Online farmer’s market startup Seasonal Roots touts itself as bringing food fresh to consumers from “dirt to doorstep,” but it’s a third element that makes that seamless transaction possible: the internet.
“The problem with a farmer’s market is a farmer will come and never know if they’ll sell a thing,” founder Duane Slyder said. On the other side of the equation, customers never know if what they want from the market will be available.
The traditional community-supported agriculture model, in which customers pay a farmer a fee upfront and then receive a weekly box of food, suffers from a similar drawback: because shareholders don’t choose what they want, they can end up with an overabundance of one product, food they don’t like or an array that doesn’t work with meals.
To combat that uncertainty, Seasonal Roots provides customers with an online farmer’s market from which they can choose exactly what they want every week from local offerings of produce, dairy, bread, meat, honey and more, either through a membership or through a guest system of purchasing.
“People can fully customize what they want,” Slyder said.
Although the company is cause-based – “We want you to believe in what we do,” he said – its technology allows it the flexibility to compete in a marketplace rapidly becoming populated by behemoths like Amazon and Instacart.
Slyder, a former software developer, refers to Seasonal Roots’ proprietary software as “Ginger” and thinks of it as the equivalent of a market manager, one who remembers customers and can alert them to offerings that might prove appealing.
“That’s what we’re shooting for,” he said. Ultimately, he hopes to provide users with a 30-second order process, a goal the company hopes to reach by incorporating machine learning into its software.
Amazon's machine learning can predict what customers might like to see and buy, and its acquisition of Whole Foods initially seemed to spell doom to smaller grocery delivery operations. But to Slyder, Seasonal Roots has an edge beyond its technology: its emphasis on local farmers, food, delivery drivers and staff.
“You can taste the difference” between a Seasonal Roots apple and an internationally shipped one, he said. “We do fresh, all fresh.”
Founded as the Farm Table in 2011, Seasonal Roots underwent an extensive revamp and rebrand in 2016, a transition Slyder considers the beginning of the company’s “startup” phase.
“We were looking at why people were quitting, and there was no one reason,” he said. So, the team concluded, “We weren’t what they thought we were.”
It was during that transition that the company poured resources into software development to create a more scalable and nimble platform for customers with an eye toward expansion. One of the earliest members of Startup Virginia, Seasonal Roots was also an early beneficiary of local angel investment group CVA Angels, through which it raised $350,000 in capital in 2016.
Today, the startup draws from nine core producers and 40 supplemental ones, delivers from Hampton Roads to Northern Virginia, and oversees a network of 140 market managers around the commonwealth. That network is poised to grow.
“The goal is to go nationwide,” Slyder said.
