On the outside, Good Eggs is a no-frills industrial brick building at the end of a garbage-lined street in Bushwick. But step inside, and you’ll see plaid-clad twenty-somethings in assembly-line formation filling paper bags with eggs, celery, sour pickles, coconut yogurt, and other locally produced goods. Three big flat screens display the day’s online orders, which get packed up and delivered to Brooklynites’ doorsteps. And the company does the same thing for thousands of shoppers from similar packing centers in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. “People are finally beginning to get what good food is and why it’s important, there’s been a boom in local food producers, and we have great cloud-based technology,” says Good Eggs 30-year-old CEO Rob Spiro. “This wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago.” MORE: Food and Drink on Tap Only: How You Shop for Food Is about to Change And this, I’m told, is the kind of grocery shopping that could fix a broken food system. What Good Eggs is trying to do is bridge the gap between you and local farmers and food companies, making it easier for shoppers in the area to get high-quality, healthier whole and packaged goods with convenience—and easier for small, healthy food companies to sell their goods. How Good Eggs does it: Shoppers can go to the company’s website and add whatever foods they want—produce, meats, eggs, coffee—to your virtual shopping basket, then check out. Their order will be delivered in two days. It’s not a subscription, and just like a real farmer’s market, there are no minimum orders Having a CEO who used to grow pears and tomatoes, build portable chicken coops, and sell the fruits of his labor at farmer’s markets doesn’t hurt, either. After getting his B.A. in history from Yale, and before heading west, Spiro spent time working with friends on a farm in upstate New York, where he realized just how hard it was for farmers to make a living tending the land. “When you do the math, it can work out to below minimum wage,” says Spiro. “I knew there had to be a way for people who do this incredibly important job to make a real living.” So after a few years working in Silicon Valley—where he founded the tech startup Aardvark, a social search engine that was later acquired by Google—Spiro decided to apply his tech resources to a problem that had social, environmental, and communal impact. In 2011, Good Eggs was born, thanks to an initial round of funding from investors who backed Spiro’s previous entrepreneurial ventures. MORE: Chef Michel Nischan: How To Shop Sustainably (Not Just Pretend You Do) Another reason Good Eggs is thriving: A well-curated list of food producers. “We pound the pavement and see who’s out there,” says Greta Caruso, who heads up Good Eggs’ Food Maker team, which finds new producers and sets them up to sell. “This means checking out farms and commercial kitchens, and looking for products that taste incredible and producers who are willing to be transparent about their ingredients and farming practices.” Beyond finding producers, Good Eggs also serves as a business mentor to companies to ensure that they thrive. “We help them brainstorm new products, new flavors, crops they might want to plant—all based on the insights we have from our customers,” says Caruso. “We like giving opportunities to people who might otherwise be too small to grow a business on their own.” Good examples of high-quality Brooklyn brands gaining traction thanks to Good Eggs include Anita’s Coconut Yogurt, a dairy-free cultured coconut milk that’s doesn’t use synthetic fillers found in most mainstream brands; and Up-Mountain Switchel, an apple cider vinegar drink that is trying to give kombucha a run for its money. Of course, if you’re like me and don’t live in one a major city, you want to know when Good Eggs will come to your hometown. On the question of expansion, all Spiro will reveal is that Good Eggs will be in Manhattan “reaaaaaaally soon” and begin the process of entering other cities toward the end of 2015. MORE: The Truth about What’s Really in Organic Food Until then, if you want to buy more high-quality, locally produced food (and help fight our country’s unhealthy supermarket system), Spiro doing a little research on small food businesses in your area, subscribing to a CSA, and trying to do most of your shopping at a farmer’s market. Localharvest.org is a good place to start. And most importantly, be patient: While all things innovative and trendy may seem to start in Brooklyn or the Bay Area, they rarely stop there.
