April 5, 2022 • 26 mins
Jasmine is an award-winning entrepreneur, TED Speaker, and leader working to make the world a better place.
She sits in to talk about the development of her company Goodr, a startup seeking to combat hunger and food waste.
Host IG:@itstanyatime
Guest IG: @jasminecrowe
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Hey money Movers, Welcome
to another episode of the Money Moves podcast powered by
(00:23):
Green One. Our next guest is a social entrepreneur and
the founder of good Or, a startup based here in
Atlanta at Georgia that is leveraging technology to combat hunger
and food waste. Good Or collects circlus food from organizations
like Turner Broadcasting Systems, Heartsfield, Jackson International Airport, and many
others throughout Atlanta and other places across the US, and
(00:45):
redirects that food to nonprofits who distribute the food to
people experiencing food hunger. She has collected and donated more
than two million food items worldwide and fed more than
one hundred thousand people through the Sunday soul Enless feeding
initiative as well. Jasmine Crow is an incredible entrepreneur and
I am so excited to have you on the podcast today.
(01:07):
You were also one of my favorite people to follow
on Twitter, y'all. Jasmine Welcome to the Money Moves Podcast.
Thank you so much for having me I'm so excited
to be here. I am so excited to have you,
and I am so excited for all the wisdom and
just to share your story with so many because you know,
on the Money Moves podcast, what we really like to
do is enlighten our audience with people's story of how
(01:28):
they did it, the resilience that it took, and the
money moves that they're making to build and create wealth generationally.
And I think this is exactly what you have accomplished
and continued to do every day. I think so too,
So we're gonna get to good er. But I know
that this is not your first foray into entrepreneurship. Jasmine.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and
how you sort of broke into entrepreneurship. Yeah, I like
(01:51):
to think that I have been an entrepreneur since I
was thirteen. I used to kind of have my own franchise,
if you will, of a company call Tumble Tots. I
was a gymnast, and so then I started teaching gymnastics
to basically preschoolers inside of daycares, and so my mom
would drop me off and it was basically like every
parent would pay five dollars for their kids to take
(02:13):
my class and I would go to different years and
teach the class. So that was when I was like thirteen.
I did that all throughout high school and um, like
I said, I really feel like that was like my
first kind of foray into entrepreneurship. What led me to
good her As. I actually had a consultancy called Black
Celebrity Giving. So it was one part media, one part
(02:34):
kind of consulting and planning, and I used to work with,
as you can guess, black celebrities to really define their
star power and define what would be they're kind of
giving blueprint. And I worked with you know, countless celebrities
Candy Burris, um singer, songwriter, television star, to hip hop
stars like Future and Young Jeezy, and I would help
(02:55):
them really with their nonprofit outreach and hosting their events
and whatever that looked like. And I would often say
to my clients, you know, the same people that are
hungry during Thanksgiving are hungry throughout the year. And it
kind of not that it fell on deaf ears. Their
big goal was obviously maintaining whatever it was they were doing,
(03:15):
whether they were a basketball player, football player, singer, actress,
and so what I decided to do was start feeding
people on my own. And I started that right here
in Atlanta, started feeding downtown at Peach Tree and Pine
Tree and just cooking out of my apartment and going
out and feeding people, and it became just an an
amazing passion of mine. I always get asked the question,
(03:38):
you know, what made you start doing this? And I
really don't have an answer, but I will say that
those moments, I feel like changed me and it really
just began to order my steps into what would I'm
eventually be good. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot
about that, no, And I love that, you know, I
think it's incredible because, you know, not just in Atlanta,
but all across the country there's this epidemic of food
(03:58):
and security. And know oftentimes people are like, well, is
this philanthropy? Is this charity? But you've also created a
for profit business from something you're so passionate about but
at the same time gives back to so many So
I think this is, you know, just such a beautiful thing.
