A couple of University of Michigan graduate students living in Hubbard Farms are increasing city residents' access to fresh produce with their new startup,
Get Fresh Detroit.
Noam Kimelman and Zach Markin took a class at U-M that focuses on social venture creation, or basically creating businesses around helping solve social problems. Kimelman had past experience with providing fresh food in Ypsilanti, and so they gave birth to Get Fresh Detroit in January. "We wanted to address the lack of access to fresh food in Detroit," says Kimelman, CEO of Get Fresh Detroit.
Their startup does that by packaging fresh produce and putting it in corner stores and party stores across the city. The idea is to help make up for the lack of vegetables, normally available grocery stores, by providing them in the smaller stores many inner-city residents depend on.
Get Fresh Detroit began packaging its food in May and now has a presence in 10 retail outlets. It hopes to hit 20 by the end of the month. It's also looking to create some partnerships with some larger name-brand outlets, such as CVS, to broaden its reach. "We're pretty ambitious," Kimelman says. "We'd like to scale up to 50 stores by the end of the year. Our goal is to transform the whole corner store paradigm."
Source: Noam Kimelman, CEO of Get Fresh Detroit
Writer: Jon Zemke
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