RALEIGH – In the U.S., food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply.

For Shraddha Rathod, that’s just not good enough. So she decided to do something about it.

“Our initial approach was marketing the surplus food that is often left on farms or in food distribution warehouses,” recalled the recent electrical/computer engineering graduate from NC State University. “I clearly remember a conversation with a farmer: ‘I don’t want to sell surplus food, I want to sell food before it’s surplus!’

“That’s when we started looking deeper into the problem and learned that communication between farmers and buyers is inefficient, creating problems in local food access as well as waste.”

With orders generally placed via text, calls or email, Rathod realized that there was no good way to find farms or buyers and manage local food orders.

Enter Freshspire, an online wholesale local food market, connecting local farmers directly to buyers to create a network of sustainable food.

Freshspire co-founders Mona Amin and Shraddha Rathod.

Cultivating a sustainable vision

Under the app, farmers and local food sellers can upload and manage their inventory and be visible to buyers such as restaurants, grocery retailers, food hubs/distributors, and nonprofits.

In turn, buyers can now manage all of their local food orders in one place, instead of juggling multiple communications with multiple farmers. They can also search for other products in their area and meet new farmers near them.

“There is a bigger vision here,” said Rathod, who presented her company to a 100-strong crowd at Big Top’s Startup Crawl held in downtown Raleigh on Monday night.

“We collect data that goes through Freshspire so that we can provide accurate landscapes of our food systems — what’s growing around us, price ranges, and buyer demand — for our users, as well as powerful matching algorithms to make local food even easier. This information doesn’t currently exist.”

Visiting a local farm.

So far, she and fellow co-founder Mona Amin have bootstrapped the company through various business plan competitions and grants. There are two other employees: Matthew Simpson, chief technology officer and Ziwa Mukungu, lead developer. The team primarily works at HQ Raleigh.

In coming weeks, the startup is getting ready to launch with Weaver Street Market, a grocery co-op with locations in Hillsborough, Carrboro, and Chapel Hill, as well as a new location opening in Downtown Raleigh.

They’ve also signed on a number of Raleigh restaurants, including Whiskey Kitchen and Trophy’s. They plan to buy some local items through Freshspire as the network grows with favorite farmers like Carolina Mushroom Farms and Sweet Pea Urban Gardens.

“We want to empower farmers to market themselves and their product, so they have greater control and can sell more. We also want local food to be an option for wholesale buyers,” said Rathod.

“By giving them direct access to their local food community, Freshspire makes local sourcing a viable option.”