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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

local food

Forager Raises $4M for Local Food Procurement Platform

Forager, a digital platform that grocers and food retailers can use to easily source local food, announced this week that it has raised $4 million. This funding round was led by Duncan Saville of ICM Limited and Coastal Enterprises Inc., with participation from other private investors.

For a food retailer, connecting with hundreds of local farmers, fishers, ranchers, and artisanal producers can be an arduous process. This is where Forager comes in handy; rather than a grocer having to deal with each local producer individually, Forager’s platform lists available local producers and their products in one place. This allows local farms and such to update their inventory on-demand with a phone or computer, and buyers from grocery stores can immediately see the amount of stock available and price of each product.

Forager’s new capital will be used to expand key product features, further develop sales channels, and incorporate upgrades to their product. Towards the end of last year, the company announced that it had partnered with Roche Bros. supermarkets to be used in 20 of its locations and subsidiaries in the Boston Metro area.

Eating food that has traveled shorter distances typically tastes better, helps support a farmer in your community, and is more resilient to supply change disruptions. With all of these benefits, it makes sense that the demand for local food has spiked has spiked, and why more companies in the food tech space are catering to this. Cropswap launched at the start of the pandemic in 2020, with its app connecting consumers to local farmers in their area. Grubmarket, a virtual farmer’s market, raised $60 million in October of last year. Chipotle launched a virtual farmers market last summer to give its customers the opportunity to source food from its ingredients suppliers.

As Forager continues to expand, hopefully local food will become more of the norm in standard grocery stores. To date, Forager has sourced over 200,000 local products through its platform, and currently operates in 12 states with more than 40 grocers and retailers.

Forager Partners With Roche Bros. To Make Local Food More Accessible

Forager, a procurement platform for sourcing local food, announced its partnership with Massachusetts-based Roche Bros. grocery store this week. Over 20 Roche Bros. and its subsidiaries in the Boston Metro area will be implementing Forager’s platform.

Forager forms relationships with local farmers, ranchers, fishers, and artisanal producers, and then streamlines the process of getting their products into stores. Local producers can update their inventory on a phone, and buyers from grocery stores can instantly see the price and amount of these items. Through the Forager program, local food and products go straight from the farm to the grocery store, rather than to a warehouse before heading off to the grocery store.

I spoke with Forager Founder, David Stone, this week about this recent partnership and Forager’s mission. Stone said that his company prefers focusing on partnering with smaller, independent grocery stores over the big players in the grocery game like Walmart or Amazon. By connecting smaller grocery stores with more local producers, this gives smaller stores a chance to compete with larger retailers and providers by attracting consumers that are specifically looking for local produce.

The demand for local produce surged at the beginning of the pandemic, and although it is unclear if this trend is still on an upward trajectory, companies have responded to it. Besides Forager, other companies have made an effort to connect consumers to local goods. Grubmarket raised $20 million in funding earlier this month for its virtual farmer’s market platform. This summer, Chipotle also launched a virtual farmer’s market so consumers can have access to local cheese, meat, and produce from its suppliers.

The Forager platform is currently being used in about 30 grocery stores in nine different states. The company is in discussion with about 10 other grocery stores for new potential partnerships.

Like Local Farms? You Better Step Up Now or They’re Going to Disappear

Certain food sources, like e-commerce grocery sites and meal kit companies, are seeing a boost in sales in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, many parts of the world are shuttering farmers markets and restaurants, eliminating key revenue sources for local farmers. So how can those farmers survive in our new coronavirus reality?

Unfortunately, it won’t be easy. Small farmers make a significant chunk of their money from these markets or selling to restaurants — which, as you’ve probably noticed, are also struggling. The numbers are discouraging: Civil Eats pointed to an analysis of the impacts of COVID-19, predicting a $689 million decline in sales from March to May 2020 for farmers who sell at local markets. It’s especially tricky for farmers who sell perishable goods, like eggs and produce, which might go bad while their sales channels are blocked.

Some farmers and supporters are fighting back by making a petition to designate farmers markets in areas like Seattle, where they’ve been shut down, as essential. I think that makes sense. People are already shopping shoulder-to-shoulder in grocery stores, way closer together than six feet. Arguably, it’s less dangerous from a public health standpoint for them to shop outside in the open air?

