The world needs dreamers, but dreamers are dangerous. They are dangerous, especially, when they ignore reality.

Serial entrepreneur Matt Wadiak is, again, on to the next thing. Having helped launch meal kit delivery manufacturer Blue Apron, which failed, and then a large-scale regenerative poultry processing company Cooks Venture, which failed, he says he is now pursuing a new startup that seeks to re-invent consumer home cleaning products with “circular economy solutions.”

The cleanup in the communities that Cooks Venture failed and left behind isn’t pretty: multiple processing plants closed, hundreds of people abruptly out of work, more than a million chickens stranded without feed and eventually euthanized, and the farmers who grew them left holding the bag.

All of this in five years, during which Wadiak prophesized repeatedly to media (including Meatingplace) about the solidity of the company’s financial backing and mission. He was able to raise tens of millions in financing, but it wasn’t enough. He admitted in an Axios interview it was “shoestring.” By the time the Cooks Venture’s board ousted Wadiak and replaced him with industry veteran and ex-Cargill exec John Niemann, it was too late.

A chef by trade who has longed to revolutionize the production of food in a manner ostensibly more healthful for people and planet, Wadiak and company went bigger than its britches, attempting to give niche, heritage breed chicken production a new level of scale. “Conscientious meat is possible,” the Cooks Venture website stated.

And that might be true, but the reality is that it takes far more than mission statements and good intentions to succeed in the conventional meat production business, let alone the large-scale “sustainable” model and supply chain that Cooks Venture was trying to build. It takes so much more than money; among other things, it takes a complex infrastructure, a continuum of institutional knowledge, a keen awareness of cost controls, and a precise plan of execution.

It takes incremental steps, not giant leaps.

In our June magazine issue, we will examine what the Cooks Venture failure says about the state of the sustainable, regenerative ag chicken market, and what it takes to avoid such failure.

Wadiak’s new venture, Everybody Cleanup, has pulled in nearly $3 million in seed capital.

In Wadiak’s wake

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