Pineapple Collaborative has a familiar story. When Ariel Pasternak moved back to the D.C. metro area, she noticed a lack of coordination amongst the region's women in food community. Unlike in New York City, where she lived for a few years prior, D.C. didn't have much in terms of meet-ups or events to support the growing community.
So, instead of leaving the problem alone, she decided to build the solution herself.
Flash forward three years, and Pineapple Collaborative has gained a co-founder, Atara Bernstein, and expanded its events series into two additional cities, New York and San Francisco. The company has a newsletter that's grown subscriber numbers 500 percent so far in 2018, and they're looking at building an e-commerce component to the group. Pineapple generates revenue through ticket sales, which range from $15-$100, depending on the event.
And that growth came with the help of the District's women in food.
"D.C. is a very mission-oriented place, no matter what industry you're in, so many people come here because they want to make a difference," Pasternak said. "That's a huge guiding principle for pineapple."
Both Bernstein and Pasternak joined District Download to chat about the recent growth and progress they've seen. Listen to the full interview in the eighth episode of the show:
Subscribe to District Download on your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher.
All music for this episode comes from Broke For Free under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Our theme song is “Playground Pigeon,” and transition track for this episode is “Something Elated.”