And I'd love to dive into how you founded good
Or because it really is a startup. You know, it
(04:19):
started as a startup, cooking out of your house. Um,
so take us back to those early days. Well, you know,
a video of one of my pop up restaurants that
I used to host for people that we're experiencing homelessness
and hunger actually went viral on Facebook. And one morning,
you know, I was up really really late, like three
hours of the morning this was and I started reading
(04:39):
through the comments, and amongst the praise, people were saying,
this is so amazing who donated the food? And the
truth was nobody. I was keep finding price matching, taking
five and ten dollar donations and really making all this
food myself. And I started thinking, like, I should really
just start getting the food donated. This is like a
no brainer. And a simple Google search, you know what
(05:00):
happens to access food at the end of the night
really led me to stumble into what would be food waste.
And I go down this rabbit hole and I'm seeing
how much food is going to waste while so many
people were going hungry, and I just thought that that
was a problem. I think, you know, easily I could
have created good or as a nonprofit. That was my business.
I helped so many celebrities create their nonprofits. But what
(05:23):
I knew about nonprofits is that you were always kind
of focused on like fundraising and getting donations in and
not so much focus on the problem. And the other
thing that really stood out to me is that businesses
were already paying waste management companies to throw this food away.
And there was a lot of value in that food,
not only in it going to somebody in me, which
(05:43):
was priceless, but there was tax incentives. There was a
lot of value in the data knowing what are the
items that you're consistently wasting. And that's what made me
decide to start good Er as a for profit business
that was going to essentially serve as a food waste
management company. Twenty seven percent of everything that goes into
landfill is actually food. In the waste industry is a
(06:05):
trillion dollar industry globally. Um it's a multi billion dollar
industry just in the United States alone. And that's what
made me say, Hey, you know, I am gonna be
here and I'm gonna candle food waste. And that's how
it got started. I love that because you know, I
speak to so many entrepreneurs and it's like there's this
light bulb moment and you know, oftentimes it happens in
the wee hours of the morning where you go in
(06:27):
and you just start googling down this rabbit hole, and
I think, you know what the successful ones really say
is like you learned everything about that industry and how
you could make a profit in it, and there was
just all this pathway that took you to lall, okay,
people are paying to throw away food, Like that's so incredible.
So fast forward. Now you've been like, I think there's
something here. How did you go about, like what was
(06:50):
the next steps in terms of like building the business?
Was it finding the wasted food? The you know what?
What it was? It the supplier demand? It was a lot.
I think the demand was not the issue. You know,
they are still nearly fifty million people this year in
the United States alone that are going to experience some
level of food and security, which means they don't know
(07:11):
when and where their next miller is coming from. So
I knew that the demand was there. I knew that
people were gonna need the food. What I really needed
to focus on was the supply. Where was I going
to get it from? And so that took about a
good almost a year and a half really of I
guess you could say customer discovery UM. Obviously at the
same time, I didn't have the technology built. It was
(07:33):
an idea. It was things that I was working towards.
But I was spending a lot of time discovering the
customer So asking businesses what do you do with your
surplus food? And I would find out that they would
throw it away and I would ask them why is that?
And they had learned about, hey, you were fearful of liability,
or we usually don't have food that's ready for pick
up until eleven o'clock and there's nobody to donate it to.
