Kimberlie Le

Her mother is a professional chef. VegNews in February 2020 called her the “daughter of renowned Vietnamese chef Chi Le”; the introduction to a Thrive Global interview of December 2019 has “MasterChef Vietnam Star Chef Chi Le”; Green Queen and the Vegan Women Summit’s speaker biography describe her as the daughter of a chef and restaurateur.⁠[1][2][3][4][5]

The Georgia Straight wrote on August 25, 2016, that the chef Chi Le, who competed on MasterChef Vietnam, is originally from Bình Dinh province in central Vietnam, lost several of her 11 siblings during the war while the rest scattered across the world after 1975, moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 1990, was formerly a jewellery designer and is a mother of four; that in 2014 a friend entered her in MasterChef Vietnam without her knowledge and she flew to Saigon and finished as “a runner-up,” then toured the country with well-known chefs and wrote two cookbooks, one in Vietnamese and one in English; and that on August 25, 2016, her first restaurant, the 50-seat Chi Modern Vietnamese Kitchen, held its soft opening in Kitsilano, Vancouver.⁠[6]

Kat Smith of LIVEKINDLY wrote in a profile reprinted by AWIS in July 2021 that both of her parents owned restaurants; “Some of my earliest memories are just me sitting next to boxes of produce,” she said; her mother taught her how to cut food, and the family’s dealings with farmers showed her where food came from; she was not raised vegan or vegetarian, and meat was central to family meals.⁠[7]

In a Food Dive interview of February 2020 she said that her family is Asian and that she had known koji since childhood. Two ages are given for her first encounter with it: the LIVEKINDLY profile has her helping her mother ferment rice wine and other rice products at age five, while in a 2023 article in SupplySide Food & Beverage Journal she said, “My mom was a chef, so we’ve been using it in the kitchen since I was 4 years old.” Green Queen in December 2020 relayed her remark to Berkeleyside that koji is now highly beloved by numerous Michelin-starred chefs but is part of her culinary toolkit because “we started fermenting koji when I was young.”⁠[8][7][9][4]

In a 2022 Q&A with TASTE she said that, as the daughter of a chef, she grew up going to farmers’ markets. In a 2024 Q&A with Deli Business she recalled that food was central in her household, that going to the deli counter was a family ritual where she loved getting a “free slice” and learned to order at a young age, that the family had a meat slicer at home, and that the household drew on French and Asian influences, with meat, cheese and bread part of its daily and weekly traditions.⁠[10][11]

In an interview published by Thrive Global in December 2019 she said she grew up around her mother’s cooking and the food service and retail industries, “alongside my family of food and retail entrepreneurs”; she watched her parents lead and successfully exit their companies as CEOs, called them the most important people in her life, and still calls them for advice. On the Business for Good Podcast she likewise said both parents had been CEOs and entrepreneurs.⁠[3][1]

She has said she began working at age 11: in the Thrive Global interview she said she had experienced almost every function of a business by the time she went to college, and in the transcript of the Business for Good Podcast she said she started working full time in finance at 11 and had about seven years of management experience before college. A May 2018 article of the UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry Alternative Meats Lab states that she comes from a family of entrepreneurs and managed restaurants starting at age 15. Her profile on Qwoted says she has worked in management in the food industry (retail, food service, investing) for more than ten years, and The Food Institute’s episode notes of December 2022 say she has deep roots in the restaurant and foodservice industry.⁠[3][1][12][13][14]

In an interview published by Ladderworks in January 2021 she said that she was “born and bred in the food industry,” at first wanted to get as far away from it as possible, and for most of her life was unaware of how broken the food system was.⁠[15]

She attended the University of California, Berkeley. The LIVEKINDLY profile says she began studying microbiology there; she herself has said she did microbiology research at the university on “novel and natural ways of fixing our food production systems”; and Unreasonable Group’s biography states that she “previously attended UC Berkeley and was an agricultural microbiology researcher.”⁠[16][7][3]

Several accounts of her degree exist. SupplySide Food & Beverage Journal wrote in November 2023 that she received a bachelor’s degree in “society and environment” at UC Berkeley, that she wrote, designed and taught a course on environmental sustainability there, and that Prime Roots was born less than five years after she graduated. A February 2018 article of the UC Berkeley Alternative Meats Lab calls her and Joshua Nixon UC Berkeley alumni who formed Terramino Foods after graduating. In the transcript of episode 85 of the Business for Good Podcast she herself said “I actually don’t even have a, a undergrad degree to my name,” adding that she had technically dropped out of her PhD: she was starting agricultural microbiology research, studying how the soil microbiome helps plants grow, and left school to start Prime Roots.⁠[9][17][1]

