Interview with Julie Chapon, (EDHEC Master 2011), co-founder of Yuka, and EDHEC of the Year 2025

Yuka, in 2016, was a somewhat crazy project led by 3 co-founders, including Julie Chapon (Grande École 2011). Today, the food and cosmetics scanning app is part of the daily life of 70 million people in 12 countries, thanks to a score out of 100 and information about harmful additives… but not only that! A soft power of better consumption, a pillar of change for the industry, Yuka's expansion—100% funded through its freemium version—shows no signs of stopping. All the more reason to give the floor to the EDHEC of the Year 2025 on collective awareness strategies.

How would you describe your current role and responsibilities?

To sum up, the best way to describe it is that I manage everything that is neither technical, nor legal or financial. This obviously includes growth to reach new users and communication, which is quite “activist,” especially since our recent brand alert feature and a petition to ban aspartame. I also lead the scientific evaluation component and work a lot on content creation (video or written), especially through educational outreach. I now also spend a significant amount of time on U.S. development—building a small local team, raising awareness about the project, and finding the right partners.

Did you co-found Yuka in response to a lack of information about corporate ethics?

The idea for Yuka came from one of my partners, who wanted to choose better food products for his children. He felt he had no idea what he was buying, and started decoding the labels, full of words he didn’t understand. He was unable to interpret nutritional charts. The project resonated with me because I was already trying to pay attention to product composition, and I realized how complicated it was. Food scandals (horse meat lasagna, fipronil-contaminated eggs…) that followed one after another fed into the growing distrust consumers felt toward the agri-food industry. 

Yuka quickly took on the role of “whistleblower,” a common model in the U.S. but less so in Europe. Yet, you started in France…

As soon as you criticize legally authorized substances, you inevitably become a whistleblower. The “It’s legal, so it’s safe” argument from manufacturers is completely fallacious. If that were true, cigarettes would have been banned a long time ago! Our message is that current regulations do not sufficiently protect consumers. To take action, there are citizen tools like ours. The three years of legal proceedings that followed our petition against nitrites in 2019 confirmed how powerful corporate lobbying is. In the U.S., where we hadn’t initially planned to expand, the financial power of companies is even greater. We therefore asked ourselves what risks we faced by going there. We took time to reflect and to establish sufficient legal protection in advance.

Yuka placed transparency at the heart of its model from the beginning. Has this transformed how companies operate?

Yes, completely—though not by their choice. The goal of manufacturers isn’t to poison people, but to generate profit. They follow the laws of supply and demand, so if the demand shifts to healthier products, it’s in their financial interest to adapt. We hadn’t anticipated the number of users (and thus the millions who stopped buying certain products), which itself had an impact on the manufacturers. In France, we’ve already seen major product reformulations. Intermarché, for example, reformulated 900 products and removed 142 controversial additives. Between 2019 and 2025, we observed a 13% drop in the number of high-risk additives in France. In some categories, the average number of high-risk additives decreased significantly: 75% in cereal bars, 58% in breakfast cereals, 48% in prepared meals. Now, the brand alert feature allows us to go one step further in pressuring brands.

Is it more effective to pressure brands than politicians who can change the laws?

I think so, yes, although that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do both. The petition on nitrites in 2019 was addressed to the French government; the current one on aspartame is for the European Commission. But those efforts take years, while brands can change their compositions in just a few weeks if demand drops—without waiting for an official ban on controversial additives. In the last 10 years, only one additive has been banned in France. There’s too much lobbying, too many conflicts of interest for quick regulatory changes. So our approach is to pressure brands directly to remove these ingredients. Some do so for certain product lines but not for others. “Nitrite-free” is more expensive than “with nitrites.” This creates a double standard in access to food: lower-income households get nitrites, and wealthier ones don’t. 

Do you think the future of food and cosmetic consumption relies on brands responding to consumer demand?

Yes, it’s already happening and will only grow in the years ahead. A brand will no longer be able to launch a product without questioning its ingredients and how it’s rated on Yuka or other apps, or its Nutriscore. They may choose to launch poorly rated products, but I find it unthinkable that they wouldn’t try to improve them. Previous generations blindly trusted what they were sold and couldn’t imagine buying potentially harmful products. Today, that trust is gone. People no longer rely on manufacturers to protect their health. Everyone is free to choose—knowing the risks. Yuka users feel they’re part of a movement, a community, that can reclaim power and take concrete action. 

Do you think that in a few years, manufacturers will be able to sell entirely healthy products?

Yes, because in any product category, you can already find healthy options—without a long list of ingredients, nothing controversial, not too much sugar or salt. However, it will take time. Manufacturers are making efforts because consumers now realize they need to be vigilant. Healthy and organic products have become more accessible thanks to economies of scale. There’s still a significant price gap, but it’s now easier for lower-income households to access healthy products—unlike in the U.S., where it remains very difficult.

In Yuka’s freemium model, how do you resolve the dilemma between access to information and economic sustainability?

When we created the project, we envisioned it as an educational and informational tool to help consumers make better choices. 90% of the app is completely free: anyone can scan products and access recommendations. The extra features included in the paid freemium version provide alerts for gluten, lactose, or palm oil, a search bar, or offline mode. In France, 99.7% of our users use the free version. In other countries, the conversion rate is much higher. Many people also choose the premium version just to support the project. 

How are ESG criteria integrated at Yuka?

We’re B Corp certified—a U.S. label for companies meeting high social and environmental standards—and for the past two years, we’ve also been a mission-driven company. Our actions are guided by their positive impact on users and brands, rather than income. With B Corp, our environmental charter includes governance, choice of banks and energy providers, as well as stakeholders (clients, partners) and user feedback. Becoming a mission-driven company was essential to me because it truly defines who we are. 

What does winning the “EDHEC of the Year” award say about EDHEC in 2025?

I think it’s great to recognize entrepreneurship (especially with a mission), not just people who climbed the ladder in a CAC 40 company. That’s a big shift from my time, when I never heard about alternative business models or goals beyond salary. I’m proud to represent that and maybe inspire others to pursue similar ventures. I lacked role models, especially female ones. Everyone should choose the path that aligns with their values. People often oppose “evil” profit-driven companies to “good” nonprofits working for the common good. But there’s a third option: impact-driven businesses. Yuka is a for-profit company (SAS), with paying customers, but our goal is to have a positive impact on society.