Jack has been trying to reduce the amount of red meat he eats, but the portobello mushroom alternative got boring very quickly.
He found it hard to find chicken of the woods, a wild mushroom. He met Andy Conner, a mushroom hunter who was having difficulty selling seaweed because of his certification.
Not seeing an option out there, they created Foraged, a community marketplace for wild and specialty foods, in May 2021.
According to Hamrick, mushrooms are a $13 billion market and that Foraged is a lucrative market and products on the site run on average between $40 and $50 per pound.
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He doesn't want you to think Foraged is an online farmer's market.
He said that it was for heirloom and boutique foragers and farmers who wanted to sell food with a story. We have food artisans who are selling foods that you can't get anywhere else.
Foragers apply to sell on the marketplace, and Foraged staff vets them and onboards them, providing a shop and e-commerce tools. The average order value last month was $123 and the company takes 10% of the cart value.
When the applications were opened, 100 people signed up to sell. 500 customers were purchasing from the marketplace within a few months, ranging from James Beard-awarded chefs to food lovers. 20% is the average for return customer purchases on the site.
The co-founders bootstrapping the company forced them to be responsible. Foraged is growing at 434% and has only spent $3,000 on marketing.
Now that the company has a footprint in 47 states and five countries, Hamrick and Conner want to build a social network for mushroom and specialty food enthusiasts like them. To eventually pay themselves.
In September of last year, $200,000 of pre-seed funding was infused into Foraged by some investors, including Tom Colicchio and Sam Shank, HotelTonight CEO and head of commercial at Airbnb.
The natural foods category has ideal conditions to grow because of a fragmented set of suppliers who can turn their hobby into a meaningful business and passionate consumers who are looking for new, superior products that come directly from producers.
Colicchio told me that he invests in companies that fit into areas that he is interested in and are providing a solution to a problem. In Foraged's case, his favorite thing to eat is wild mushrooms, but unless someone has a direct connection to a restaurant or sales, it was hard for people to sell.
Jack and Andy founded Foraged. Foraged.
He likes working with small family farms and with an idea that makes products available to chefs, but also to consumers.
There are a lot of things that are hard to find, for example, the sassafras leaves.
The company was able to make its first hire last month because of the new funding. Hamrick wants to create some custom packaging options for sellers to standardize the offerings while also allowing brands to keep their individuality.
We will be adding more features now that we have more of a budget.
With this year's sales expected to be gangbusters, the company plans to do a more formal seed round later this year and go after $5 million.
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