One solution for farmers could be to move towards selling more CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture. With a CSA, individuals can buy a share in a farm’s output, which is delivered either to their door or a pick-up point, usually once a week. It’s a way to continue to get local produce and support farmers without having to risk cross-contamination in a farmers market, if those are even still available. Clearly people are interested — according to Yelp, deliveries of CSAs have gone up 405 percent in March.

Certain online platforms are also facilitating online sale of local foods. MilkRun in Portland, Oregon, for example, is an online marketplace connecting people with local farms in their area. MilkRun’s CEO and Founder Julia Niiro told me that the company’s orders have increased more than 6 times since the start of the crisis with “no signs of them slowing down” as farmers markets close. Even if you aren’t in the Portland area, Niiro is urging diners to buy from local farmers wherever they can. “If you want to be able to get beautiful, local food at any restaurant after this crisis is over, you need to buy directly from small farmers now,” she told me.

Restaurants are also thinking of creative ways to support farmers. Naked Farmer in Tampa Bay, Florida, which was slated to open its doors this April, has instead pivoted to open a digital farmers market. People can order locally-sourced foods through either the Naked Farmer website or UberEats, and can get their orders at a pick-up zone or via delivery. In Seattle, Eric Rivera, who’s been especially innovative in the face of COVID-19, is partnering with local farmers to sell bags of locally grown vegetables for pickup at his restaurant. Diners can also add it onto their delivery order from his restaurant, Addo.

Some existing online farm-to-diner sites are struggling to keep up with the sudden explosion in demand. UK-based platform Farmdrop, a service that delivers food from farmers to Brits’ doorsteps, has had to limit its drop-off days. When I checked the site earlier today, I saw a note that they are “at capacity and unable to take any further orders for the current days available,” but would be opening new slots soon. In the U.S., local farmed food delivery service Hungry Harvest has also had to pause new signups due to an increase in orders.

That’s an encouraging sign that people want to support local farmers and buy their goods. It also shows that we need more services connecting consumers to farmers and facilitating purchases and delivery. And soon.

Small farmers are already struggling to survive for a myriad of reasons — if we don’t find ways to sell their produce, or give them a significant bailout, we could be looking at a future with significantly fewer farmers markets and locally-grown food. And that’s not a future I want to eat in.

Farm’d is a Marketplace for Restaurants to More Easily Buy From Local Farms

There are lots of reasons that buying local food is better. It’s better for the environment, better for the community, and better tasting. But for restaurants and retailers, buying locally sourced food may not be easier. That’s why Farm’d created a B2B marketplace to connect those food buyers with local food growers.

The premise is pretty simple. Farmers can list and sell their products on Farm’d’s service, and chefs and other food buyers in that area can select and buy them. Farm’d Co-Founder and CEO Chris Damico got the idea when he was a restauranteur and looking to buy local produce. “There was no economical way to get locally sourced food,” said Damico, “and I was frustrated by the options the Syscos of the world were offering.”

So Damico launched Farm’d in January of 2018. “We have a 400 restaurants and retailers on the platform. We’ve got 70 farms selling 1,200 SKUs, all within three hours of Atlanta.”

Right now, Farm’d facilitates meat, dairy and produce sales. Since produce is seasonal and not every fruit or veggie is available in every region year-round, Damico says that it’s only 30 percent of Farm’d’s sales.

“Anybody can sell tomatoes,” Damico said. “You’re not going to buy beef from just anybody. That’s how are we different. Direct, transparent and favorable.”

Another key differentiator for Farm’d, according to Damico, is that the company doesn’t own or use any warehouses, and delivery drivers are all independent contractors. “The farm is the warehouse,” Damico said. “We pick it up when someone wants it and our IP is in the routing.” Damico said that deliveries are made on a daily basis.

So far, Farm’d has raised roughly $3 million in seed and angel funding. The company makes money by charging farmers a straight 10 percent cut of its sales generates via the platform. Farmers can set their own price and tack on the 10 percent fee on top of their sales or subtract it from the total.

Farm’d is part of an interesting overall trend of startups that are in the business of connecting volume food buyers with smaller brands. Pod Foods is a marketplace that connects retailers with smaller CPG brands, and WeStock is a platform for consumers to tell their local grocers which brands they would like to see in store.

Given that Farm’d is simply a marketplace, and says that its special sauce is more in the logistics of food delivery, there’s no reason that it can’t scale relatively quickly to new markets. They still need to enlist new farmers and drivers, but no matter where you are in the country restaurants want food and farmers want to sell food.

If that happens, eating local while eating out could become easier than ever.