She has said she did not understand the environmental impact of animal agriculture until college. She has given several figures: in a 2019 interview that animal agriculture accounts for almost 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, and in an interview of January 2021 15–20%; the LIVEKINDLY profile has her learning that animal agriculture accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation combined. Green Queen wrote that she, a self-described meat lover all her life, then switched to vegan meat alternatives, which she found “underwhelming” and “lackluster.” In the Food Dive interview she said that, as a UC Berkeley student working on meat alternatives, she wanted to test koji for that purpose.⁠[7][3][15][4][8]

She met Joshua Nixon on UC Berkeley’s ski team, where, she said, “we learned that we work well together.” The two won three challenge labs in courses of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET). In one collider class they designed a helmet to better protect skiers from head injuries and won, but later learned that other people had already patented a similar project; a subsequent sustainable energy project for the developing world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, lost its funding after Donald TrumpDonald TrumpDonald Trump (born 1946) is an American politician and businessman, a Republican who ran the real estate company the Trump Organization and starred in the television series The Apprentice. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has been the 47th president since 2025.Open the full entry was elected in 2016.⁠[12]

She and Joshua Nixon first conceived of using fungi to make a replacement for salmon in SCET’s Alt.Meat Challenge Lab, a semester-long student competition. VegNews names the course in which the two began working with koji as UC Berkeley’s “Plant-Based Seafood Collider.” Paul Shapiro, host of the Business for Good Podcast, mentions in the interview that she was then studying in Professor Ricardo San Martin’s class.⁠[12][2][1]

She recalled that she was fermenting in her kitchen when she found that koji “had the texture and taste of meat.” The editor’s note to the Ladderworks interview states that she did exploratory research in the Alternative Meat Lab and began by growing koji in an Instant Pot in her apartment. In early recipes for the salmon burger she once used sugar instead of salt because the containers looked alike, producing something “sweet like a candied salmon”; she said she labelled every container afterwards.⁠[3][15]

The company was first called Terramino Foods, with her as co-founder and chief executive officer and Joshua Nixon as co-founder and chief technology officer. The founding year is given differently: the company’s press releases and Groceryshop’s speaker biography have 2017, and in May 2023 she said she had founded the company six years earlier, while The Hustle wrote in October 2026 that the company “started around 2018.” The “About Us” page of Prime Roots’ website says the company began with two students at UC Berkeley and calls the two Kim and Josh.⁠[18][19][20][21][22][23]

Terramino Foods was one of fourteen startups accepted into the biotech accelerator IndieBio, a four-month program that provides $250,000 in seed funding, lab and work space, and mentorship; SOSV’s company page lists it under IndieBio 06. On January 22, 2018, it was one of four companies that pitched and demonstrated products at IndieBio’s consumer biotechnology showcase; its product at the time was fungi fermented into a mostly flavorless, protein-dense base and flavored and colored with algae, the first item was a salmon burger with a fish fillet to follow, and the company planned to scale up production within six months and sell to restaurants by the end of 2018.⁠[17][24]

She described the experience at the time by saying: “One semester at Cal I took 38 units, and this [IndieBio] is harder than that.” Food Dive later wrote that the prototype of the salmon burger took four months of work at IndieBio.⁠[17][8]

An article of the UC Berkeley Alternative Meats Lab dated May 7, 2018, records that she and Nixon spoke in April 2018 in SCET’s Newton Lecture Series. In the talk she said, “About a year ago, I was in your seat,” and that the company was in the midst of closing its seed round. The article states that fungi fibers are closer in size to meat fibers than plant fibers are; she remarked that “plants always taste like plants”; the salmon burger then retailed for $15, and the two planned a full seafood line for Terramino Foods. Her advice to students was: “Entrepreneurship can be a vector for whatever you want to achieve in your life.”⁠[12]

In the list of the 2018 class of Thiel Fellows announced by the Thiel Foundation on June 22, 2018, she is item 15, with food technology as her field; she is described as co-founder and CEO of Terramino Foods, which uses fungi-based protein to replicate the taste, texture and nutrition of seafood and meat, and her locations are given as Edmonton, Canada, and San Francisco. The announcement states that fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the Thiel Foundation.⁠[25]

The Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry is a two-year program founded by Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry in 2011 for young people who want to build new things; fellows skip or stop out of college.⁠[26]

