Het Pasta Gilde explained

A few months back I started a non-profit Het Pasta Gilde (The Pasta Guild). Our mission is to fight poverty by producing and donating premium quality pasta to customers of food banks in the Netherlands.

Aren't we the #5 in the world's top Happy Countries list, why do we need this?

Yes, The Netherlands is not a 3rd world country however, poverty is real in every developed country and the situation is getting worse. Dutch foodbanks serve 120,000 customers every week by redistributing surplus production and food that is close to the expiration date. In 2022 Dutch foodbanks saw an increase in demand of over 40% due to high inflation and energy costs. On top of that supermarkets and food producers became more efficient in their process which means that foodbanks now get less food from their suppliers to distribute.

The easiest way to ignore poverty is to reason that the government should fix this. The reality is simply different, we need a practical approach that is sustainable.

Why did I start this non-profit in the first place?

I got frustrated by the way non-profits work. Don't get me wrong, in most cases the intend is good and some are very effective (yes; @ease is an excellent example). However, most non-profits lack a business model which leads to a dependency on donations. Every year non-profits jump through hoops to get a bigger piece of the "donation pie". It must be possible to approach this differently where we make the pie bigger….

YAC, Yet Another Charity!

Yes and no; yes, Het Pasta Gilde is a registered non-profit that optimizes for impact. However, we do this by implementing an underlying business model. Het Pasta Gilde will not only produce pasta for foodbanks, it will also commercialize its pasta brand and sell this online and in retail. In the long run, for every package of pasta we sell we will be able to donate a package of pasta to the foodbanks in order to hit break-even.

Het Pasta Gilde is therefore run as a commercial startup which makes the decision process very straightforward. Since we intend to commercialize our pasta, we will not be dependent on donations post boot-strap.

What do you mean by premium pasta?

Het Pasta Gilde will produce high quality premium pasta. Pasta you buy in supermarkets from major brands are dried at high temperatures. This pasta has a yellow color since it is effectively burned. Het Pasta Gilde will produce slow dried pasta from the best Italian durum semolina flour.?Not only tastes this better, it is better digestible, healthier and the vitamins of the flour are preserved.

When?

We are currently setting up a production facility that could produce up to 4 million packages of 500 grams per year. We expect to start production by the end of 2023. In the second half of 2023 we will make our production site food safe according to HACCP standards and we will install the necessary equipment.

Our Goals

Our long term goals are fairly straightforward. We like to feed all customers of all Dutch foodbanks 1 pasta meal per week. With 120,000 customers we like to donate about 6 million pasta meals per year. To fund this we will need to sell 6 million pasta packages as well. For 2023 we have a stretch goal to donate 30,000 kg (60,000 packages) of pasta. Setting up a new production facility takes a while but you got to have a short term objective.

?I want to start this in my region….

Yes you can. Het Pasta Gilde is setting up an operation that is replicable for whomever that wants to start a similar initiative in their own region. We essentially are developing a cookbook for a non-profit pasta production facility and we will help you get started in your region.

I like to help out

We are looking for volunteers that want to help out in production and logistics; experts in food safety; specialists in food marketing or cooks that want to build recipes. Send an email to i n f [email protected].

Keep me informed

If you subscribe to our newsletter then you can follow our progress. Yes, I hate spam as well so I will only send updates if we have meaningful progress.