On his way to work at a restaurant in Rhode Island, Matt Tortora always passed local farms. He wondered: If farm-fresh goods abounded, why did his restaurant always source food from a distributor with no local connections?
Now, Tortora’s company, WhatsGood, pairs farmers with restaurants and average consumers to make “fresh and local” truly fresh and local.
WhatsGood started by solving a problem
Restaurants wanted farm-fresh goods. Farmers wanted to sell more of their products. But neither had time to foster connections.
Tortora leveraged his restaurant connections and visited farmers to get the first parties on his platform in 2015. In the first 2 years, WhatsGood made about $1m.
Then came the big idea
After Tortora and his co-founders Erin Tortora and William Araújo realized that they and their friends never had time to attend farmers markets but still wanted fresh foods, WhatsGood launched a new service.
Their new subscription product lets consumers buy vegetables a la carte directly from farmers, while WhatsGood delivers the purchases. So far about 20k people have signed up in the DC, Boston, and Rhode Island markets. That number is growing about 30% each month.
“I think if we had just been beholden or tied ourselves to ‘this is what we’re going to do and only what we’re going to do,’” Tortora says, “I don’t think we would’ve found the successes that we’ve found.”
