Center for Sustainable Business | 2023 NYU Stern Sustainable Business Pitch Competition

About the 2023 Competition

In the Spring 2023 NYU Stern Sustainable Business Pitch Competition, students developed business pitches for Dollar General to implement retail strategies that expand the range of healthy and sustainable food products offered in its New York stores that will help address food insecurity in surrounding communities. Competing for a $15,000 total prize purse, teams pitched proposals to persuade Dollar General to diversify its food offerings, including specific plans to address operational, marketing, and scaling challenges.

Lack of access to nutritious food is the leading cause of poor health in the United States. In New York State alone, 656,000 people live in food deserts, defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as low-income areas where a significant percentage of the population lives at least one mile away from a full-service grocery store in urban areas or ten miles in rural areas. Food deserts lack access to “fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods… largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.” Food deserts disproportionately affect minority communities: in Albany, for example, 95 percent of areas that are home to predominantly BIPOC residents are food deserts, as defined by the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas.

In alignment with Dollar General's recent initiatives to align its sustainability initiatives with UN SDG Goal 2: Zero Hunger, student pitches aimed to leverage the convenience and affordability of Dollar General to expand the accessibility of healthy food options to these underserved communities.

Congratulations to this year’s winners! 
First Place: Team 1

• Riley Angarella 
• Nate Hudson 
• Eitan Khan 
• Maggie Talbot 

Second Place: Team 7

• Sara Dicker 
• Sarah Reul 

Third Place: Team 3

• Akshat Bhargava 
• Danit Fleischman 
• Allison Ranshous 
• Devashish Taknet 

Competition overview: 

• Teams were asked to develop innovative, practical proposals for Dollar General to expand the range of healthy food offerings in its NYS stores as part of its commitment to addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, notably Goal 2: Zero Hunger. 
• Teams used background research, financial data, and measurable impact metrics to demonstrate the concrete financial and strategic benefits of Dollar General expanding its healthy food offerings, as well as the risks of not acting
• Teams had the opportunity to attend educational sessions led by experts in relevant fields and receive coaching from Stern faculty and CSB scholars during both rounds. 
• The Competition entailed two rounds:
  1. A 6-10 page written submission and
  2. A live proposal presentation 

The Sustainable Business Pitch Competition is organized by the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business with sponsorship by Eddie Stern. In the Spring 2022 competition, more than 50 NYU graduate students from Stern School of Business and other NYU graduate schools developed proposals to persuade banks to facilitate clean energy loans to fund energy efficiency retrofits in their lending portfolio. Read about the 2022 challenge here.