It’s not easy to start your own food brand and get it off the ground. Larissa Russell and Fiona Lee found that out firsthand when their company, Green Pea Cookie, failed.
Their natural vegan cookies built a loyal following of customers, but they struggled to get on shelves due to challenges navigating the country’s wholesale food distribution system. So Russell and Lee decided to start over and create a new company that helped other emerging food brands avoid the same roadblock they ran into.
That company, Pod Foods, now works with over 600 food and beverage brands from across the country. And on Wednesday, the company announced its next distribution hub: Los Angeles.
Pod Foods created a tech-forward distribution and logistics platform to help food brands of all sizes get their products into grocery stores and new markets. The company started in San Francisco in late 2017, and then expanded to Chicago this summer. It also just announced that it is expanding to New York.
This gives the distribution company strategic locations across the country, which lets the brands it works with enter in new markets.
But expanding into LA was more like a natural progression. “We had a lot of vendors that wanted to get into LA, it was just a matter of finding the right time.” Pod Foods CEO Larissa Russell told Built In.
And through expansion, Pod Foods gets to try new things with its business. “Right now, we’re working on leveraging machine learning to elevate our experience,” COO Fiona Lee told Built In. “What we’re really trying to get to other than being a logistics company, is infusing technology to optimize the process and influence how stores purchase these products.”
