Goodfynd's steady growth in Richmond is just one of the reasons the startup has amassed such a following since its founding two years ago.
Founded in 2018 by Kyle Miller and Lemaire Stewart, Goodfynd operates a B2B platform that connects food trucks with nearby properties, and a B2C platform that allows customers to find nearby food trucks, order directly through the website or mobile app and skip the line.
Miller, who has a background in property management and UX design, said he and Stewart -- a software engineer -- met at Virginia Tech and had long discussed working together on the business idea.
"I realized that we'd always go out to food trucks for lunch; they were always crowded, lines were long and I never knew what I wanted," Miller said. "By the time I got back to the office, I'd only have a few minutes left to actually eat. That's how the idea kind of came about."
He and Stewart began talking to food truck owners and customers, who loved the idea. And in 2018, Goodfynd launched in the D.C. area. In 2019, they expanded operations into Virginia after going through the Lighthouse Labs Accelerator.
"It was the best experience for us as a company. [Lighthouse Labs] helped us lock down our business model and organization as a company," Stewart said. "It was a huge push for us, a big vote of confidence and validation."
The startup now has about 400 food trucks using the platform in Richmond, D.C. and parts of Maryland.
Goodfynd was recently named an Inno on Fire Blazer for 2020 in the Tech and Software category, as well as this year’s Dominion Energy Innovation Center’s Pitch Competition Winner in the general category.
The pair have since brought on Sofiat Abdulrazaaq as chief operating officer and Patrick Powell as head of sales and outreach.
Stewart said Covid actually served as a boost for Goodfynd because people were looking for ways to get their meals efficiently and without having to come in contact with a lot of people. He said that bump in traffic on the platform helped the startup reach $100,000 in revenue earlier this summer.
"Since the Covid outbreak, we've really seen an increase in our revenue being able to pair food truck owners with people stuck at home," he said. "It began climbing in March, and we hit that $100,000 mark a couple of months ago."
Abdulrazaaq said now the team is focusing on growth, which includes fundraising.
"We love Richmond... Scaling is super important to us, and maximizing on the demand we're experiencing," she said. "Right now, some of us are part-time, and some are full-time... We want to be able to have the full capacity of our team executing at a high level."