As an NFL offensive lineman for the Arizona Cardinals, David Moosman was no stranger to food.
He was eating 13,000 calories a day to stay at playing weight.
“It sucked,” he said with a laugh.
After a brief stint in the NFL, his football career took him to Italy, where he eventually traded in the shoulder pads for a chef’s coat, beginning his journey in the kitchen.
Moosman’s cooking career took him across the country and across the world, working as a chef in Italy, Brazil, Boston and Napa at oyster farms, vineyards, butchers’ shops and more in the last decade.
“Everywhere I went, I saw the same problems. Farmers don’t know how to find chefs and chefs don’t know how to find farmers,” he said.
“We’re not splitting atoms, we have very busy people on very tight schedules. We make it streamlined, time-efficient and easy to use.”
With a new generation of chefs and old-school farmers, Moosman said there was a disconnect in communication. So, he decided to take the problem head on.
Moosman created To Market, an online platform that connects purveyors of local foods directly to restaurants and chefs.
“We’ve made a frictionless ordering platform to connect purveyors and buyers, to cut down on wasted time, cut down on the cost, and most importantly, cutting down on wasted food,” he said.
For farmers, To Market allows them to post their current product list and start connecting with local chefs. On the other side of the platform, chefs are shown the available products from various farmers and can send a connection request. When the deal is agreed on, chefs can track their product’s delivery and be alerted when new products are available.
The company's latest version of the platform launched in March 2018, and To Market currently has over 400 accounts, with buyers in 15 states and producers in 4 states.
Moosman said the platform’s key feature is the ability to bridge the communication gap between chefs and purveyors.
“We’re not splitting atoms, we have very busy people on very tight schedules,” he said. “We make it streamlined, time-efficient and easy to use.”
Moosman said the platform shouldn’t be looked at as chefs competing for products, rather as an opportunity to bring the two sides of the food spectrum together to cut down on waste.
“At the end of the day, everybody thinks they’re competing. But, what we’re doing, is offering a platform for them to connect with who they want, when they want,” he said.
In addition to connecting chefs and purveyors, Moosman said To Market is tracking product demand to show farmers greater opportunities for profit.
“There’s a lot of data getting wasted right now. We have the ability to go to a farm and an area, look at how many people want this product, and see that it isn’t getting supplied. We can take that delta, that lack of a market, and bring it to the farmer,” he said.
The three-person To Market team works out of an office in Arvada and is in the midst of raising an undisclosed funding round.
Moosman said they’ll continue to build out the platform and hope to transition into a consumer facing portal in the future.
“Imagine going to your favorite steakhouse, getting a meal and then buying what a chef buys from the farms she buys it from, then having it delivered to your front door,” he said.
To see the partner restaurants and farms, check out To Market’s website here.
