West Michigan based Farmish leverages entrepreneurial services at The Bridge to launch local produce app
Written by Sarah Carpenter
Fremont, Michigan native Terra Osman was a stay-at-home mom, raising two kids and chickens in suburbia when she founded Farmish, the viral app that connects people to locally produced food.
“Teaching our kids where food comes from is part of our family’s culture. They love it. We pick our own food at farms in the summer and visit farmers' markets, but it’s not always practical for people to do that. So, I started thinking about an easier way – one that supports local food producers and the community at the same time,” she said.
Osman, a web developer, joined forces with Collective Idea, a software company in Holland, MI, to bring her vision to life. A place where homegrown produce, backyard chicken eggs, honey, plants, and trees could be bought and sold. A place where the community could talk to each other and build side hustles doing what they love. Neighbor to neighbor, farm to table - food that won’t see a warehouse or the back of a semi-truck.
On March 15, 2022, Farmish was born. The app was downloaded in all 50 states in its first week, and in four weeks, Farmish was downloaded 5,000 times: a solid beginning. About a month after launch, Osman was invited to Start Garden’s 5x5 event, a local pitch competition, where five startups get five minutes to pitch to five judges for a $5,000 prize. Guess who won. Within a week, Farmish’s content went viral, and that weekend, the app was downloaded 60,000 times.
“5x5 is when I first met Kyle McGregor and Janet Wyllie from Spartan Innovations – Kyle served as one of the judges, and we kept in touch. They called to check in around the time we went viral. It was good timing because we had some performance issues with all the user activity. They offered their support,” Osman commented.
Spartan Innovations quickly connected Osman with their Entrepreneur-In-Residence program to help guide her company’s next milestones. They worked with Farmish to obtain SmartZone funding to fortify the app’s backend for continued growth. Farmish was accepted to the 2022 Conquer Accelerator cohort in Grand Rapids and completed the program in November 2022 which culminated with a very successful Virtual Pitch event.
In the Spring of 2023, Farmish will offer a market membership that allows in-app transactions, event listings, and a handmade market that lets people sell and ship items all over the U.S. and Canada.
The relationship between Osman and Spartan Innovations is symbiotic. She recently became their tenant. Farmish is the first high-tech, high-growth startup to plant itself at The Bridge, a brand-new, 18,000-square-foot incubator space located on the Medical Mile in downtown Grand Rapids. The business tech incubator hopes to drive innovation through the relationships of its tenants and make new discoveries within the market.
“When I started all of this, I was a solo founder. I didn’t have a community, and I didn’t have the support I needed – but this team has given that to me. Farmish has 65,000 active users right now and has been downloaded 226,000 times in less than a year. I’m grateful. The whole ecosystem of Spartan Innovations has enabled us to become a fast-growing startup and not just a company I’m working on.”
Find it on Farmish. Download Farmish now on the Apple App Store or Google Play.