(07:54):
And there were just all these things that became really
what was my service? And so now I was like, Okay,
I've got solve for the liability. I've got to have insurance,
I've got to solve for the logistics. We've got to
have cars that are available at any time to pick
up this food. We need to know, we have to
have a massive nonprofit network where we could get this
food donated to. So those are the problems that I
(08:16):
think I started solving for UM. It definitely wasn't an
overnight thing at all. You know, I think the video
of of my pop up restaurant actually went viral in
sixteen in February. I didn't launch Gooder until seventeen, so
I really spent that entire year just kind of thinking
about it and trying to understand it. And even once
I launched the company, I still spent the next year
(08:38):
still trying to get customers, still trying to raise money
um to build the technology, and so it's you know,
hard to fundraise. But what I turned to at the
time was pitch competitions, and so I started entering pitch
competitions and using that prize money to build my m
v P and kind of get the product to market
until we landed our first kind of landmark customer, which
(08:59):
as you mentioned was the Atlanta Airport. And so once
the airport came, I think it really helped to kind
of open more doors, and so I'm always so grateful
to them for for taking taking a chance on you know,
I just love hearing stories like this because you know,
people think that oftentimes, you know, they're getting nose fundraising,
they're getting knows this, But I mean the nose and
(09:19):
entrepreneurship starts so early. Well, we can't do this because
we're scared of liability, we're scared of this, and you
know your mind how you were like, Okay, I need
to solve for all those problems. That's my job as
the entrepreneur. Like that, I think is something that is
so special to the entrepreneur mindset because you're like, Okay,
people are telling me no every step of the way,
it's my job to solve for it. Exactly exactly, that's
(09:43):
what you have to do. You have to solve for
their problems. And I think any entrepreneur knows that what
problem are you solving is the question you've got to
answer for fundraisers, for customers, what problem are you solving
for them? And that's what I really focused on, not
only the problems that I was solving, but I also
wanted to really back into why my solution was the
best and why I was the best, why our company
(10:04):
was the best. And so those are the things that
I think in those times when I was, you know,
hearing no, it really only motivated me to kind of
go back and just prove to people that that this
was gonna work. Yeah, And I remember, so let's get
to we'll talk about fundraising a little bit, because I
remember those early days. I remember a lot of like
nose and nose and nose. But I want to come
(10:25):
back to fundraising and let's get back to just continuing
to build the business. So now you've got one big client,
can you talk about how it was landing that big client,
because I think that's something that so many people wrestle
and they're like, oh, am I ever going to get it?
Am I ever going to get it? Especially as a
black woman. You know, there's always this, you know, idea
that it's harder for us to raise money get clients.
(10:46):
But your success, you know, was hard fought for. Tell
us a little bit about getting that big first contract.
Must have. I think the one thing that I had
to do is I had to do a lot of research.
So one of the things first and foremost, I researched
everything I could about the air port. They put out
a sustainability report. I looked and I read that sustainability
port report, you know, from front to back, and it
(11:07):
was very, very massive. And so I took all the
data that they had already put out about their waste
and I came back to them and said, you guys
are wasting ten million pounds of perfectly good food, and
your airport is in a food that there where so
many people are going hungry. So I really kind of
talked to them about this issue and this problem, and
(11:28):
and also that airports were a huge you know, carbon
jet fuel emitters, so that they were really part of
the problem of climate change, and so how by reducing
their food waste they could be part of the solution.
So it was a lot of research, and it was
really a It could have went either way. You know,
it could have said, we're not always seeing any food,
where did you get this information from? You know, get
(11:50):
out of here. But instead it was like, well, where
did you get that information from? This is something certainly
that we don't want to do. We didn't know that
this many kids were hungry in our community. How can
we out be as solved to that. And that's how
that happened. And so it wasn't an overnight thing, you know.
I think I started talking to them and maybe like
June of seen. I think our first initial pick up
(12:12):
and launch was probably in November of seventeen, and then
our full out scale launch was probably like in July
of because their government entity and so it was always
like right in the middle of their fiscal year getting
started so it took time, and it also took pay chats.
I think that's the other thing, to know that they
are gonna come and just not rushing the process. So
(12:36):
at this time, now you've got your first check, had
you been fundraising and doing pitch competitions, like what came
first for you? Definitely the prize money from pitch competitions
came first for me. And I just remember, you know,
in those moments, just really struggling. You know, I always
tell people I started good or with nothing. I had
just came out of almost a five year relationship that
(12:56):
that end it really badly and I just walked away
from that relate ationship with nothing, um but my vehicle
and like my clothes and furniture. And then I think
I lost the vehicle. It broke down like a couple
of weeks later. And so it wasn't tough A tough
time for me in teen and I remember winning that
first pitch competition and literally leaving and running out of
(13:19):
gas like on the highway, just like feeling like I
had to just get there to get on time, didn't
have time to stop and get gas, and you know,
I called five one one. Literally it was on a
Friday afternoon. I'll just never forget on an Atlanta highway
when I ran out of gas on the side of
seventy five, and so I just stood there, you know,
for like two hours, you know, just waiting for for
(13:41):
gas to come, but just believing in that moment that
even though you know, here I am in Atlanta traffic
on a Friday afternoon running out of gas, I still
had just one, you know, the first pitch competition that
was going to be the seed money to getting my
company going. And I just believed at that moment things
were gonna start to turn around for me, and they
(14:01):
definitely did. Oh my gosh, you're literally like making my
makeup tear up, Like that's such a beautiful story. If
that's not a testimony today, I don't know what is, y'all.
