49 - How Jodi Frank & Culineer Are Connecting Home Cooks with Local Food Producers Artwork

Local to Legend

Local to Legend is the podcast for local business owners like you, looking for the resources and tools needed to create a scalable, profitable, simply irresistible brand. What makes local businesses different than small businesses? Local businesses have their own little ecosystems they work within. Some local business owners have the hopes of being sold to Unilever (Schmidt’s) or getting a HGTV show (Joanna Gaines) or being sold in Target (Ben & Jerry’s). Others want to be a legend in their own community where people know, love, trust, and refer them all the time. The cool thing about being a legend is it’s fairly subjective, right? We have legends in Des Moines, Iowa (my home base), but they aren’t legends in the country. We have legends in the country, but they aren’t legends in the world. What I’ve come to discover in hundreds of conversations with local business owner is this: they desire MORE for themselves. They want to expand, but how? They want to grow their business, but what do they do? They want to pivot, but what will that mean? Local to Legend is about that conversation. And I'm thrilled to have you here.

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Local to Legend

49 - How Jodi Frank & Culineer Are Connecting Home Cooks with Local Food Producers

January 24, 2022 • Emily Steele

In this week’s podcast episode, Emily chats with Jodi Frank from Culineer, an app designed to build a community for home cooks who want to buy directly from farmers. Culineer is set to bridge the gap in marketing for the $70B direct-to-consumer farming industry.

Jodi got her start in medical communications working for Bristol Myers before leaving that job to raise her children. After teaching at a local community college in the marketing department, Jodi was ready to finally get to work on an idea she’d had brewing for a decade: an app that would make it easy to source local ingredients and find recipes while also connecting with your local community. That idea morphed into what is now Culineer.

Listen as Jodi shares more about her journey to creating Culineer, from sourcing developers, to finding a design team, to figuring out the best business model and revenue streams. Jodi shares how her initial idea for her app evolved into supporting an untapped market, CSA’s (community supported agriculture). Jodi also explains the difference between crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter vs. the platform Jodi is currently using, Wefunder.

Fellow startup lovers, sustainability advocates and curious humans, you’re going to love this one!

Tune in for topics like:

How the food industry has evolved in the past century
Finding an untapped market and pivoting to serve it
Putting together the right team and messaging to build Culineer
Why food deserts exist and how to decrease them
How to use the Culineer app as a customer and a farmer
Equity-based crowdfunding - what it is and why it works
Why Jodi wants to build a zebra rather than a unicorn

Links from the episode:

Invest in Culineer here on Wefunder
Culineer Instagram
Culineer Website

Use code LEGEND to get 10% off all House of Wise products

Follow me (Emily Steele) (Love Local) on Instagram for a little business + a little life, and a whole lot of positive energy!