Alright. We've all either (a) been through the gardener phase ourselves or (b) know someone who has.
And the people who are still at it since COVID? They're here to stay. Not a fad when you're supplying everybody and their brother with blueberries, cucumbers, and paw-paws.
And what does every good garden need? Compost. So what do you do?
Option 1: You buy from your local Home Depot or Lowe's
Option 2: Set up a makeshift composter you know damn well is falling apart with the next strong breeze
Option 3: You go a little nicer and get one of those rotating barrels
They're all fine options. Even well-intentioned. (Apart from option 2 if you've got handyman skills like myself.) Just maybe not for suburbia.
Options 2 & 3 will stink up your driveway or backyard. And even though it's right outside, it's not super convenient. You're not walking out in the rain to toss in one banana.
SURELY there's a better option. I mean, this is Left Field, isn't it?
Introducing Mill. A kitchen bin that dries and grinds your food scraps into odorless grounds. No fruit flies, no smell, no walking outside in the rain to throw away a banana. And it comes from the guys behind the Nest thermostat that may very well be on your wall right now.
Okay but how
First, let's take a moment to appreciate the design. For residential, you get an assortment of color options, including white, black, and silver. I mean, these things look like an AirPods case flipped on its side.
For commercial, you get a recycler that reminds me of the ice machines that make pellet ice. Which I think we can all agree is the superior form of ice.
But enough about the design. Let’s get into how this thing actually works.
The Mill is actually simple — which is sort of the point. After you throw in your leftover food (bananas, oranges, chicken scraps, eggshells, etc.), it’s dried out and ground up by what looks like two rotating paddles. Think a dehydrator meets blender. But a hell of a lot quieter. A charcoal filter handles the smell, and that’s about it. No babysitting either. You set a schedule in the app, and it runs on its own every day.
The end result? A ground-like substance that’s 80% smaller than what you threw in. You can use it in your garden, mix it into your compost, or ship it back to one of Mill’s farm partners where it can be used for chicken feed.
The bin is good for 40 pounds of food, which means you’re only emptying this thing every few weeks. Unless, of course, it’s bulking season and those bone-in chicken thighs are going down like water.
The commercial recycler? Same shindig, just bigger. 200+ lbs a day. And from a guy who used to work at Harris Teeter — promoted to U-Scan clerk, no big deal — I can 100% tell you every grocery store in America needs one. Good for the earth, good feed for farmers, good publicity.
What we like to call a triple crown in Left Field.
The guys who started it
Matt Rogers. Whether you know it or not, Matt's worked on stuff you've almost certainly owned or are using to read this issue right now.
He interned at Apple in 2004, later went full-time, and worked on the original iPhone. After about five years at Apple, he left to co-found Nest, the company that took thermostats from old, clunky plastic things on your wall to an intuitive, beautifully designed, energy-efficient product. Noticing a pattern here?
Four years after the company's founding, Google bought Nest for a cool $3.2 BILLION. Excuse me? With a B? Yeah.
After stepping away from Nest in 2018, Matt focused on Incite, a fund started with his wife, primarily backing founders in the climate sector.
In May 2020, he co-founded Mill with Harry Tannenbaum. Harry also worked at Nest, as Head of Business Analytics and later as Director of Business Analytics and eCommerce. More than anything, Harry seems to care about the mission. How’s the company making a real-world impact? At Nest, it was saving people money on their energy bills while cutting energy use. That’s a mission to be proud of.
Highly recommend this interview on MCJ with Harry.
So why waste? After Google bought Nest, Harry stayed on. But over time, the work drifted further from the climate mission that got him there in the first place. And that bugged him. So he left to find something he could be passionate about again. Something out in Left Field.
Then COVID hit. And just like every other Joe when they’re bored, Harry began scanning the EPA’s website for waste-related PDFs. Not a joke.
What he found was pretty simple. Food waste isn’t really a food problem. It’s a mixing problem. When you toss a potato and a can of beans in the same bag, it all becomes trash. Right, Ben? (My recycling friend).
Keep them apart, and they’re both resources. The can gets recycled, and the potato goes back to the soil.
Surely a business can solve this. So Harry went to Matt hoping for a mentor. Instead, Matt signed up. And, as his post would indicate, he’s all in.
The honest take
It’s expensive. That’s really it.
4.8 stars out of 3,417 reviews on Mill’s site. Overwhelmingly positive. It’s quiet, it doesn’t smell, and people actually use it. But the cheapest one to buy outright is $999.
And expect some recurring costs. For the Essential, a filter runs ~$60 every 5–6 months, and if you want Mill to send your grounds to a farm, that’s an extra subscription.
So who’s buying it? I think you’re one of three people.
You really care about climate change and doing your part. That’s your thing, and $1,000 is worth it because it matters to you.
You’ve got it like that, and $1,000 isn’t much money. And you’re fine knowing you might not get $1,000 back.
You’ve got a lot of food waste and a yard or garden to put the grounds in. In that case, you’re actually getting something out of it.
And remember the commercial side? Mill signed a deal with Whole Foods to put Mill in its stores starting in 2027. For the business, that means more Mills, more scale, and big early adopters footing the bill. Like your dad at every family dinner.
If that plays out, the one in your kitchen should get cheaper.
And food waste is a real problem. If everyone took it a little more seriously, it’d probably make a dent in greenhouse emissions. As Harry put it, “We don’t need to invent nuclear fusion, we just need to stop throwing food in the trashcan.”
If they pull this off
Fewer fruit flies, more food for your garden, less rotting in landfills.
Food scraps stop being trash. You’ve got a convenient, low-maintenance, easy-to-use bin in your home that changes how you deal with waste.
And if the price comes down as we talked about, this stops being an expensive gadget and starts being the trash everybody has.
It’s the circle of life. And Mill is bringing it to the trash can in your kitchen.
Want to work out there?
28 open positions as of 10/9/2026. Engineers, marketers, operations folks, and 8 internships if you’re still in school. Certainly not a waste of your summer. (That may have been one of the corniest jokes I’ve made to date.)
Open roles → https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/Mill
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