Online farmers market Farmigo Inc. has raised $8 million in its second financing round, led by Sherbrooke Capital and RSF Social Finance and joined by previous investor Benchmark Capital.
Farmigo also launched the first online farmer’s market to connect workplaces, schools, and community centers, and other places directly to local farms to provide a personalized online marketplace for local, freshly harvested food. The first food markets are rolling out in San Francisco and New York, with Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago and Philadelphia to follow soon.
Farmigo was founded in 2009 by CEO Benzi Ronen as cloud-based software for farms to manage their consumer supported agriculture (CSA) subscriptions, but now provides technology to hundreds of farms in 25 states that are connected to more than 3,000 food communities. The company is headquartered in New York and has its development center in Tel Aviv.
“At Farmigo, we envision a community-oriented food system in which people and farmers in the same geographic region are connected, and everyone has access to fresh-from-harvest food,” said Ronen. “The Internet has been collapsing supply chains and rewriting conventional business models for nearly two decades, but until now it has had limited impact on the food industry, which is ripe for change. There has never been a better time to disrupt the status quo and Farmigo is poised to fundamentally change the way food is purchased and distributed."
Farmigo says that its local food community initiative taps the power of the web to make it easy for people to buy direct from multiple local farms that offer seasonal fruit, vegetables, eggs, meats, fish, bread, cheeses and even wine and coffee. Members of each food community shop their dedicated Farmigo farmer’s market online, pick and choose their preferred items, and then have their orders delivered weekly to their food community site within 48 hours of harvest. Farmigo kick-starts local food communities at workplaces, which are the catalyst for making this new food system work. The company is now actively seeking out individuals who want to help bring Farmigo to their workplace, school or community center.
Farmigo cites a study by Mintel, which says that more than half of US consumers believe that it is more important to buy local produce than organic, which often travels an average of 1,500 miles to the supermarket. Selling direct to consumers means that farms reap 80% of the sale of the food, compared with 9-20% with traditional grocers, with Farmigo receiving 10% for each transaction.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 16, 2012
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