Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: From your network, how big of a consumer base were you able to pull together?

Nick Carter: We got to about 70 to 80 orders a week, which is $2,500 to $3,000 in sales. It was enough of a critical mass.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it stay in just Indianapolis?

Nick Carter: The first year.

Sramana Mitra: The business model was what percentage?

Nick Carter: On average, it’s 27%.

Sramana Mitra: Are people paying any kind of subscription for the logistics?

Nick Carter: Optionally they can. We charge a $5.95 delivery fee. If they want free delivery, they can subscribe to $149 a year.

Sramana Mitra: One year in Indianapolis. What kind of gross merchandise volume and what kind of revenue level did you get to?

Nick Carter: By the time we decided to start replicating out of Indianapolis, we were at $100,000 a year.

Sramana Mitra: Was this in 2014?

Nick Carter: 2016.

Sramana Mitra: What decision process did you go through to decide what market to expand into beyond Indianapolis?

Nick Carter: To begin with, the wrong one. We just went with risk aversion. In food, there’re a lot of regulations. Those regulations differ from state to state. State lines in the US have a tremendous impact on food regulations. We decided that we wanted to just stay in Indiana. We went to other cities on the Indiana border.

The problem is there are no other major cities in Indiana. These are places with population densities of maybe half a million. Indianapolis is four million. In hindsight, they were too small. Within about six months of that, we realized we’re going to learn how to cross state lines. We went to Ohio. That’s when we started to take off.

Sramana Mitra: Food regulations were not too big a hurdle to cross?

Nick Carter: Actually, it was. Their laws were a little different. Politically, they’re a little different. They just didn’t like us. There’s a code, but it really comes down to who has the batch. That factors in quite a bit. We had to use quite a bit of our networking using advocacy groups and someone higher up in the government to get us an audience.

Sramana Mitra: Where in Ohio did you start?

Nick Carter: We started in one hub in southwest Ohio that served Cincinnati and Dayton. Then we opened in Columbus. It was late 2019. We were in six cities – four in Indiana and two in Ohio. The big pivot point was when COVID hit in March 2020.

Sramana Mitra: You said earlier that Indiana was built out of your own Rolodex. What happened in Ohio?

Nick Carter: The farm is just a B2B sales funnel. A little bit of prospecting takes place. Because of how popular farmer’s markets are, all of the producers are gathered in some parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. On the consumer side, we really centered on digital ads. Facebook was the primary driver. We were also able to use Google and some email marketing.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon
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