On July 24, 2018, Terramino Foods announced in San Francisco a $4.25 million seed round co-led by True Ventures and Collaborative Fund, to be used to expand the team and develop protein products as alternatives to meat and seafood. The release states that she and Nixon built their prototype at the Alternative Meat Lab of UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology and received initial funding and product development support at IndieBio; the first product was a fish-free salmon burger containing omega-3 fatty acids, and the line was to be all-natural, non-GMO and completely animal-free.⁠[18]

In the release she said: “We plan to expand into multiple seafood and meat products using our flexible and efficient protein platform.” True Ventures partner Adam D’Augelli and Collaborative Fund partner Lauren Loktev both voiced their support for “Kim and Josh” in it, and the company announced a series of tasting events for the following months and that it was hiring.⁠[18]

In a post on the True Ventures website dated July 25, 2018, Adam D’Augelli wrote that True Ventures was co-investing in Terramino’s seed round with IndieBio and Collaborative Fund — its third co-investment with IndieBio and its seventh with Collaborative Fund; he had tasted the beta version of the salmon burger, and the company was starting with seafood on a platform meant to support beef, chicken and pork products later, aimed mainly at flexitarians who eat meat but want other options.⁠[27]

In a Q&A published by New Hope Network on October 16, 2018, she said the company was still in the product development phase and that the first salmon burger prototypes had taken a few months, including growing the fungi in-house; the fungus used was koji, the omega-3s came from sustainably farmed microalgae, and the products had less fat and no cholesterol; the target was meat eaters and flexitarians; the company was then pursuing a direct-to-consumer model with no retailers, showcasing the product at private, invitation-only tasting dinners that it planned to hold in various cities in the following months; the products, she said, were vegan by virtue of being animal-free.⁠[28]

By February 2020 the company had been renamed from Terramino Foods to Prime Roots. Food Dive wrote that month that it had recently moved into a 12,000-square-foot facility in Berkeley, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, and that besides the salmon burger it had developed meat-free shrimp, crab cakes, ground beef, tuna and lobster chunks, chicken tenders, bacon, sausages, a savory dip, protein bars and crackers; an online poll asked consumers which products to release first, the company’s online community had about 10,000 members, about half of them flexitarians, and the company estimated that it had fed 20,000 people at events.⁠[8]

In that interview she said, “Seafood is much harder than meat, I would say, to replicate,” which is why the team began with the harder product; because koji fibers are about the size of animal muscle fibers, the company uses meat-processing equipment such as grinders and bacon slicers, and the bacon is made into a block and then sliced; the protein is a whole-food source, not pea or soy isolate. The long-term goal, she said, was grocery stores nationwide, with the focus for the moment on scaling production and selling directly to consumers.⁠[8]

The first product chosen by the consumer vote was bacon. VegNews wrote on February 5, 2020, that the koji bacon would go on sale on the company’s website for one day only, from 9 a.m. on February 14, while supplies lasted, shipping in 8-ounce containers on a rolling basis; in the article she said, “We felt like there were no real meat-free alternatives to bacon on the market.” The launch is dated in two other ways: Green Queen has the bacon launching in February, and vegconomist wrote in October 2020 that it sold out soon after a March 2020 debut. vegconomist wrote in 2022 that the bacon sold out within hours and drew a waitlist of 50,000 people.⁠[2][4][29][30]

From October 27, 2020, Prime Roots’ ready meals were sold in the refrigerated deli and prepared-food sections of select Whole Foods stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, in six varieties: Koji Bacon Mac and Cheese, Koji Bacon Kale Quinoa Bowl, Koji Beef Thai Lemongrass Larb, Hawaiian Shoyu Koji Chicken, Kung Pao Koji Chicken and a soba noodle dish. Identified as co-founder and CEO, she said: “We are reimagining meat for people and the planet.”⁠[29][31]

Green Queen wrote in December 2020 that Prime Roots’ ready meals contained chicken strips, pork and beef and were sold in markets around the Berkeley area, and that online meal subscriptions grew sharply during the pandemic; the article called Prime Roots “to date the only startup” offering koji-based vegan meat alternatives and said the company was also developing plant-based seafood such as shrimp, tuna chunks, crab cakes, lobster chunks and salmon burgers.⁠[4]

In an interview published in January 2021 she said the company had partnered with Whole Foods to sell Prime Roots products and that the products were available online; the coronavirus had required the company to adapt quickly, with part of the team moving to remote work and changes to how it hired and scaled. The company, she said, does not think of things as failures: everything is “a learning experience.” She later recalled that the team had gone to Whole Foods and tried its fresh salmon burger side by side with their own.⁠[15][1]

