How Jodi Frank and Culineer Are Connecting Home Cooks with Local Food Producers
In this week’s podcast episode, Emily chats with Jodi Frank from Culineer, an app designed to build a community for home cooks who want to buy directly from farmers. Culineer is set to bridge the gap in marketing for the $70B direct-to-consumer farming industry.
Jodi got her start in medical communications working for Bristol Myers before leaving that job to raise her children. After teaching at a local community college in the marketing department, Jodi was ready to finally get to work on an idea she’d had brewing for a decade: an app that would make it easy to source local ingredients and find recipes while also connecting with your local community. That idea morphed into what is now Culineer.
Listen as Jodi shares more about her journey to creating Culineer, from sourcing developers, to finding a design team, to figuring out the best business model and revenue streams. Jodi shares how her initial idea for her app evolved into supporting an untapped market, CSA’s (community supported agriculture). Jodi also explains the difference between crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter vs. the platform Jodi is currently using, Wefunder.
Fellow startup lovers, sustainability advocates and curious humans, you’re going to love this one!
Tune in for topics like:
How the food industry has evolved in the past century
Finding an untapped market and pivoting to serve it
Putting together the right team and messaging to build Culineer
Why food deserts exist and how to decrease them
How to use the Culineer app as a customer and a farmer
Equity-based crowdfunding - what it is and why it works
Why Jodi wants to build a zebra rather than a unicorn
Links from the episode:
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