Greenease, a local startup in the sustainable food space, made headlines last month when it
won Tech Cocktail's regional showcase in D.C. Cofounder Vanessa Ferragut has since moved up to NYC for a two-month stint in a food-focused startup accelerator, which includes a $25,000 investment. (The other cofounder, Carlos Amaya, remains in D.C.)
"This is the venture capitalist's first food [enterprise] accelerator," Ferragut says. "S/he wants to keep it on the QT."
Greenease is a mobile
app for iOS that helps consumers figure out which restaurants buy locally and/or sustainably. Diners choose among 11 different categories, including local, organic, sustainable seafood, gluten-free, grass-fed meats, vegan and so on, select a neighborhood and then hit "search." "Gluten-free" near Dupont Circle yields
eight results. Each result lists the usual information a diner might find on Yelp—location, cuisine, contact information, website—but it also lists which other Greenease categories the establishment falls into, as well as where they source their ingredients from.
Urbana on P St. NW, for example, offers gluten-free options and falls into the free range meats, hormone-free meats, local, sustainable seafood, and veg-friendly categories. They get their meat from Fells Point Wholesale Meats in Maryland and their seafood from Prime Seafood, also in Maryland.
Ferragut says she built the app because when she searched under "local" on other restaurant suggestion apps, "there was nothing about sourcing. It would say, 'local dive bar.'" Her previous startup, a sustainable event planning firm, set the stage for Greenease. "I was blessed to work with a lot of great chefs. They taught me that local trumps organic. Small farms can't [always] afford organic certification through the USDA." Even without that certification, "they don't
monocrop. Small farms care about the local economy."
Greenease has about 600 restaurants and markets on its app, from Frederick to Virginia Beach. A tie-in with restaurants to offer in-app specials allows Greenease to monetize—a feature that will become more robust as the company gains more users. Ferragut is also testing out a business app that will allow restaurants and farms to self-update their profiles on the platform as they add different suppliers.
Greenease plans to return to the D.C. area after their time in the NYC accelerator is complete. In the meantime, the company has launched an
Indiegogo campaign to fund the building of its Android app.
This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Carlos Amaya is not moving to New York City. Also, due to a reporting error, a previous version of this article said that Greenease had been approached by a reality TV company. Elevation DC regrets the error.