In the interview published in December 2019 she said the company would know it had succeeded when every person on the planet had access to clean water and nutritious food, and that she hoped to feed “millions if not billions” of people with sustainable foods; Green Queen’s article of December 2020 carries the same two statements.⁠[3][4]

In December 2020 ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry released its 30 Under 30 lists for 2021, and she and Joshua Nixon were named in the Social Impact category as co-founders of Prime Roots; VegNews gives their ages at the time as 25 for her and 26 for Nixon (printing her name as “Kimberle Le”). vegconomist wrote then that Prime Roots had raised $18 million to date.⁠[32][33]

In 2021 Prime Roots launched a ravioli range with koji versions of lobster, sausage and chicken.⁠[34]

In the LIVEKINDLY profile reprinted by AWIS in July 2021 she explained that the company feeds koji mainly simple sugars so that it grows into muscle-like fibers, which are then turned into products such as bacon, seafood and chicken; the company chooses what to make through consumer surveys, in which thousands voted and bacon came first. She said: “We know that we can tackle the Nestles of the world, the Kraft-Heinz…” In 2021 she and Nixon said in a vegconomist interview: “We have a waitlist and community with thousands of people from over 50 countries.”⁠[7][30]

In February 2022 Prime Roots rebranded and shifted its focus to plant-based deli meats, announcing its first line of koji deli meats and charcuterie — sliceable hams, turkey and salami, plus koji pâtés, pepperoni and foie gras — aimed at what it called a $300 billion global bulk deli market.⁠[30][35]

On episode 85 of the Business for Good Podcast (the episode page gives only March 15; in it she says the deli products would launch “this year in 2022”), she said the company had started with seafood, had become known for its koji bacon, and was now focused solely on deli as a category, adding: “I have always had a dream of taking over a meat case.”⁠[1]

On the program she said the company’s Berkeley facility was about 20,000 square feet with a capacity of about one million pounds a year; the company then had about 30 people and expected to scale to about 100 within a year and a half to two years. On total funding, the episode introduction says the company had raised $20 million, while her own answer in the interview was under $20 million. She also said the company’s products were “between 90 to 99% better in every single environmental metric you can measure” than conventional meat.⁠[1]

In a July 2022 Q&A with TASTE she said the company could make textures from “whole-muscle flaky fish fillets all the way to lobster, bacon, and deli meats”; that “we will never make a product that is animal-based” and that it did not use shortcuts such as GMOs; she called Boca and Tofurky “Gen 1” alternatives and Beyond Meat and Impossible a “Gen 2” built on ultra-processed plant proteins, and said, “Celebrating and honoring meat rather than shaming and blaming meat is the answer to drive inclusive change”; her vision was to “take over the meat case,” starting with deli meat. Matt Rodbard, editor in chief of TASTE, wrote in his introduction that the texture of Prime Roots’ meatless lunch meat was the best he had tried in plant-based meat.⁠[10]

In November 2022 Prime Roots’ Koji-Meats line reached select deli counters and sandwich shops in the San Francisco Bay Area in whole pieces for fresh slicing; the first partners were Berkeley Bowl, Bi-Rite Market, Rhea’s Deli, Timeless Coffee, Millennium and Above Ground Pizza, and Driver’s Market, and the products were whole koji turkey in three flavors (classic smoked, cracked black pepper and golden roast), koji ham in three flavors (classic smoked, Black Forest and Sugar Shack maple), and koji pepperoni, salami, two pâtés and a foie gras. It was a preview ahead of a wider rollout in U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry retail and restaurants in 2023; the company also joined a list of global fungi companies to form the Fungi Protein Association, a trade body.⁠[35]

In the article she said, “Through the power of koji mycelium, we are able to create better-tasting meats for every type of eater,” and that the goal was to offer Koji-Meats alongside animal meats in delis, sandwich shops and restaurants nationwide. In December 2022 she was the guest of an episode of The Food Institute Podcast titled “Plant-Based Deli Meats for Carnivores.”⁠[35][14]

On May 15, 2023, Prime Roots announced a $30 million Series B, bringing its total funding to about $50 million, to scale up and expand to deli counters and restaurants across the United States. The company’s release names 13 investors: True Ventures, Pangaea Ventures, Prosus Ventures, Top Tier Capital, Diamond Edge Ventures, SOSV/IndieBio, Solasta Ventures, Monde Nissin, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, Meach Cove Capital, The House Fund and Hyphen Capital; FoodNavigator-USA’s article lists 12 of them, without Hyphen Capital.⁠[19][21][34]

