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

Back in 2016, Yuka was a bit of a crazy project put together by 3 co-founders, one of whom was Julie Chapon (Grande École 2011). The application, which scans food and cosmetic products, has now become part of the daily lives of 70 million people in 12 countries, providing a score out of 100 and indicating the presence of harmful additives ... but that's not all! Yuka's expansion, 100% financed by its freemium version, is unstoppable: it is a form of soft power for better consumption and is a pillar of change for the industry. All good reasons to give our 2025 EDHEC Person of the Year the chance to talk about how we can raise our collective awareness.

How would you describe your current position and responsibilities?

Perhaps the best way of putting it is that I manage everything that is neither technical, legal nor financial. This obviously includes development in a way that attracts new users and communication with quite an “activist” approach, especially since the recent addition of a feature to challenge brands and a petition to call for a ban on aspartame. I'm also in charge of scientific evaluations and work a lot on content creation (video and text), particularly through popularisation. I now also devote much of my time to development in the US – creating a small team there, raising awareness of the project and looking for 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 didn't know what he was buying, so he started deciphering labels, with all those unfamiliar words. He was unable to interpret the figures displayed in the nutritional tables. This project spoke to me because I was already mindful of the ingredients that go into products and I was well aware that it was complicated. A series of food scandals (lasagne with horsemeat, eggs containing fipronil, etc.) fuelled consumer mistrust of the agrifood industry. 

Yuka immediately positioned itself as a "whistleblower", a model that is common in the US but less so in Europe. But you began your journey in France ...

As soon as you criticise substances that are legally authorised, you inevitably have a role to play in sounding the alarm. The argument that "It's authorised, so it's harmless", put forward by manufacturers, is completely fallacious. If that were the case, cigarettes would have been banned a long time ago! Our message is that today's regulations do not adequately protect consumers. To take action, there are citizen-led tools like ours. The 3 years of legal wranglings that followed our petition against nitrites in 2019 confirmed the extensive power of corporate lobbying. In the US, where we initially had no intention of developing, the financial resources of companies are even greater. So we wondered about the risks involved in going there. We took the time to think about it, and to put in place sufficient legal protection upstream.

From the outset, Yuka placed transparency at the heart of its model. Has this transformed the approach of manufacturers?

Absolutely – in spite of themselves. The aim of manufacturers is obviously not to poison people, but to generate profits. They follow the law of supply and demand, so if demand evolves towards healthier products, they have every interest, if only from a financial point of view, in adapting. We didn't anticipate the number of users (and therefore that millions of people would stop buying certain products), which in turn has had repercussions for manufacturers. In France, we've already seen some major overhauls of product formulas. Intermarché, for example, has changed the formulas of 900 products and removed 142 controversial additives. Between 2019 and 2025, we have seen a 13% drop in the number of high-risk additives in France. There have been very significant reductions in the average number of high-risk additives in certain categories: 75% in cereal bars, 58% in breakfast cereals and 48% in ready meals. And now, by calling on brands, we can go one step further and put pressure on them.

Is it more effective to challenge brands than politicians, who can amend laws?

I think so, but that doesn't mean you can't do both. The petition on nitrites in 2019 was addressed to the French government; the current petition on aspartame targets the European Commission. But that takes years, whereas brands can change their ingredients in a matter of weeks if demand falls, without waiting for a ban on controversial additives. In the last 10 years, only one additive has been banned in France. There is too much lobbying and too many conflicts of interest for rapid regulatory change. Our angle of attack is therefore to put direct pressure on brands to do away with these ingredients. Some are eliminating them in certain product ranges, but not others. “Nitrite-free” is more expensive than “contains nitrites”. There is a persistent problem of two-tier access to food: the poorest households consume nitrites, and those who can afford not to avoid them. 

Do you think that the future of consumerism, whether in agrifood or cosmetics, lies in brands taking consumer demands into account?

That is already happening, but it will gather pace in the coming years. Brands will no longer be able to launch a product without considering its composition and its rating on Yuka or other apps, or its Nutri-score. They can choose to launch products with poor ratings, but I can’t imagine them going ahead without at least exploring how they could do a little better. Previous generations had blind faith in what they were sold, and never dreamt they could be buying potentially dangerous products. Today, we've reached a turning point: we no longer trust manufacturers to look after our health. Everyone is free to make their own choices, with full knowledge of the facts. Yuka users feel they are part of a movement, a community that can regain power and take concrete action. 

A few years from now, do you think manufacturers will be in a position to sell completely healthy products? 

Yes, because if you look at any product category, you can find healthy products without a string of ingredients, without anything controversial, without too much sugar or salt. But it will take time. Manufacturers are endeavouring to achieve this because consumers are now aware of the need to be vigilant. Healthy and organic products have become more accessible thanks to economies of scale. There's no denying that there's still a big difference in price, but it's now less difficult for households on more modest incomes to access healthy products, unlike in the United States, where it's still a big challenge.

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

When we created the project, we imagined it as a way of educating and informing consumers so that they could make more enlightened choices. 90% of the application is completely free: anyone can scan products and access recommendations. The additional features included in the paid freemium version include alerts on the presence of gluten, lactose or palm oil, a search bar and an 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 subscribe to the premium version to support the project. 

How are ESG criteria included in Yuka?

We are B Corp certified – an American label that certifies companies who respect rigorous social and environmental criteria – and for the last 2 years we have been certified as a mission-driven company. Our actions are defined on the basis of their positive impact on users and brands, rather than on cash inflows. In accordance with B Corp requirements, our environmental charter extends to governance, our choice of banks and energy suppliers, not forgetting third parties (customers, service providers, stakeholders) and accounting for user opinions. Establishing a mission-driven company was essential for me, because it really defines us. 

What does the "EDHEC Person of the Year" award tell you about EDHEC in 2025?

I think it's great that entrepreneurship (especially mission-based entrepreneurship) is being promoted, and not just people who have worked their way up in a CAC 40 company. It's a big change from my day, when I'd never heard of any other form of enterprise, or of any goal other than the salary I was going to earn at the end of the month. I'm very happy to represent all this in my own way, and perhaps inspire others to embark on this kind of adventure. For my part, I've been very short on role models, especially female ones. We can all choose the path that seems most relevant to us, as long as it's in line with our values. A dichotomy is often put forward between the evil companies that only want to make money and the kind associations and NGOs that work for the common good. But they’re not the only 2 structures out there; companies that have an impact represent a third way. Yuka is a simplified joint stock company, which creates value like a business, with people paying for our services, but whose aim is to have a positive impact on society.