Courtesy Find Your Farmer
Like most of the population, Ben Green, Noah Offenkrantz, and their circle of friends found themselves with a lot of time to think during the COVID-19–induced stay-in-place orders this past spring—and they’ve turned those idle moments of brainstorming into a new farm-to-table venture.
Find Your Farmer, the startup that they founded this past May, launched last week as a way to connect consumers to farmers through an online platform that Green likens to a virtual farmers' market. As he explains, the idea came to Offenkrantz, the company’s CEO, when he tried to buy products directly from farmers after becoming aware of the difficulties that they were experiencing due to a loss in restaurant orders.
“Noah tried to order food directly from farmers and realized there should be a website or online market for all of the farms to buy from where people can get food delivered to their doors,” Green explains. “It would allow people to do their grocery shopping from their laptops and not risk going to the stores, and it is a great way to support farmers, whose wholesale had gone down the drain. He brought up the idea one day, and it took us all about two seconds to be on board. We started working on it that night.”
Green, a recent Washington University graduate who serves as Find Your Farmer’s CFO, says he was surprised to learn that such a service did not already exist, especially considering the simplicity of the idea. Working with a distributor, Find Your Farmer acts as an intermediary between consumers and producers, as well as a delivery service. Using the brand’s website, customers place their order during a weeklong window that opens Tuesday morning and closes Monday evening; those orders are processed by Find Your Farmer, received and delivered to its commissary kitchen by a distributor, and then separated and delivered to customers' doorsteps by Green, Offenkrantz, and the rest of the team the following day.
Though the idea behind Find Your Farmer seems straightforward, Green admits that the startup has had to adjust its business model as it encounters challenges inherent in the food chain. Logistics has proven to be quite difficult, especially in terms of sorting individual orders from the bulk delivery from their distributor. There has also been a learning curve in how the company is getting the word out about its service.
“We weren’t sure how to do outreach and did some Facebook and Instagram ads,” Green says. “None of us were on the ground, and we’ve had to shift to on-the-ground marketing. One-on-one conversations have become valuable in terms of people understanding our business, rather than seeing a flyer.”
The Find Your Farmer team has also evolved in terms out its outreach to producers. As Green explains, he and his colleagues began by reaching out directly to farmers but shifted to working with a distributor to leverage his already existing relationships.
“We started out trying to work with individual farmers but had a mixed response,” Green says. “Some are very traditional and like to do things the way they have been doing them; others see the benefits of a new business model, but working with a distributor gets more reach and helps support more farms because he’s already created connections, and we can build on that. It’s super helpful.”
Green and his colleagues are excited to see where the fledgling company goes. Though none of the team planned on founding a startup during quarantine, they are eager to see how far they can take the concept in St. Louis and beyond.
“Three of us have jobs, one is still in school, and another is still looking, but this opportunity just presented itself,” Green says. "It’s been really fun doing our first deliveries. We’re wanting to make sure we figure out St. Louis for the next few months and have that down pat and provide benefit to the community as well as we can. If it works well, we’ll see if we can provide the benefit to other cities.”
