Big Wheelbarrow is moving to Buffalo in two months.
In the meantime, the public will get the opportunity to invest in the company via a WeFunder campaign that goes public today.
The catch: The startup is closing the campaign once it raises $250,000 and much of that could be spoken for already, as the round was first opened to early stakeholders.
It’s an early taste of a company moving from Austin, Texas, a burgeoning technology mecca, to Buffalo, a city that is seeking to prove it can be a landing strip for successful startups.
Big Wheelbarrow was among the eight awardees in this year’s 43North competition, winning $500,000 in exchange for a 5% stake in the company.
CEO Sam Eder and other key team members will move here in January with plans to make it their permanent base of operations. A number of key hires are expected to be made in Buffalo in the coming months.
Big Wheelbarrow is in the process of launching with Buffalo-based Tops Markets.
“We’re excited to be in the same town as our biggest customer,” Eder said. “There is so much agricultural activity in Erie County and surrounding counties, and that creates opportunity for us. Along with 43North, it was one of those perfect storms.”
Eder’s startup proposes a fundamentally different take on the supply chain that currently supports food on its journey from a farm to a supermarket. The links in that chain treat food as a commodity – the goal being the best price on strawberries, for instance, no matter where they were grown.
Big Wheelbarrow’s software-as-a-service platform connects stores to locally grown produce, however, dovetailing with a major trend in consumer demand. Traditional supply chains and the software that serves them simply weren't built for this problem, he said.
Eder says it’s a system that works because it serves everyone involved. And he said Big Wheelbarrow can win business by onboarding new customers and expanding within existing ones.
“Every department in perishables is a potential Big Wheelbarrow customer,” he said. “We power their hyperlocal direct-to-store delivery program.”
