BY ERIN TORTORA, Director of Resources, Crave Food Services
For the last year, WhatsGood has been bringing together purchasers and purveyors to provide an easy and efficient means of ordering direct and managing the relationships. WhatsGood is an online marketplace that connects wholesale food purchasers such as chefs and food service directors, with local purveyors through a comprehensive directory of farmers, fishermen, artisans, and producers.
The platform allows farmers to communicate product, inventory, and price updates to all of their accounts at once, and provides even the smallest farms the capability of marketing and connecting with wholesale buyers. A customizeable Purveyor profile provides an opportunity to tell producer or business’s story, as well as clearly outline delivery schedules, minimum order amounts, and soon, provide the ability to upload and display an operations actual certificates and licenses to purchasers. Market and advertise the products you are proud of with the ability to upload your own photos and tell your product’s story with a brief description.
Chefs and purchasers use this real-time, cloud-based, marketplace to communicate orders for the essential products they need to keep their kitchens cooking. WhatsGood reduces the complexity and time purchasers currently spend searching, selecting, establishing, organizing, and maintaining vital relationships with their local sources. The Purchaser App for iPhone (iOS) now allows buyers to manage their purchasing on their iPhones. WhatsGood will also be introducing the Purveyor App, and Android versions of both Purchaser and Purveyor Apps, in the near future.
WhatsGood’s mission is to generate real food system change by helping chefs source more food locally in the Northeast… moving fresh, local, and sustainable food directly from sources, to chefs and purchasers who are proud to serve their communities because they care.
But that’s not all. WhatsGood is revolutionizing local, regional, and sustainable food procurement for buyers at Colleges, Universities, Private, and Public schools with the new Bids Feature. Purchasers project what products they need, the amounts and frequency they will need it delivered, and the duration of time they will need that product for to more than 400 farmers, fishermen, artisans, and distributors in New England. Purveyors can then bid on these requests in real-time, and have the capability to sell product before it is even planted, harvested, or raised via this new Bids Feature.
Food Service Directors (FSDs) can confidently request bids from local growers knowing the platform conforms with the most current (7/1/2016) USDA federal procurement regulations. Imagine being able to grow your business efficiently by preparing for your upcoming season’s planting and crop or by raising more livestock with purchase orders for those products already in hand. Place Bids on all or part of these requests according to your farm’s capabilities and volumes of production.
The WhatsGood team is composed of talented food system professionals, with well over 100 years of combined experience as chefs, restaurateurs, farmers, and managers. Through collaborative, innovative, and hands-on leadership, they focus on helping build sustainable food ecosystems which help producers and procurement managers to streamline their operations, while deploying technology, technique, and operational standards. They also offer a wide variety of consulting, branding, marketing and web design services to help your business.
Together, as a community of purchasers and purveyors, we can continue strengthening our local food system to be more reliable and generate REAL food system change. For more information, or to sign up for your free account today, visit www.sourcewhatsgood.com and give your products the marketing they deserve.