Fresh Take: Digging In To Some Favorite Features On Food And Sustainability

To celebrate Fresh Take’s 100th edition, I thought: Wouldn’t it be fun to take a turn down memory lane? This year marks a decade for me at Forbes. I’ve learned so much, and reporting for its magazine and beyond has brought me to some incredible destinations.

Below are my top 10 favorite features—from before this newsletter even existed. Explore these stories over the weekend, and know that I’m so proud of each and every one of you from around the world that have come together to read these missives every week. This is a smart audience, and I’m only going to keep elevating. If you’ve been with me since 2021, if you’ve just subscribed, or if you’ve joined me somewhere along the way, thank you! Onwards!

— Chloe Sorvino, Staff Writer

Order my book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, out now from Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books.

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Top 10 Favorites

How This Impact Investor Is Generating Double Digit Returns Cleaning Up The Seafood Business (2020)

Amy Novogratz fought back from a brain tumor that could have killed her to build the world’s largest sustainable aquaculture investment fund.

Tempest In A Tea Bottle: Billionaire GT Dave Brewed A Fortune (And Plenty Of Bitterness) From Kombucha (2019)

GT Dave once had the kombucha market all to himself. Now he must survive a flood of competitors.

The 13 Siblings Who Saved Their Family By Creating A $300 Million Startup From Their Dying Dad’s Protein Bar Recipe (2019)

As their father lay dying, the 13 Keith siblings took his recipe for a snack no one could sell—a refrigerated protein bar—and created a $300 million startup.

Fresh Fanatic: Private Equity Spoiled Natalie’s Juice Company. Then The Founder Rebottled It Into A $140 Million Success (2019)

Marygrace Sexton sold her orange juice company, then watched it start to spoil. A rescue operation was needed.

The World’s Most Successful Caviar Entrepreneur Is A Scrapyard Operator In Wisconsin (2018)

The most coveted fish eggs in the world aren’t produced in Russia. They’re made in China—by Bill Holst, the accidental caviar king.

A Billion-Dollar Fortune From Timber And Fire (2018)

From humble beginnings traipsing through California’s vast forests with his dad to salvaging wood from forest fires, Red Emmerson has built a logging empire by being cheaper and more aggressive than his rivals.

How Haircare Startup Briogeo Went From Zero To $10 Million In Sales In Just Four Years (2018)

Inspired by personal tragedy and her family’s homemade beauty concoctions, Nancy Twine went from trading commodities on Wall Street to building a fast-growing luxury hair-care brand.

This Secretive Billionaire Makes The Cheese For Pizza Hut, Domino’s And Papa John’s (2017)

From Pizza Hut and Domino’s to Little Caesars and Papa John’s, the vast majority of pizzas in America feature mozzarella from one company. For the first time, secretive billionaire James Leprino explains how he built a cheese juggernaut.

Why Steakhouses Are Obsessed With Beef From This 97-Year-Old Family Business (2017)

Henry Davis made a billion-dollar fortune by carefully growing his family’s small-scale slaughterhouse into one of the country’s top suppliers of high-quality beef. It’s always been quality over quantity, and Greater Omaha’s customers like it that way—even when they can’t get all the meat they want.

America’s Nuttiest Billionaire Couple: Amid Drought, Stewart And Lynda Resnick Are Richer Than Ever (2015)

Fresh off sapping the water from a Pacific island and flogging pomegranate juice with questionable health claims, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the billionaire couple behind Fiji Water and POM Wonderful, are profiting off pistachios and almonds with the same combination of marketing genius and opportunistic water grabs amid California’s worst drought on record.

Field Notes

I love a power lunch at Via Carota, especially during citrus season.

Thanks for reading the 100th edition of Forbes Fresh Take! Let me know what you think. Subscribe to Forbes Fresh Take here.

Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture as a staff writer on the enterprise team at Forbes. Her book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, published on December 6, 2022, with Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. Her nearly nine years of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger’s secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms in California’s Central Valley, burnt-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, a century-old slaughterhouse in Omaha and even a chocolate croissant factory designed like a medieval castle in northern France.