Miyoko Schinner. (Beth Clifton collage)
Would Miyoko’s Creamery exist without Miyoko Schinner’s recipes?
SONOMA, California––Perhaps the only dairy product for which Miyoko’s Creamery founder Miyoko Schinner, 65, never tried to develop a vegan alternative was bullshit.
Post-Miyoko, however, the Miyoko’s Creamery management team who ousted her appears to be moving fast to corner the market on vegan bullshit.
On February 16, 2023, the same day that Miyoko’s Creamery euphemistically announced that “The company and its founder Miyoko Schinner have parted ways,” Miyoko’s Creamery sued Miyoko for alleged breach of contract, violation of the Defend Trade Secrets Act, violation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, breach of duty of loyalty, and breach of promissory note.
(See Canned Miyoko: the ballad of Jon Blair & Miyoko Schinner and How Miyoko Schinner got the same shaft as Paul Watson.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Hong Kong-based Green Queen could smell it from there
Posted the Green Queen vegan news web site late on February 19, 2023, “Earlier today, Green Queen received a PDF copy of court filings detailing that on February 16, 2023, Miyoko’s Creamery filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California naming founder and former chief executive officer Miyoko Schinner as the sole defendant.”
Green Queen learned of the lawsuit against Schinner from the legal news service Law360.
Law360 reporter Craig Clough reported about the case late on Friday, February 17, 2023.
“According to the filings,” Green Queen said, “Schinner allegedly stole company IP and ‘hatched a plot to steal the company’s property, trade secrets, and confidential information so that she could create a competing company.’”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“The devil made them do it”
“In the documents,” Green Queen continued, “the company says it issued multiple notices to Schinner upon discovering her plans and asked her to return the confidential items,” purportedly including “proprietary recipes and plant-based culture configurations.”
Because Schinner did not comply, the new Miyoko’s Creamery management team contends, it “was forced to bring this action to protect its trade secrets and confidential information.”
Added Green Queen, “Further allegations against Schinner mentioned in the filings include not being able to develop or maintain a strong executive team, repeatedly missing performance and financial targets, refusing to facilitate a smooth transition following her departure as CEO, and enlisting the help of now-former company employees to help her steal company documents.”
Bald eagle contemplates cashew nuts.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Designed to destroy me”
Founded in 2011 by self-described Hong Kong “serial social entrepreneur and eco activist” Sonalie Figueiras, Green Queen said it had “reached out to Schinner for comment.”
Schinner, however, had already responded, minutes earlier, via Facebook.
Said Schinner, “I am shocked that certain board members have decided to file a lawsuit against me. There are wild untruths about me that are designed to destroy me and get me out of the way. I have been cooperative with the company [Miyoko’s Creamery] since my termination,” in June 2022, but Schinner made no public statement about it until after the new Miyoko’s Creamery management announced her forced exit on February 16, 2023.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“I am going to move with care”
Continued Schinner, “I fail to see how this is adding value to the brand that I––and other values-driven, passionate vegan former employees––worked so hard to build.
“While I am eager to bring the truth to light,” Schinner said, “I am going to move with the care necessary to ensure that I am operating in accordance with my fiduciary duties as a director”––Schinner remains on the Miyoko’s Creamery board of directors––“and with applicable legal rules and guidelines.
“While I remain a director,” Schinner noted, I am uncertain of how much sway or say I actually have. As always,” Schinner assured sympathizers, “I thank you for your trust, your patience, and your support.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Timing
Regardless of the eventual legal outcome, Miyoko’s Creamery chief financial officer Jon Blair, now the acting president, and James Joaquin, cofounder of the San Francisco-based venture capital company Obvious Ventures, appear to have already lost in the court of public opinion.
Wrote Anna Starostinetskaya, senior news editor at VegNews, “The public announcement of the separation came as a surprise to Schinner, who learned of the [Miyoko’s Creamery] press release as she was cooking dinner for 150 guests at a fundraiser for Rancho Compasión, a farm sanctuary she founded with her husband Michael Schinner.”
Schinner alleged that the Miyoko’s Creamery media release “was deliberately timed to coincide with the event she was hosting, such that she could not immediately respond,” Elaine Watson of of AgFunderNews elaborated.
See Miyoko to dairy farmers: “Don’t have a cow, man!” (Beth Clifton collage)
“Street cred”
Whether or not that was the intention of the new Miyoko’s Creamery management team, in effect publicly firing Schinner was unlikely to strike many observers as a class act.
