This is Now.
When we launched Yumi in 2017, there were more fresh dog food companies than there were baby food options. Despite hundreds of noes from investors, we were steadfast in our thesis: people care as much about babies as they do about Fido — hopefully, more.
Three years on, millions of meals delivered, our thesis is more than holding up. The movement to raise the standards of baby food and kids food overall has hit an inflection point. Families across the country are now demanding more nutritious, freshly made options that fundamentally register as real food.
Real to this generation means something entirely different; today’s parents embrace the notion that food is thy medicine. They may not eat perfectly, but they’re more aware of the dangers of unfettered access to sugar. And while they may have been raised on rice cereal as babies, when they learn about the link between rice and higher levels of arsenic, as laid bare in recent headlines, they push big food to do better.
So as we thought about our first campaign, we kept circling back to this idea of celebrating the “Now” and the power of this generation of parents to define their now. For decades, parenting has largely been defined by narrow terms and by the preceding generations, creating cliched representations of identity — who gets to be a parent — and what it means to parent. These containers have now busted wide open. Parenting has never felt more inclusive, unvarnished, imperfect, and weird.
Our campaign, “This Is Now’ takes an intimate, crowd-sourced look at what it means to be a parent today and celebrates the power of this generation as the Definers. This concept of “now” exists as both a celebration, and a rallying cry. This is now, is a demand as much as it is a feeling.
As a part of our launch, Yumi shipped cameras to real families across the country and had them document their everyday lives, against the backdrop of a global pandemic. The resulting images are nuanced, raw snapshots of real moments and real parenthood — a single dad from Chicago who is also an activist, a child sharing an ordinary moment with one of his two moms who happens to be a goth rockstar, and more. You’ll find them plastered on our site, in our commercial (see below), at your nearby bus stop and in billboards across America.
These images beautifully capture our ethos of keeping it real. It’s our love letter to the modern parent, who’s doing their part in defining their now.
It is today’s decisions, after all, that will shape the future. The next generation is literally in our (very tired) hands. What we decide to demand of our food industry, of our society, and of our earth today, will stretch into tomorrow.
So here’s to the Definers — the now is yours.
Co-founders, Angela & Evelyn & the entire @Yumi fam.
Read on helloyumi.com or post your #thisisnow @yumi.
*Editor’s note: We also love Fido, no offense to our four-legged friends (Raja, Miko & George).
