Female Disruptors: Caroline Vanderlip of Re:Dish On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Love what you do. It will energize you as a person and improve the quality of your work. To spend so much time doing something you don’t love, that doesn’t bring you joy, that you aren’t passionate about, will take its toll physically, mentally, and spiritually.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Caroline Vanderlip.
Caroline Vanderlip is the Founder and CEO of Re:Dish, a Brooklyn-based, WBE-certified corporation that offers a reusable dishware program that helps large organizations like Fortune 500 companies and school systems implement circular solutions that eliminate single-use food packaging waste. Caroline puts her passions and creativity into building businesses like Re:Dish and is excited to be able to tell its story of huge environmental impact.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I figured out early on that I was happiest and most productive in an entrepreneurial environment. At 23, I was asked to launch a new business at a publishing company; I was so young and being paid so little that there was little risk to them. I, however, fell in love with the strategy, market analysis, and product market fit involved in identifying and building something new. While there have been a few corporate stints throughout my career, my most exciting roles have always been with startups. In 2019, a random conversation with my then-manager about the huge amounts of non-recycled waste in NYC caught my attention. Digging in, I discovered astonishing facts like in the US, food service packaging contributes 10 million tons of waste annually. The idea that something that is used for only minutes takes a toll on our environment for years, sometimes decades, is absurd and I knew it was a problem that had to be tackled. So why not pursue a solution?
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
While many people have called Re:Dish disruptive, I don’t see it that way. I think we are actually addressing the disruption created over the last 50 years by a world focused on discarding after consuming once; this throwaway economy has greatly contributed to the climate change issues we are all grappling with today. Returning our communities and supply chains to a local focus, and promoting thoughtful use of earth’s resources, is imperative to a sustainable future, or any future at all.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When we first started, we had no idea of the impact that we could, or would, make. We leased a space in Brooklyn to wash and sanitize our reusable product, and to house our inventory, with no idea of how much square footage we would need and how quickly we would grow out of the space. As it turns out, we outgrew the space in 2 months (on a 4-year lease!). Lesson learned? Don’t underestimate your idea and how it will resonate. Believe in yourself and your plan! And scaling well takes a lot of trial and error! Creating a ware washing system that can support more than 75K reuse items a day takes a lot of development of operational processes and automation to achieve excellence and efficiency.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I have been so fortunate to have a lot of people support me in my career, but I’d have to say my Dad and then, after he died when I was in my 20s, my closest friend. Both reminded me time and again that I have the stamina and the will to overcome obstacles and to push forward. Their belief in me early in my life helped me believe in myself, and that has been invaluable. I could not have done this without them.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disrupting an industry is often positive by virtue of the fact that it requires enough people buying into the idea to actualize change.
Determining whether a disruptive business is good or bad, whether it succeeds or fails, is another story. Companies are called disruptive when they create solutions for real-world problems in a way that upends societal expectations of how those problems can be solved. While disruptive companies are inherently innovative, they are still businesses, and many of the rules of good business still apply. The best, most disruptive ideas can easily fail or become toxic for the industry if they don’t have three things: (1) A clear sense of their ‘why’: identifying the problem that is actually being solved (beyond profit), (2) an ever-evolving balance between executing short-term and long-term goals, and finally (3) a decision maker that both believes in the company’s potential but can pivot based on new information and updated daily (market) realities.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Love what you do. It will energize you as a person and improve the quality of your work. To spend so much time doing something you don’t love, that doesn’t bring you joy, that you aren’t passionate about, will take its toll physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Keep pressing forward. We all hit obstacles, and we all have experiences where things don’t go as planned. You may not always be able to progress as quickly as you would like, but even one small step forward is a step in the right direction. Be resilient!
Stay nimble. There are always uncertainties, that’s a given. I try to stay calm and stay curious; I’m constantly learning. With new information, whether that comes in the form of a setback, an insight, or a shift in culture, I’m afforded the opportunity to make more informed decisions that better address the needs of the business.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We’re just getting started! We’re on a mission to make reuse mainstream. We’ve begun by tackling single-use food packaging because it’s a major contributor to the waste crisis, and we have launched Re:Dish’s reusable container program in institutional settings (i.e., companies and schools) so we can start exposing people to reuse and normalizing reuse behavior at scale on a daily basis. By building our own warewashing facilities, we can accommodate large volumes and have complete control of the process and quality output. While we continue to grow the Re:Dish business — expanding to new markets, audiences, and spaces in which we implement, and diversifying our product SKUs — having warewashing infrastructure and tracking technology allows us to offer reverse logistics solutions to existing companies that want to introduce circular solutions to their employees and customers. The reality is that building reuse infrastructure internally at companies can be timely, costly, and sometimes unrealistic. We largely service clients that don’t have the space, equipment, or staffing to implement reuse. By sharing our washing capabilities with others, we can accelerate the reuse economy as a whole and deliver large-scale impact to those who might not otherwise be able to participate in this kind of practical environmental solution.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Access to capital, access to capital, access to capital. With all the strides that women have made, we still represent a low, single-digit percentage of the money raised each year through the venture community. Also, access to capital.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I’m a big Malcolm Gladwell fan, and I find the insights in Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational” on consumer behavior to be particularly illuminating. Both authors remind us that human beings do not act as rational actors but behavior, however, can be predictably irrational. This becomes really important when you are introducing (an old but now) new concept like circularity. The success of our program relies on not only the consumer embracing our solution but participating by returning our wares to a collection site. This is a small but mighty contribution that empowers those that use our system to actively move us all in the right environmental direction.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This is precisely what we are doing at Re:Dish. Reuse is a movement, and we are at the forefront working with everyone from Fortune 500 corporations, their CEO’s and their employees, to school children to inspire, fortify hope, and implement new practices to realize practical climate solutions. Two of the most critical issues facing everyone on earth are mitigating waste and balancing climate change. There are a lot of movements already underway to support this — everything from banning single-use items to promoting more circular solutions, to creating more sustainable business practices and calling for increased accountability — and plenty more that aren’t directly tied to reuse. I don’t feel I need to inspire a new movement as much as support the ones that exist. My hope is that in my lifetime, the idea of using a product for an hour just to throw it away is considered foreign and absurd.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Don’t let the bastards get you down.” In the 80s and 90s, corporate leadership was predominantly male. As a woman, I often felt I had to work harder than my counterparts or justify why I should be in the room. Today there are a lot more women in C-Suite (though still not enough), and while I no longer feel the need to prove myself in the same way, this has become my rallying cry for facing the unknown. It’s all about resilience and rising to the challenge.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can find me online on Linkedin and follow Re:Dish on Instagram and LinkedIn! Or to learn more about us visit www.redish.com.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Caroline Vanderlip of Re:Dish On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.