Hi! My name is Joshua. I'm the founder of Nabu Market, an online marketplace for locally grown fruits and veggies that helps you search and discover local farms near you. This is part 2 of the origin story of this company, please read The Genesis of Nabu Market Part 1 before continuing. I started this company because I was trying to solve a personal problem, I wanted to eat the freshest most nutrient rich food possible, and be more connected to the people growing my food while reducing my impact on the planet. And, you can't get more connected to your food supply than actually growing your own food, if you ask me!
But, after 6-months of growing local microgreens in my best friend's garage we had to shut down our operation, and he decided to leave the company. I began doing more research during this time period and realized that there were many urban farms starting up in cities all over the world, and around my city. This insight was the seed of the idea to build an online marketplace for locally grown food and local farms.
Like many during the first COVID-19 lockdown I had a lot of spare time on my schedule. So, I built a product called FarmFinder which is a simple online directory that allows you to enter a zip code and the nearest local farm's contact info will pop up on a Google map including the farms address, email, phone number, and even a website if they have one. After a couple months of onboarding users and gaining a little bit of traction I started talking to some of our users and one user named Gina said that she had a personal problem that she was trying to solve. Her husband was over 50 and her son was epileptic, and she was a low-income earner on food stamps but had to shop at Whole Foods because of the high quality nutritious food that they had. I discovered this could be a huge gap in the market that I could help serve. So, recently I partnered with a third-party logistics provider called Otter that uses on-demand delivery apps like DoorDash, UberEats, Postmates, and GrubHub to offer last-mile delivery for customers like Gina!
