The food industry consists of 4 parts:

1. Agriculture: arable farming, livestock farming and greenhouse cultivation.
2. Food factories: processing agricultural products.
3. Supermarkets: Walmart, Kroger, Costco - top 7 US retail players control >50% of US grocery retail market.
4. Brands: Heinz, Doritos, Magnum - often owned by conglomerates such as Kraft Heinz, PepsiCo and Mondelez.

This food industry has grown into a clusterf*ck of misaligned incentives. Brands place impossible demands on producers and farmers, who in turn make compromises on quality. Supermarkets squeeze brands down to the last cent, forcing them to resort to shrinkflation and lower-quality ingredient choices. Fingers are pointed, but no one takes responsibility for the chain as a whole.

The result: humans no longer understand what they are putting into their bodies, which we believe is one of the root causes of many modern lifestyle diseases. It’s madness - and the customer pays a higher price every year, both literally and figuratively.

To solve this problem, 1 party must take responsibility for all 4 connected parts. Only then can a true 21st-century alternative to the current food system emerge. It is Upfront’s mission to build that alternative by offering humans simple, accessible and healthy food.

To realise this vision, we have a 3-step plan.

1. Build our own supermarkets.
2. Build our own food production.
3. Integrate everything to achieve unprecedented economies of scale.

Upfront lives by these standards:

• Our supermarket contains only ultraprocessed-free foods.
• Our supermarket has <200 products which cover the complete food assortment, which is all organic.
• Our supermarket only sells our own Upfront products.
• Each category only has 1 variant: 1 peanutbutter, 1 rice, 1 orange juice.
• Each product has ingredients and nutrition facts label upfront.
• Each product has transparent and convenient packaging, unless this poses challenges to food safety.
• Each product states its origin, which is Austin -> Texas -> America first.
• Each price is a rounded number, such as $1.00 or $6.50. No discounts.
• We aim to offer the highest quality food for an accessible price. (3 examples: single origin specialty coffee for $11/16oz, single origin extra vierge olive oil for $10/19fl.oz, organic grassfed ribeye steak $12.5/11oz. )
• We aim to make supermarket customers calmer after visiting. (3 examples: clear walking route, vertical product stacking, neutral unless natural food colors.)

Maintaining these standards is essential to realize our vision.