Anya Fernald

Fernald grew up in Palo Alto, California, where her parents were Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry professors; by high school she had decided on a career in food, which her parents firmly opposed.⁠[1]

In 1995 she took a year off from Wesleyan University to bake bread in California, Montana and Greece. She recalled that when she was at Wesleyan, food “was not on the radar.”⁠[2]

After graduating she won a one-year Watson Fellowship to study artisanal cheesemaking, traveling to the United Kingdom, Greece, Tunisia and Italy.⁠[1]

In 2000–2001 she wrote business and marketing plans for small cheesemakers in Sicily under an EU-funded rural development initiative; from 2001 to 2005 she directed the Slow Food Foundation’s International Presidia program in Italy, running micro-investments for artisan producers in several countries.⁠[3]

After returning to California in 2006 she led a statewide farm-to-school initiative in more than 100 low-income schools and launched the California Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaign.⁠[3]

With Susan Coss she organized Slow Food Nation, a 2008 festival of artisanal food in San Francisco.⁠[4]

She served for a year as executive director of Slow Food Nation and founded the San Francisco consulting firm Live Culture, which helped food businesses change their sourcing.⁠[2]

In 2009 she founded the Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square in Oakland, focused on affordable street food; the first three-day event drew about 70,000 people.⁠[4]

From that year she was a regular judge on Food Network’s Iron Chef America; she was also named to Food & Wine’s 40 under 40 and The New York Times’s Nifty Fifty.⁠[5]

She has said that after four years in Italy American meat made her feel sick. She and financier Todd Robinson then launched Belcampo Meat Co., aiming to control the whole supply chain from ranch to shop.⁠[6]

Belcampo started in Larkspur, California, and later opened locations in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Santa Barbara.⁠[7]

The seventh Eat Real Festival in 2015 was expected to draw 75,000 or more; festival director Ally DeArman said Fernald founded it after Slow Food Nation and that the two had developed the Food Craft Institute, a nonprofit supporting small food businesses.⁠[8]

In 2016 Ten Speed Press published Home Cooked, her first cookbook, written with Jessica Battilana and inspired by cucina povera, the frugal cooking of Italian peasants; it teaches preparing base ingredients, cooking over fire and preserving food.⁠[9]

In February 2019 Belcampo announced it would close its Russian Hill and Palo Alto locations, open a 7,000-square-foot outpost at San Mateo’s Hillsdale Shopping Center and set up its first commissary kitchen in SoMa for delivery; Fernald said delivery was growing 25 to 40 percent year over year.⁠[10]

In March 2019 Belcampo opened its first location outside California, a restaurant at Hudson Yards in New York; she said its animals were grass-fed for life and argued that the problem lay not in meat itself but in how some meat is produced.⁠[6]

In May 2021 a recently dismissed former butcher posted Instagram videos alleging that the Santa Monica shop was selling corn-fed beef, chicken and turkey from other companies as marked-up Belcampo products.⁠[11]

The company acknowledged that outside products had been improperly sold there, calling it an isolated incident; Fernald said the store had not followed sourcing and labeling protocols, that little product was involved and other channels were unaffected, and promised retraining and oversight.⁠[11]

In a statement the company attributed the shops’ outside purchasing to supply shortages and pandemic-related supply-chain disruption and said the errors made up a small percentage of total product.⁠[12]

Fernald then posted an Instagram video calling the footage “heartbreaking” and saying the incident did not touch mail-order or grocery products, which carry third-party certifications and regulatory oversight.⁠[13]

In June 2021 Belcampo released its internal investigation, which found that externally sourced meats not meeting its quality standards made up 6 percent of the total value of meat procured from the start of 2020 to the end of May 2021.⁠[14]

The company pledged to hire a full-time compliance officer to oversee purchasing and labeling; several former employees described a demanding work culture that intensified with growth.⁠[7]

She appeared on episode 203 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls her co-founder of Belcampo farms, a chef and a regenerative agriculture expert; topics included cooking, regenerative farming, carbon-negative farming, grass-fed beef, being a woman CEO of a meat company and advice for young people.⁠[15]

In October 2021 Belcampo abruptly closed its e-commerce, retail and restaurant operations and deleted its social media accounts; CEO Garry Embleton said the company was exploring selling non-branded products through new channels and called its supply chain, farm and processing facility best in class.⁠[13]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/anyafernald (opens in a new window)⁠[15]