Identified as founder and CEO, she said in the release: “People are asking for sustainable meat options that taste good, make them feel good and do good with less planet impact.” In a FoodNavigator-USA interview she said, “I founded Prime Roots six years ago,” and that the problems the industry was then discussing — long ingredient lists, unclean ingredients and taste — were the ones the company had set out to solve; the products use no nitrates or preservatives; they were then sold in the Bay Area of California, and the company was building out its team and operational facilities.⁠[19][21]

The release states that the products can be made in three to five days and that a third-party lifecycle assessment found the production methods 89–92% more sustainable than conventional meat; retail partners said the deli meat often sold out before lunch, with sales 5–10 times those of other plant-based alternatives; and the company had recently become a B Corp and had received Food & Wine’s “Game Changer’s Award” and Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas Award.” SOSV’s article of the same day gives different figures: a life-cycle assessment by Boundless Impact found the company 90% to 99% more efficient than conventional meat in land use, water use and CO2 emissions, and, kilogram for kilogram against pork bacon, its bacon avoids 9 kg of CO2 emissions, uses 92% less water and has a 91% lower land impact.⁠[19][36]

SOSV’s article relays a remark of hers published by Forbes: “We’re tackling a whole new category that no one in plant-based has gone to.” Michael Jeon, managing partner of Solasta Ventures Silicon Valley, called the company’s products “highly differentiated” in the announcement.⁠[36][34]

SupplySide Food & Beverage Journal wrote on November 22, 2023, that Prime Roots’ products are non-GMO and free of the nine major food allergens, are roasted, smoked and handled like conventional meats, are encased in plant-based casings and are made in three to five days; “The first ingredient in all our products is koji,” she said. The article states that developing the recipes took about five years, that the team tasted many hams to settle the amount of juniper berries in its Black Forest ham, and that the textures also took years of work, each product needing its own process — salami is dried, ham is netted and smoked.⁠[9]

Deli Business published a Q&A with her on June 27, 2024, as a winner of its 20th Annual Deli Changemakers Award, giving her title as chief executive and co-founder of Prime Roots, Berkeley, California. She said she had been building Prime Roots for the previous seven years, from product development to finding a home in the deli case and working on nationwide expansion; the best advice she had received, for young companies, was that “the things you say yes to are what kill you, not the things you say no to”; and she described work as central to her life.⁠[11]

Groceryshop’s speaker biography states that she is a Forbes “30 under 30” and an Inc. 2024 Female Founders honoree and has received the Game Changer Idea Award from Food and Wine Magazine and Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award. Gold House’s profile page describes her as “a chef’s daughter with a passion for fermentation” who founded Prime Roots. Unreasonable Group’s profile page lists her as an Unreasonable Fellow in the program Unreasonable Impact Americas 2022.⁠[20][37][16]

In April 2025 Prime Roots announced in Toronto that it was entering Canada with what it called the country’s first mycelium-based deli meats, in seven products. Identified as co-founder, she said in the release: “As a Canadian-founded company, I’m excited to finally bring Prime Roots home.” The release lists two trade shows for that month, the Restaurants Canada Show in Toronto (April 9–11) and another in Vancouver (April 24–27), and dates the U.S. launch of the products to two years earlier. An article of April 7, 2025, in Protein Production Technology International calls her “Canadian-born” and says the Canadian launch would begin with food-service channels.⁠[38][39]

Green Queen wrote on July 8, 2025, that Prime Roots had unveiled its first product refresh in seven years; the company had earlier gone viral through NetflixNetflixNetflix is a U.S. entertainment company that offers streaming series, films, games, and live programming, headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997, it grew from online DVD rental into an international subscription entertainment service and also runs original content, advertising, and in-person experience businesses.Open the full entry’s “You Are What You Eat,” had raised $50 million to date, and the new range was available at delis and grocery stores in the United States and Canada. The article states that Joshua Nixon founded Prime Roots with CEO Kimberlie Le in 2017.⁠[40]

The company’s release on the refresh, datelined New York, says the upgraded line of whole-cut plant-based deli meats was introduced at the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York City and that after seven years of research and development third-party blind taste tests showed them “preferred by a majority of meat eaters who would switch to Prime Roots”; the line comprises smoked turkey, cracked pepper turkey, smoked ham, Black Forest ham, salami, a cupping pizza pepperoni and bacon, sold at hundreds of locations in more than 30 states; against traditional meat production the company claimed 91% fewer carbon emissions, 92% less water use and 89% lower water eutrophication. In the release she said some retail partners were seeing Prime Roots drive 20% growth in deli sales.⁠[41]

