is similar. Even though they support startups at early stages, I have found no accelerator program that integrates deeper education or content in supply chain and operations. And remember there are close to zero individuals with supply chain expertise employed in global FoodTech accelerators.

If the ecosystem continues to bring supply chain expertise only after problems emerge, it will continue to pay the price. The failures we see are not mysterious — they are predictable outcomes.

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.