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Christopher Jane's light bulb moment came as a Stanford MBA student contemplating a $20 Sweetgreen salad he couldn't afford. His frustration with America’s food landscape—with meals either “low quality and cheap” or healthy but “ridiculously expensive,” according to Jane—led to Proper Good, a shelf-stable meal company that’s rewriting the rules of supply chain performance by delivering restaurant-quality meals to the masses.
Jane, a British entrepreneur who previously built Montana Mex condiments and is today the co-founder and CEO of Proper Good, identified what he calls a barbell market: pricey premium options on one end, “archaic” center-store staples on the other—with nothing serving the vast, hungry middle.
Nimble manufacturing meets mass scale
The Austin-based company’s $5–$6 solution—ready-to-eat, microwavable soup, pasta, curry and oatmeal pouches with keto, dairy-free, gluten-free, low-sodium and other options—defies conventional industry wisdom. While traditional shelf-stable producers require minimum orders of 100,000 units, Proper Good partnered with manufacturers for runs of just 2,000 units. That agility enabled it to launch more than 50 products over four years, everything from Southwest chili and chicken Alfredo to chana masala curry and Thai red curry soup.
Proper Good’s test-and-learn approach, which incorporates feedback from customers in Slack and Facebook groups, paid off after the company introduced a new soup. Online reviews of the new recipe immediately flagged a problem: “Five stars, five stars, five stars … and then one star: ‘worst thing I’ve ever tasted,’” Jane recalls.
The culprit? Thyme, which like cilantro, tastes bitter or “soapy” to a percentage of the population. So Proper Good nixed the herb. “We’d only made 1,000 units, so it wasn’t a million dollars sitting in a warehouse.”
Launched as a direct-to-consumer operation, after a successful appearance on Shark Tank in 2021 the company was approached by Walmart, resulting in 22 products across 2,500 stores. Jane uses the retail giant as an unlikely proving ground for innovation, mixing in bold, global flavors, many of which outperform traditional favorites; Jamaican jerk chicken soup, for example, outsells chicken noodle at Walmart.
Strategic trade-offs for market access
Proper Good deliberately avoided the specialty certification route (organic, non-GMO, kosher) that many startups pursue, and which Jane says adds significant cost. While Proper Good meets Whole Foods’ banned ingredient standards (e.g., high-fructose corn syrup), Jane says the company chose accessibility over premium positioning to serve “teachers, nurses and students.”
That philosophy extends to food deserts. Thanks to its DTC operations, the company can ship where traditional fresh food supply chains don’t.
Demographic disruption through data
And then there’s Proper Good’s customer base. While legacy brands like Campbell’s show linear sales growth based on consumer age—peaking among seniors—Proper Good’s sweet spot is 25-to-40-year-olds.
"Legacy brands have tried everything under the sun,” Jane says. “The problem is consumer perception. How do you attract a 25-year-old as Progresso? (Cheeseburger soup, anyone?)"
Squint testing and other AI
No matter the age, Proper Good leverages artificial intelligence to attract consumers. When launching a macaroni and cheese product to compete in Kraft’s blue-and-yellow-dominated aisle, for example, Proper Good’s AI “squint test” for tracking two-second recognition on crowded shelves favored cream-colored packaging. “When everyone zigs, we zag,” Jane says. That perspective also saw the company’s heat-mapping AI predict 52% visibility when marketing a high-protein product.
Expansion, not cannibalization
While most companies launch variations of bestsellers (Campbell’s offers nine versions of chicken noodle soup), Proper Good’s data-driven approach identifies white space. Jane says the success of Jamaican jerk and cheeseburger soups shows that agile supply chains can create market segments rather than simply redistributing existing demand among established players. “You’re not just cannibalizing sales; you’re expanding the category.”
Resilient supply networks
U.S.-based production offers Proper Good tariff-proof resilience, while access to multiple sources for each ingredient sidesteps pitfalls that trip up boutique brands relying on single farms. By emphasizing scale over artisanal positioning, Jane says, “We’re trying to build a modern Campbell’s.”
A modern, green Campbell’s. Jane’s vision extends beyond quality and convenience to sustainability. His goal? A compostable pouch, free of all plastics, that contains the same ingredients for the same price. “That’s the Holy Grail.”
