New Virtual Marketplace Safely Connects Shoppers with Fresh Produce and Local Farms

Tonight the dinner menu is pasta with fresh tomato sauce. You go to the grocery store and buy a tomato without a second thought. 

If we take a deep dive into the backstory of that tomato, we will learn that it was grown in Italy, sprayed with toxic chemicals to allow it to synthetically ripen and sprayed with preservatives to maintain its coloring. After this the tomato is flown from Italy to the United States and where it landed in your pasta sauce. 

Unbeknownst to you there is a local farm ten minutes away that grows delicious, fresh tomatoes. That tomato can be harvested and delivered to your front door in just a day. No chemicals, no artificial colors — just fresh, authentic taste. 

Washington University in St. Louis alumni Noah Offenkrantz, Ben Green, and Anish Naik, recognized this gap in the food industry and decided to develop Find Your Farmer: a virtual marketplace where people in the St. Louis area can purchase fresh produce, meats, cheese and fruits from local farms. Offenkrantz is currently acting as the CEO, Green as the CFO and Naik as the CTO. 

As coronavirus spread and shut down restaurants, local farms faced a decrease in sales, as they relied on restaurants buying their produce. They have had to shift their focus from selling to restaurants, to a more consumer-based shopping experience, which is where Find Your Farmer comes in.. While farmers have struggled in the past to effectively sell to locals, Find Your Farmer streamlines this experience for the everyday, household shopper. 

Find Your Farmer is better for the planet, contributing to less factory and travel emissions, better for the businesses and economy of local farms, provides healthier quality food and facilitates a more personal, direct relationship with the farmer and shopper. 

The average meal travels over three weeks and thousands of miles from its point or origin to your dinner plate. Food goes through countless hands, facilities, and packaging, which wastes resources, damages the local economy and doesn’t provide the greatest extent of health benefits our bodies deserve, according to Offenkrantz. 

“We’ve realized this issue, which is people are buying tomatoes from halfway across the world when someone grows tomatoes in practically your backyard, and you just don't know about it,” Offenkrantz said. “Right now we are partnered with farms that can go directly to you, there are tons of different growerers who don’t have the ability to reach consumers.” 

Offenkrantz has been interested in agriculture since college, and worked on a community farm in St. Louis for three years. During the coronavirus quarantine he was tossing around business ideas with Green and his other housemates, when the concept for Find Your Farmer was brought to life. 

So far The Find Your Farmer team has been working on developing their platform, and connecting farmers with shoppers. 

The website officially launched the week of June 29, and so far offers produce from three farms, Howie Farms, Farmstead Foods and Bee Simple City Farm. About 10 customers are now shopping with Find Your Farmers services. 

What makes Find Your Farmer unique is the ability to shop from multiple local farms in a one stop shopping experience. You can buy honey and fruit from one farm, and cheese from another, and Find Your Farmer will organize your payment and delivery in one click. 

Howie Farms and Farmstead Foods are facilitating farm to door delivery, while Bee SImple City Farm is organizing pick up for customers. 

Right now Find Your Farmer is focusing on establishing brand loyalty and strong customer relationships.

One of the benefits of using Find Your Farmer is eliminating the risk associated with going to a public grocery store amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I was recently communicating with one of our customers today, thanking her for her order. She said she loved the idea and the main reason she used it is because she has asthma, so she was really worried about going out to the grocery store and getting produce,” Green said. “She has also been shopping with these brands [farms] for a long time, so she understands the benefits and she was really happy that we were able to produce her with alternatives when she wants fresh local produce but knows she can’t go out her way to do it.” 

Another unique component of Find Your Farmer is that they are featuring interviews with the local farmers on their site. They hope to facilitate a more personal shopping experience, and allow consumers to gain a better understanding of the faces behind their food production. 

Looking ahead, Find Your Farmer will focus on facilitating relationships and providing a higher quality shopping experience in the greater St. Louis area. 

“The next phase of our operations is to connect with those growers and allow them to establish new relationships with customers so they can expand their market, diversify their revenue streams and they can basically provide a service that's not only good for the health of the people, but also the community and the planet,” Offenkrantz said.

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