Matt Tortora can remember as a young boy standing on a stool at his grandmother’s kitchen counter so he could watch her cook for the family.
“Good ingredients make a lazy chef,” she would say in Italian.
Years later, Tortora went on to become a chef in Jamestown, working with dozens of farmers to find the best ingredients for his dishes. But he found it challenging to buy from all his vendors on a weekly basis.
That frustration led Tortora to create a solution for himself and other chefs to have one platform where they could find seasonal ingredients and purchase them directly from local farmers, artisans and vendors to simplify the weekly ordering process.
In 2014, Tortora established Crave Food Systems Corp., which developed an online marketplace called WhatsGood that connects buyers with local farmers, remodeling the supply chain. Tortora acknowledged that the original idea was to keep the platform, now a mobile app, just for chefs. But in 2017, it was expanded to residents across the state.
WhatsGood has about 100,000 users and is partnered with 5,000 vendors – 200 of them in Rhode Island and Boston areas. The platform also offers pickup and delivery services in 16 different states. Sales have amounted to more than $1 million a month.
“We really went down the road of building a model that was fair and equitable to both farmers and buyers,” said Tortora. “We’re getting rid of the act of buying product that you will need based on past data, buying from very far away, holding it in a warehouse and then having 30% of that get thrown away because it’s not sold. We’re totally flipping the supply chain.”
Where many businesses have suffered through the coronavirus lockdowns nationwide and farmers markets were shut down in some areas, WhatsGood was deemed essential and its sales skyrocketed.
Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer William Araujo said revenue during the crisis has been 20 times higher than it was for the same period a year earlier.
“I don’t think we will ever see numbers like that again,” Araujo said. “The pandemic definitely made people think about food a little bit more. It was a good opportunity for us in a bad situation.”
While the pandemic has spurred interest in consumers buying local, Araujo isn’t sure if WhatsGood will cause a systematic shift in the way people get their food. But the trend of localizing a supply chain could sway consumer habits long term, he said.
Erin Tortora, a co-founder and director of resources, is looking to increase food access for low-income families. Currently, those using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other benefit cards can pre-purchase for WhatsGood pickup orders only. Delivery drivers are not yet equipped with the technology to make these transactions on the go because of current regulations.
“The goal is being transparent and a reliable connection of consumers and their farmers,” said Erin Tortora, who is Matt Tortora’s wife. “Either through delivery at home, our pickup points, or a market, we want to be the resource that customers can come to and find all of these options.”
OWNER: Matt Tortora
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Online local farmers market and delivery
LOCATION: 305 Lincoln Ave., Warwick
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 30 full-time employees, 125 part time
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2014
ANNUAL SALES: $11 million to $12 million
Alexa Gagosz is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Gagosz@PBN.com.