Schinner, recalled Jemima Webber of PlantBasedNews, “had been active in the vegan scene decades prior to Miyoko Creamery’s debut, teaching plant-based cooking classes in the 1990s, and launching a number of cookbooks, restaurants, and smaller vegan brands, while remaining “vocal about operating Miyoko’s Creamery in a manner that protects animals and the planet.”
Schinner, in short, may have had more “street cred” among vegans than any celebrity chef since the vegan Cain slew the herdsman Abel, and certainly more than the fictional Betty Crocker.
PAC Man vs. the vegans.
Vegan success
Neither did Schinner lag behind anyone as a vegan entrepreneur, having taken Miyoko’s Creamery from zero at debut in 2014 to a reported $260 million in sales in 2022, perhaps the fastest breakout after a hard landing since George S. Patton hit the beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and headed straight toward Berlin.
The investor James Joaquin did not help the Miyoko’s Creamery takeover team by telling Elizabeth Crawford of Food Navigator USA, that “It is often the case that the skill set of a founder––that innovation engine to go from zero to one, to just create a new category that didn’t exist,” is often “not the same skills to go from one to 100 and then scale that and make it more accessible and more affordable and bring those products to the masses.”
Miyoko’s Creamery products are already reportedly sold in more than 20,000 supermarkets, approximately a third of all the supermarkets in the U.S.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“New branding”?
“It is telling,” Schinner said, “that I was patronizingly described as taking the company from ‘zero to one,’ in contrast to what is needed to take the company from ‘one to 100.’
“The results that this company achieved under my leadership speak for themselves. We achieved these results––while I still had the ability to meaningfully ensure it––in a legitimately values-aligned way.
Joaquin mentioned to Crawford that Miyoko’s Creamery is soon to introduce “new branding,” perhaps hinting that Miyoko Schinner’s name is to be de-emphasized or perhaps even be removed altogether, since Schinner refused offers to stay on as a figurehead, with no actual authority over the corporate direction.
Miyoko Schinner.
(Miyoko’s Kitchen Facebook photo)
Ninja Miyoko
Meanwhile, Joaquin and Blair, though Blair only joined Miyoko’s Creamery in March 2022, should know that Schinner is not only not afraid of a fight, but has a history of winning legal battles against much bigger, much more affluent opponents.
“In 2020,” recalled Jemima Webber of PlantBasedNews, ‘Miyoko’s Creamery was hit with a temporary injunction by the California Department of Food & Agriculture, which took issue with the company’s use of descriptors like ‘cruelty-free’ and ‘butter.’ It claimed such terms were ‘misleading’ to consumers.
Merritt & Beth Clifton on a case.
“Schinner fought back, stressing that ‘food is ever-evolving, and so too, should language to reflect how people actually use speech to describe the foods they eat.’
“The vegan company ultimately won the legal battle,” Webber finished.
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Related Posts
Canned Miyoko: the ballad of Jon Blair & Miyoko Schinner
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What Miyoko’s Creamery lawsuit alleges Miyoko Schinner did
Starring Miyoko Schinner in “The Decline & Fall of the Dairy Empire”
How Miyoko Schinner got the same shaft as Paul Watson
Miyoko court win: the world doesn’t owe Big Dairy a living
I don’t know much about vegans except that they don’t eat meat. Although I like meat, I would prefer to find something that doesn’t involve animals.
Still, I have other concerns. Cats are carnivores. With the last I heard, no vegan diet for cats meets their nutritional needs. They have successfully made vegan diets adequate for dogs. Meat generally makes pet food more palatable.
Then the problem exists that a lot of farmland is not suitable for growing crops. Maybe the place is too steep to be able to be planted. In many of these areas, livestock can graze.
I’m not sure what vegans do about milk and eggs. Maybe it depends on the individual. Eggs can be important in many recipes to thicken dishes. Not that I’m crazy about angel food cake, I doubt if there is anything that can replace eggs. If chicken eggs are utilized, what is done with the “spent” hens?
I think that there are still a lot of questions to answer. I’m not discussing the article since I know very little about vegan foods.
According to http://www.ourworlddata.org, “In the hypothetical scenario in which the entire world adopted a vegan diet the researchers estimate that our total agricultural land use would shrink from 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares. A reduction of 75%. That’s equal to an area the size of North America and Brazil combined.”
In such a scenario, there would be no need to use steep or otherwise marginal lands for any agricultural purpose; such land could be returned to wildlife. However, whether there is any such thing as “too steep to be planted” is questionable, in view that the Andean civilization was fed chiefly on potatoes grown on some of the steepest mountainsides on earth, and many Asian civilizations were and still are largely fed on rice grown in comparable conditions.
