A new company YumLit is working to bring joy to family mealtimes through interactive light-up plates. As a social venture, they plan to share proceeds with nonprofit organizations committed to tackling food and nutrition insecurity in their communities and around the world.
The inspiration for the company came to Janet Lawson and her husband Seth Coan during a family dinner. After finishing his meal, their three-year-old son expressed excitement when he discovered the cartoon lion on his plate.
“It was a fun reward,” Lawson tells Food Tank. She and Coan wondered if they could inspire that same joy in other children by making plates come to life in some way.
This question led to the development of colorful, screen-free dishes that light up when a child reveals the design underneath. Lawson and Coan hope that the plates encourage children to build healthy eating habits while reducing stress at mealtimes.
“We created YumLit to make meals feel more fun and encouraging for kids,” Lawson says.
The launch of YumLit is a pivot for the couple, who recently moved to Washington State after living in Morocco. Lawson worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she focused on building more resilient food and agriculture systems. Coan, an environmental engineer, was focused on climate solutions and sustainability.
Funding cuts and the dismantling of USAID led to job losses and big transitions for the family. But even as she moves into the world of entrepreneurship, Lawson says that she is still driven by the same goals she’s always had: ending food and nutrition insecurity and advancing climate resilience.
“I was very interested in how…we could have some type of social impact,” Lawson says.
YumLit created the YumLit Luminaries Program, which allows organizations to convert the sale of a plate into a donation for their community. When anyone purchases a plate through a luminary’s unique link, 10 percent of proceeds will go to a nonprofit focusing on food access, hunger relief, or nutrition support. They are also planning to donate US$1 from every plate sold to nonprofit partners working to tackle childhood hunger.
“We know that a lot of organizations are experiencing the fallout not just from USAID grants, but other federal funding that has been reduced, and they are really struggling as well,” Lawson tells Food Tank.
The reception to the plates has been positive, says Lawson, with pediatric nutritionists and feeding specialists excited by the idea.
YumLit just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help the company scale and she expects plates will be in supporters’ hands toward the end of this year.
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Photo courtesy of YumLit
