 |
From The Ground UpAuthor: Danielle Berg
What does it take to pursue food and beverage as a career? What have culinary entrepreneurs sacrificed to follow their passion? Each week, From The Ground Up provides a platform for diverse voices across the industry to share their personal journeys the triumphs, the failures, and the raw unexpected stories in between. Follow @fromthegrounduppod on Instagram for show news and more. Hosted and produced by Danielle Berg. Language: en Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
Listen Now...
Luke Saunders: Making Fresh Food Accessible At Farmer’s Fridge
Friday, 4 December, 2020
“We are trying to change the way that people can get access to fresh, healthy food.” Luke Saunders is the founder of Farmer’s Fridge, the omni channel fresh food business. He likes to call himself a ‘small business entrepreneur’ - in college, he founded a bike rental company, sold it when he graduated and then went on to work at a small family business making industrial grease lubricants in Queens. After his left his gig at the industrial grease company, he took a job as a traveling sales man for a metal finishing company, which is what inspired his concept for this Farmer’s Fridge. As a traveling sales man, Luke was driving over 1,000 miles a week across four states and during his constant travels, realized he couldn’t get anything he wanted to eat on the road. Everything was fast food. He wondered - why isn’t there more fresh grab and go meals outside of these more dense urban locations? Luke quickly recognized the supply chain problem - food manufacturers can make food very safely and efficiently but getting it from factory to gas station could take six months because of the way supply chain works. Once Luke realized that he could connect directly to customers and create his own distribution model, then he could solve the problem of getting fresh healthy food to more people. With that, Farmer’s Fridge was born. Prior to the pandemic, Farmer’s Fridge was really all about fridges (what?!). Yes, fridges. Farmer’s Fridges makes fresh, delicious food at a central commissary kitchen then put that food in their own refridgerated trucks and then take that food to fancy “vending machines” that they call fridges. The fridges are in airports, universities, office buildings and more across the Midwest and East Coast. The whole purpose was to try and change the way that people can get access to fresh, healthy food. A vending machine is convenient, it can go places restaurants can’t go and it would allow them to be really efficient about getting food to people so it could be less expensive. Once COVID hit, Farmer’s Fridge launched a DTC business where they leverage that same infrastructure around production and distribution of food but they drop it at your house (yes please)! In this episode, we cover how Luke came up with the idea of fresh food vending machines, how his mission has driven this business, launching a new arm of Farmer’s Fridge and of course, the types of dishes they offer. Tune in and follow @farmersfridge on Instagram!