As to “what vegans do about milk and eggs,” visit any decent supermarket and check the shelves. Plant-based milks occupy more shelf space than cows’ milk at several of the largest supermarkets here, and vegan egg replacers have been readily available for baking for several decades. The vegan product Just Eggs can be used to make scrambles, “fried egg” sandwiches, etc.
Thank you for your interest, Rachel.
Good response, Merritt!
Rachel, there are marvelous vegan versions of virtually every type of food and beverage imaginable. Opting for a vegan diet is easier, better, and more compelling than ever. There’s lots of great information freely available on-line (and elsewhere) to help people transition to a vegan diet. A favorite source of mine is the Vegetarian (actually vegan) Resource Group: http://www.VRG.org
I hope you’ll avail yourself to it, for your sake and everyone else’s. As for eggs and hens, see: http://www.UPC-online.org
Regarding the article, the company certainly isn’t building any goodwill with the way the founder is being treated.
I’ve been vegan since 1973. Grew up eating the Standard American Diet (SAD). Did not connect meat with animals until an essay, “The First Step,” by the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy described his visit to a Moscow slaughterhouse. I stopped eating animals immediately. Ten years later in 1983, I read about dairy and egg production in Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation. Became vegan and never looked back except in regret for my previous ignorance and the price many chickens and other animals paid for it. There is absolutely no need for slaughtered animals including their eggs or nursing cow’s or goat’s milk (which involves tearing the mothers’ own babies away from them to live in solitary hutches, and then be slaughtered as the mother herself will be) in order to have delicious, nourishing food. Here are two good resources for animal-free recipes:
http://www.vegnews.com
http://www.upc-online.org/recipes
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
I was vegetarian since 1974 after reading “Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans” (1971), a collection of essays on animal rights, edited by Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch. I transitioned to veganism in 2001 for the sake of the animals, period. Not for my health, not for “the environment,” or saving endangered species, not for ending world hunger, and certainly NOT for religious beliefs, which forsake animals anyway as having inherent value and dignity!
Shameful, avaricious, and hypocritical behavior on the part of those who have ejected Ms. Schinner. This kind of shabby treatment is all too common in these times and in this place. I can’t afford the products the company produces, but if I could, I would certainly stop buying them to give them a vote of no confidence in the only way I could and the only way that truly counts to the greedy..
Sharing, with gratitude.
Regarding the above comment about cats and feeding them, I think that part of being an animal advocate is respecting who animals are. We can still love cats while accepting that their nutritional needs as obligate carnivores, as well as their ability to make moral choices about what they eat, are not the same as humans. I use the example that if you came home one day to discover your cat eating a mouse, your reaction would be far different than if you discovered one of your human family members eating a mouse.
Aside from a few specialty boutique brands, farm animals aren’t raised for the express purpose of feeding cats and dogs–pet food brands normally deal in animal products deemed unfit or undesirable for human consumption. (Of course, this brings up its own problems, as we’ve seen with many pet food recalls.) That said, I’m sure the factory farm industries enjoy having this lucrative dumping ground for their castoffs. Vegans who care for carnivorous animals may see this as an unfortunate but presently unavoidable situation, much like our tax dollars going to subsidize big animal agriculture.
While there are things we cannot change, such as feline biology, there are plenty of things we do have a say in, such as our everyday choices in feeding and clothing ourselves, which can either help animals or cause them more harm.
Thank you for presenting enough facts to show the dishonesty, treachery, and delusion of James Joaquin and his cohorts. He acknowledges that Miyoko Schinner took the company “from zero to 1,” and then presumes that he will take the company “from 1 to 100.” Well, Miyoko started the company and brought it to annual sales of $260 million, with placement in about 33% of all US supermarkets. So, does that mean Joaquin thinks firing Miyoko will magically help grow the company so that it has annual sales of $26 billion (about five times the size of Kentucky Fried Chicken), and will be stocked in 33 times as many supermarkets as exist in the US??? He’s a jerk. The most valuable asset Miyoko’s Creamery has is the wisdom and creative talent of its founder, Miyoko.
Wow, I can’t believe they would kick Miyoko out of a CEO role at her own company, and then sue her over her own recipes. WTF IS GOING ON??
Kate Yelkovan
They stole her shit and are now trying to take her for everything.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/11484tq/miyoko_no_longer_ceo_of_miyokos_creamery/
If you look at this thread on reddit, there’s some serious astroturfing going on. Anyone who is attacking her has a join date of the same time the comment is made, accusing her of being some kind of vicious horrible boss. Meanwhile, others who have worked there are defending her.
This is a case of deliberate malice and libel, on the part of the corporate board of Miyokos.