Our Story


Hi! I'm Claire.

I've always been passionate about two things: food and the environment. Growing up, I was really inspired by Julia Child, and I created my own cooking shows in the family kitchen. When I wasn't whipping up a dessert on 'Claire Cooks,' I was running around outside in the redwoods or playing at the beach.

As I grew older, I began to understand how these two favorite things of mine - food and nature - are inextricably linked. I first came face-to-face with food waste when I co-founded Boston's first organic juice company. At the end of each day, we were left with a mountain of nutritious produce pulp. We knew that throwing away this pulp was a waste of the resources used to grow the fruits and vegetables, but we just didn't have a solution.

Motivated by this problem, I set out to find sustainable food waste solutions. When I learned about okara, the byproduct of soymilk production, a lightbulb went off. What if we could use this byproduct to both reduce food waste and provide affordable nutrition?

I founded Renewal Mill as the next generation ingredients company that upcycled byproducts, like okara, into high quality ingredients and keeps valuable nutrition in the supply chain. And okara is just the beginning. There's a world full of other byproducts just waiting for their day in the sun.

Renewal Mill has brought me back full circle to my two original loves: delicious food and our beautiful planet.

Hey! I’m Caroline.

I always knew that I was destined to work in food. My last name means “cooked” in Italian, I’m from the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts, and my parents own an ice cream store named after me.

I first came face-to-face with the link between nutrition and human health while working in the food deserts of Washington D.C during undergrad. After interning for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! childhood obesity initiative at the White House and working on rice fortification for the UN World Food Programme in Cambodia, it became exceeding clear that obesity and malnutrition were two problems with the same root cause: a broken food system.

When I met Claire (in a canoe, of all places), I knew that we were paddling towards the same goal. Renewal Mill is the result of our shared vision to drastically improve the efficiency of today’s food system, ensuring that 100% of the food we produce is put to its best & highest use — feeding people.

I’m proud to run a female-owned business fighting for a better food future for us all!

Hi I’m Aaron!

I am passionate about two things, the environment, and what’s for dessert. I went to pastry school in New York City at The Institute of Culinary Education, and from there went on to a decade of working in pastry. I worked in some amazing restaurant kitchens and patisseries like #1 Zagat rated Gramercy Tavern (NYC), the raw vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine (NYC), and James Beard Nominated Crumble & Flake Patisserie (Seattle). I spent half of that decade as pastry chef and manager of an American dessert bakery in Dubai, UAE.

I have always been excited about books that find clever ways of solving environmental problems, and what the future of food looks like. I was a weekend environmentalist. In wanting a little change I started working at Patagonia managing local store community events with non-profits and then Patagonia Provisions HQ managing the events and trade shows across the country.  What really drew me in was the environmental purpose behind each product. As we all know COVID curbed events for a while.

In looking around at what other companies were doing to creatively find solutions to our climate crisis I came across Renewal Mill and arranged to talk shop with Caroline to learn more. I was intrigued and stoked! Why aren’t we using the whole plant?! Humans are incredibly creative creatures who have repeatedly found ways to use up what we have (Like use up extra egg whites when you need a lot of yolks at your bakery). As luck would have it Renewal Mill needed an Ops person and they called “this guy” to help save the world through using incredible upcycled ingredients that are here, and ready to be loved and eaten!