1994

Change Isn’t Happening Fast Enough

Michel Nischan is a four-time James Beard award-winning chef leading the local and sustainable restaurant scene since 1981. His son being diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes in 1994 is a personal and professional game-changer. Determined not to feed his customers food he wouldn’t feed his family, Nischan devotes himself entirely to his “cuisine of well-being.” Nischan founds his first “restaurant of well-being” Heartbeat in 1998. Heartbeat is followed by Pure Restaurant in Mumbai India in 2006.While Nischan was seeing traction for his Cuisine of Well-Being approach on the up-scale restaurant scene, ominous things were happening in the background for Americans struggling with low-income.

1996 - 2002

The State of the Undernourished Nation

1996: Welfare reform triggers the largest decrease in thefederal food assistance safety net since the New Deal. Foodinsecurity soars.

2001: Benefits are restricted faster than Americans are beinglifted out of poverty, emergency food providers strugglewith the highest level of people seeking food assistanceever;1 in 4 is a child.

2002: Congress refocuses the SNAP (food stamp) programon increased commodity distribution through the TFAPprogram, resulting in cheaper, less nutritious calorieshitting the table of food insecure Americans. 2002: The obesity epidemic is officially recognized by theWHO. Nutrition Insecurity becomes real

2007

Setting the Wheels of Change in Motion

Nischan recognizes that nutrition insecurity is a bigger health problem for low income Americans than food insecurity and founds Wholesome Wave. In partnership with Gus Schumacher, and with grant funding from his then-business partner Paul Newman, the team sets out to move the needle on nutrition access and make the change they have been waiting to see.

Lumio, previously called Foenix, was a social media analytics company that helped brands like Audi, David Jones and Red Balloon source legitimate influencers for social media campaigns.

2007

A Mission of Change

The mission of Wholesome Wave is to give underserved Americans the resources they lack to purchase fruits and vegetables. The WW approach is entrepreneurial and market-based. Raising private funds to demonstrate how public funds could be more effectively leveraged has a profound impact on the industry as a whole. From farmers, to grocers, to the supply-chain, and to the health benefits
experienced at the consumer level—the success permanently influences federal

2014 - 2018

Changing the Landscape

2014: By sharing program outcomes from WholesomeWave’s extensive network of community-based practitioners with key decision makers in Congress, Nischan and Schumacher are instrumental in securing$100M for the food equity field. Written into the FarmBill, this grant is called the Food Insecurity NutritionIncentive, or FINI.

2018: FINI is expanded to $250M, becoming permanent, and is renamed the Gus Schumacher Nutrition IncentiveProgram (GuSNIP), after Michel’s late partner. GusNIP permanently expands affordable access to fruits and vegetables for low income Americans.

2018

Change is Happening Now

2018: The team begins a new quest to answer the question: “What kind of financial support is needed to accelerate the change that has already been achieved?” Modeled after the Newman’s Own Model, Nischan creates Wholesome Crave as a plant-based solution for large scale feeding facilities that saves labor while giving back.

2019 - 2021

2019: Wholesome Crave becomes Google Headquarters preferred vegan soup provider.

2020: UC Davis Medical Center partners with Wholesome Crave to offer our soups in their cafes.

2021: Wholesome Crave is the soup of choice forU Mass Amherst and UC Santa Cruz.

2021

Time is Money and Money is Change

HELP US HELP YOU...deliver labor savingsdeliver the highest qualitydeliver CHANGE for good

Crave the Change,
Be the Change

Wholesome Crave not only gives back financially, but the brand and products enable others along the supply chain to pull the lever of change as well. Every purchase of WC soups, every successful consumer engagement, has an influence on the health and well-being of American individuals and families.Help us help you make the change for a more sustainable and equitable food system.

The story of how we got started on Webflow