The future doesn’t belong to the loudest idea. It belongs to the teams that can execute in the messiest industries.

In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua sits down with Adam Bailey, Co-Founder and CTO of Topanga.io, to explore what it really takes to scale technology that solves real-world operational problems—starting with food waste.

Adam shares how Topanga pivoted from food delivery to building a kitchen intelligence platform used by universities, hospitals, and senior living communities across North America.

They dig into what founders get wrong about market sizing, why human-in-the-loop AI outperforms pure automation, and how tiny shifts in workflow design can create massive financial and environmental wins.

Topics include:

• Why solving food waste starts with rethinking operator workflows

• How to scale into fragmented sectors like education, healthcare, and hospitality

• Why cutting user effort is the hidden key to product adoption

• The tradeoffs of human-in-the-loop vs full automation

• What it really takes to stay mission-driven when the operational reality gets messy

• Why TAM isn’t everything (and how to find markets that compound through word of mouth)

This isn’t just a conversation about sustainability. It’s a conversation about designing systems that actually work at scale.

📌 Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro and empanadas

1:00 – Early pivots: from food delivery to container tracking

5:00 – Unlocking the reusable container model for universities

8:00 – Scaling into senior living and healthcare

10:00 – StreamLine: How Topanga built smarter AI + human workflows

15:00 – Go-to-market motion: Word-of-mouth and strategic partnerships

24:00 – Mental health and operational intensity in startups

30:00 – Why zero food waste isn’t the goal (and what the real target is)

35:00 – Financial impact of small waste reductions

38:00 – Adam’s advice on market analysis beyond TAM

40:00 – Final reflections on building for impact