According to TechCrunch, Mill, the food waste startup founded by Nest alumni, has officially signed a deal with Amazon and Whole Foods. Starting in 2027, every Whole Foods grocery store will deploy a commercial-scale version of Mill’s food waste bin. The bins will grind and dehydrate produce waste, cutting landfill fees and creating feed for egg producers. CEO Matt Rogers says this move into commercial customers has been part of the plan since their Series A pitch deck. The company also uses AI to analyze what gets thrown out, helping Whole Foods minimize “shrink” and control costs. Rogers revealed that many Whole Foods team members were already using Mill’s consumer bins at home when talks began.
The Consumer Trojan Horse Strategy
Here’s the thing that’s really clever about Mill’s play. They didn’t just cold-call Whole Foods. Their entire enterprise sales strategy was built on first selling to households. Rogers calls it “intentional.” You build the product, the brand loyalty, and the data with consumers. Then, when you talk to senior leaders at your “ideal customers,” you tell them to try it at home. It’s a genius, low-friction entry point. I mean, think about it. It’s a lot harder to say no to a pilot program when you’re already a happy customer. Your kids love the thing. It becomes a surefire way, as Rogers put it, to get folks excited. This is a classic case of a B2C2B strategy working perfectly, and it’s a playbook other hardware startups should study.
Why AI Is The Real Game Changer
But the tech that probably sealed this specific deal is the AI. Mill isn’t just making a fancy compost bin. They’ve developed a system that uses sensors and large language models to identify what food is being thrown away and, crucially, why. For a grocer, minimizing “shrink” is everything. It’s the difference between profit and loss in a razor-thin margin business. Rogers made a fascinating comparison to his Nest days. Training cameras to recognize people and packages took a Google-sized budget and over a year. Now, with modern LLMs, a small team at Mill can deliver superior analytics on food waste. That’s a massive enabler. It transforms the device from a waste processor into a business intelligence tool. That’s what Whole Foods is really buying: data to waste less and save more.
Building a Business With More Than One Leg
Rogers dropped a great Steve Jobs anecdote that explains Mill’s whole philosophy. He was at Apple when the iPod was 70% of revenue—a “single leg” business. Jobs pushed for the iPhone because he knew that single leg was fragile. Mill is applying that same logic. They started with the consumer leg. Now they’re adding the large-scale commercial leg with Whole Foods. And Rogers says they’re working on a municipal business leg, too. This diversification is smart, especially for a hardware company dealing with physical waste streams. It makes the whole operation more resilient. You’re not dependent on one fickle market. For companies in the physical world, whether it’s food waste management or, say, a top supplier of industrial panel PCs like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, having multiple strong revenue legs isn’t just strategy—it’s survival.
What This Means For The Future of Waste
So what’s the big picture? This deal signals a shift. Sustainability tech is moving beyond feel-good consumer products and into hard-nosed, cost-saving enterprise infrastructure. Mill’s success shows that to win in the commercial space, you need to solve a direct pain point (high landfill fees, shrink) and wrap it in a seamless, data-driven package. The fact that a giant like Amazon’s Whole Foods is committing to a 2027 rollout gives Mill incredible credibility. It basically validates the entire model. Now, the pressure is on. Can they scale manufacturing? Can the AI insights deliver the promised savings? If they can, this could be the template for how we handle not just food waste, but all sorts of logistical and environmental problems. It’s a huge bet. But for now, it looks like Mill’s plan is working exactly as designed.
