The Startup to Challenge Supermarkets

The Lempert Report
September 16, 2014

Could a small farm-delivered food service called Farmigo, be a real challenge for supermarkets? It's employees certainly think so!

Farmigo is a start-up that delivers farm goods right to the consumers. This Brooklyn based company sells produce and other products like milk and cheese purchased directly from farmers. Users place an order online; the order is fulfilled by a farmer who transports it to a centralized packing hub; and then Farmigo delivers it to community drop-off points for the customer to pick up.  And this all happens within 48 hours.

As Founder Benzi Ronen told Fortune, “We don’t have a retail store. We get rid of all of that. We source just in time.” That means there’s no waste and produce is brought directly from harvest.

There are several other online delivery services that cut out an actual store, like for example, Fresh Direct. But the difference is they still have warehouses.  Farmigo’s hubs, however, are filled exclusively with products that have been requested, then been delivered by farmers and are going out for delivery.

Right now Brooklyn-based Farmigo operates just in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, their goal is to see how they operate in these markets and then expand.

It's certainly an impressive business idea, the cost for now may still be prohibitive for some, an organic cantaloupe costs $6.50 for example,  but Farmigo’s average order size is up to $38 from $15 a year and a half ago, in large part because the startup keeps adding new products (such as fish, and soon, fresh pasta). 

But if Farmigo's is only to sell farm goods over non-perishable items, the question is whether customers will ever leave the convenience of either a supermarket or the likes of Fresh Direct where you can get everything in one shop.