Ahh, fall. Autumn is often seen as the time of year for scenic drives into the Boston ‘burbs and beyond for glorious apple picking and pumpkin patch wanderings. Fall supplies us with a cornucopia of gourds and other homegrown goodies, and we love it. But sometimes we just don’t have time to take the trek out of the city. Sometimes “scenic” really means two hours on the road and getting lost and then being all WTF-do-I-with-all-these-apples. Sorry Mother Nature, but you just can’t fit the harvest into your schedule this season.
Well, good news for your guilty conscious and the Good Earth, too. New Boston startup SomethingGUD helps bring the local bounty to your door via its digital farmers market platform.
Just a few months old, SomethingGUD has a three-part focus, the first being to support local suppliers and farmers’ production. “We give preference to those who are lighter in distribution, often out in Somerville or outside of Cambridge that lack distribution ties with retailers like Whole Foods,” cofounding team member Jay Henderson told BostInno in a conversation. The second part of the company’s raison d’ętre is, simply put, to “make it really easy to get great local food,” said Henderson. When it came to picking the products to be made available, Henderson explained, “We went to farmers markets every day and spent time researching the food and identifying the best products in the area to price the good competitively.” The third piece of the mission? To be sustainable. The startup promises to pay more than 50 percent of every dollar their customers spend on meat, dairy and produce directly to the farmer who grew it. What’s more, the company also donates 1 percent of all revenue to non-profits that preserve clean air, clean water and wilderness.
The online subscription account service is set up as an alternative CFA program that, rather than surprising the subscriber each week, put the power in their hands. On SomethingGUD, users can order what they want, when they want, so they don’t get stuck with a basket of lowly radishes. There's no contract involved, so if need be, orders can be cancelled, postponed or changed at anytime.
Sign up for an account–free of charge–and you’ll have access to an amazing array of locally grown, mostly organic/grass fed items, like Sophia’s Greek Yogurt, Nella Pasta, Robinson Farm Cheese, Shaw Farm Milk and many more. People can also buy weekly packages of foods by particular categories, like Silverbrook Egg Farm share, or according to what’s ripe, like Seasonal Fruit and Veggie selection.
“The breadth of our customer base has been surprising,” said Henderson. “We have rock climbing grad students, local undergrads, young families, Boston socialites, athletes, families in the suburbs, all demographics. I think we underestimated just how many people cared about getting fresher, higher quality and more responsibly produced foods.”
The idea for the site came up when a crew of Davis’s friends were chatting at a friend’s birthday party in the North Shore last fall, SomethingGUD CEO and Cofounder Colin Davis told BostInno via email. A self-proclaimed eco-geek, Davis worked as a corporate sustainability consultant and started an industrial energy efficiency software company prior to launching SomethingGUD.
“Ultimately I believed that the biggest difference could be made by making it easy for individuals to source more of the ‘guds’ they consume from small local, responsible producers,” he explained.
The biggest issue the startup is having, Henderson said, is meeting the demand. After being active for only a month and a half back in July, SomethingGUD’s platform saw over 60 people sign up and become regular subscribers for the service.
“Everybody wants it, we are trying to figure out how to scale while maintaining the quality of our service and the integrity of our vision,” shared Henderson.
Working out of Somerville’s shared use catering space Kitchen Inc., the six-person company currently delivers in central Boston, Metro North, Metro South, Metro West and the North Shore via Zipcar and a few of the founders' personal vehicles.
What’s next on SomethingGUD’s plate?
Davis wrote over email:
“We have a big development in the works, we cannot share the details until its finalized, but we will give you a hint. Imagine you are grilling one of our grass fed steaks, in your other hand you would be holding a frosty, delicious, locally sourced __________.”
We’ll let you venture a guess at what type of products he’s referring to there.