An episode page published by The Healthcare Technology Report on July 29, 2025, calls her co-founder and CEO of Prime Roots and says she has a background in agricultural microbiology.⁠[42]

In March 2026 Prime Roots announced in Toronto that its mycelium-based deli meats, made in Canada, were available nationwide there through the food redistributor Dot Foods Canada, in six products, and that it would exhibit at the “Restaurant Canada show” in Mississauga, Ontario, on March 8–10; the release describes Dot Foods Canada as a family-owned company headquartered in Ingersoll, Ontario, with a second distribution hub in Calgary, Alberta. Identified as co-founder, she said in the release: “As a Canadian-founded company, I’m excited to bring Prime Roots home to tens of thousands of operators and consumers in Canada who have been demanding it.”⁠[43][44]

An article in The Hustle dated October 26, 2026, calls her co-founder and CEO of Prime Roots; the company’s releases of 2025 and 2026 identify her as co-founder. The article states that, per the company, sales had nearly doubled annually since the products launched, that it expected to be in more than 1,000 retail outlets by the end of the year, and that in fall 2026 it launched a packaged line, Safe Slice, at Sprouts.⁠[22][43][41]

In the article she said that from the start the company had focused on meat eaters and flexitarians, “which are the vast majority of the population”; she said the company was targeting some of the worst categories for health, such as “deli meats that are full of Class 1 carcinogens,” and declared, “We are not leaving the deli,” which is where the company started and what it is best known for.⁠[22]

She describes herself as a “proud meat eater” and a flexitarian, saying in 2022 that she still ate meat, as did most of the Prime Roots team. The Vegan Women Summit’s speaker biography puts it differently: after learning in college of the environmental costs of her diet, she stopped eating meat.⁠[1][10][3][5]

In 2024 she said she lives in California and that all her hobbies relate to food — foraging in the woods, diving in the ocean, cooking and traveling to try new foods — and that she loves learning where food comes from; her favorite book is “Le Petit Prince” (“The Little Prince”), which, she said, reminds her that creativity can come from anywhere. Her Qwoted profile gives her location as San Francisco.⁠[11][13]

In the TASTE Q&A she said that, short on time, she usually cooks at home with an Instant Pot or in one pot or pan; when she has more time she recreates from memory dishes from her travels, such as a peanut tofu from an island in Taiwan, a baked tapioca pudding from Vancouver and Mont Blanc cakes from Japan; and the brands she admires are Patagonia and Sweetgreen.⁠[10]

She has a dog named Chuy; in the interview published in January 2021 she said the routine and support Chuy gave her were “unwavering and comforting” and had sparked her thinking about stability, which she wanted her staff at Prime Roots to feel in uncertain times as well.⁠[15]

She calls herself a Star WarsStar WarsStar Wars is a space-fantasy film and entertainment franchise created by George Lucas and now owned by Lucasfilm, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.Open the full entry fan and says she lives by Yoda’s line “Do or do not, there is no try.” Asked whom she would most like to share a meal with, she named Bill GatesBill GatesBill Gates is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who cofounded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and served as its chief executive and chairman. He later shifted his focus toward global health, education and climate, chairs the Gates Foundation, and manages investments through arrangements including Cascade.Open the full entry. The books she recommends for leaders are “Multipliers” and “Who.”⁠[3][1]

In the Thrive Global interview of December 2019 she spoke about management: the company works bottom-up and is “community-centric,” with a product voting poll on its website that gives voters a small reward; she advocated treating everyone with respect regardless of pay or title — “put your people first” — and said “Communication is key.” She listed five things she wished she had known earlier: make decisions faster, talk to customers, embrace change, invest in yourself, and learn to say “No.” She hoped everyone would embrace plant-based foods, saying, “Gone are the days of plant-based eating only being about salads.”⁠[3]

The biographies published by the Business for Good Podcast, The Food Institute and Unreasonable Group state that she is a member of the Institute of Food Technologists and the James Beard Foundation and that she and the company have been featured in The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry and Food & Wine.⁠[1][14][16]

Prime Roots: Official website: https://www.primeroots.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26]

X: Public account: https://x.com/kimi_le (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberliele (opens in a new window).⁠[16][27][24]

Medium: Public account: https://medium.com/@kimberliele (opens in a new window).⁠[24]