Hungry Harvest faced the Shark Tank on January 8 with their produce delivery service that uses “ugly” fruit and vegetables that would otherwise be wasted. Right now, they are in DC and Maryland, but are expanding to Philadelphia, New York and Pittsburgh this year. We interviewed CEO Evan Lutz about his company. Here’s what he told us about…
To read all of Heavy’s Shark Tank coverage, click here.
How the Idea Came About
My entire life I’ve wanted to become an entrepreneur. Not just start a business that made money, but also one that made impact. So my senior year at the University of Maryland when I was studying business, I started working for an organization called Food Recovery Network. It’s a nonprofit that was founded at the University of Maryland and they take leftover dining hall food from college campuses and drive it down to soup kitchens, homeless shelters and food banks in the area so it can get redistributed and not thrown away. The executive director and I thought of this idea of selling surplus fruits and vegetables to college students and we set up a little farm stand…We had 10 or 20 students the first week, 30 the next and then by the end of the 10 weeks, we had 500 people buying.
Where the Farmers Come From
We went around to a lot of different farmers’ markets, which is the best way to meet farmers. We told them about our mission and they were immediately on board. And we’re constantly looking for more. We have a section on our website where farmers and suppliers can apply, and we do a lot of cold calling to try to get more supply.
How They Find the Families in Need
We have two different methods, through donations to nonprofits and free farmers’ markets. Our vision for this is that we donate the same box that we give to our customers to different families in need.
