Even though marketing can be tough as a small farmer, believe it or not, people want to eat your food. The problem lies in if they are able to find it.
New York City resident Kristin Zecher realized just that, according to Vogue: She wanted to find the freshest food the Big Apple had to offer, but didn’t have an easy way to find it. With the help of the NYC’s Slow Food chapter, which has a “snail” (the nonprofit’s logo) rating system already in place to designate the sustainability of restaurants in the city, as well as the nonprofit Grow NYC, she launched an app, called Aura Rating, where users can find all the restaurants in their area serving up food from local farmers.
Zecher has developed relationships with the farmers themselves, who tell her when they sell their produce to a restaurant in any of the five boroughs, so the information you find on it is constantly being updated.
Aura Rating also includes information about farmers market locations. This feature allows you to browse by borough, farm name, market name, products sold and days open.
The Aura Rating app is only the first step, though, in Zecher’s mission to provide New Yorkers with easy access to fresh, organic, local food, according to Vogue. Inspired by the markets of Italy, her overarching goal is to see a centralized marketplace where New Yorkers can find fresh food all times of year.