That is so beautiful. And the thing I love about
it the most is you're helping so many families feed
and sustain themselves. Like that's just the beauty and the
(14:21):
silver lining and what you're doing as well, Okay, it's
it's really the best job. That really is the best job.
So so people understand, for example, now you've raised a
little bit of money, you also have a technology component
to this. Are you technical or how did you go
about building out that aspect of the company. Yeah, I'm
definitely not a technical founder at all, you know, and
that was, you know, there were some roller coasters there.
(14:42):
Sometimes I would hire people I had hired a CTO
UM and then they weren't like a coder, so you know,
months had went by, they never built any tech and
so then that relationship didn't work UM, and then I
ended up hiring like a DEMP agency local to build
my first m v P. Then hired product manager is,
then hired some offshore teams and hired engineers. So it
(15:03):
definitely was a lot, you know, and I had to
learn a lot. I had to learn about repositories and
you know, you've seen get hub code come in and
seeing code be pushed since prints and how long things
were gonna take, and so it took a lot of education,
you know, especially not being a technical founder. I always
still say one day I probably might still go back
to school and learn how to code, just because it's
(15:24):
you know, if I had learned, if I had known
how to do and build my own apps and my
own dashboards and portals, you know, I could have probably
been a lot further along. Um, but I found help
and I asked questions, and when companies were having office hours,
I would participate and I would you know, get as
much as I could for as little as I could.
(15:45):
You know, I took if people were willing to meet
with me at eight am for breakfast, I was there.
And I'm not a morning person because oftentimes still three
four o'clock in the morning. But making those sacrifices to
get this technology built was really critic hole for me. Oh,
I love that. Okay, So now you've launched the product
and let's past forward. Now tell me about, like, um,
(16:07):
step by step, how the process works. Delta Airlines or
whatever hearts Field International is throwing away? Is it steaks?
Is it croissants like you pick them up? Tell us
about the process. It's everything. I mean. We've picked up
twelve ounce phone in file AT's. We've picked up food
that's never even been you know, packaged that went to
a restaurant our went tip venue and wasn't used. Um.
(16:29):
You know, I think about at the pandemic, we picked
up freezer's fool from every corporate office you could think
of of the best food in in the city, and
so essentially how the process works is we've built an
app that inventories everything it is that a business cells um.
They can access it easily from phone, web point of
sell system. They click on the items that they have,
(16:50):
they tell us how many they have excess of, and
then our platform calculates the tax value of all those
items collectively, as well as the estimated weight value which
we've gleaned from our inventory, and then they request to
pick up. We work with a network of logistics providers,
including having some of our own drivers. A driver picks
that food up and then it gets delivered to a
(17:12):
nonprofit that's usually within a five mile radius where that
business operates, and we do that purposefully to make sure
that not only the food travels efficiently and safe, but
also that that business is really kind of creating social
change right in their own backyard. And when the nonprofit
receives it, they signed for it like they would a
UPS package, and their signature generates a donation letter with
(17:36):
a picture of that donation into our clients dashboards, and
so our clients now can see, you know a lot
of trends, like what are the items that are going
to waste a being donated the most Um, who is
the food serving how many meals have they provided? How
many pounds have they kept out a landfill? They can
generate sustainability reports from our system of community impact reports
(17:58):
as well. And then again just looking at seeing a
lot of the data, that's incredible, I mean, and just
such great quality food are you getting cava? Have you
ever had to deliver cavea? I don't think that in
cave are yet? I don't know that. I mean we
we definitely cleared out, as I said, a lot of
great stuff UM at the start of the pandemic when
everything closed, So I could definitely say hundreds of nonprofits
(18:20):
received donations from us UM, as well as thousands and
thousands of families. So let's talk about the pandemic because
I know that was an incredible thing. We've all gone
through it and a lot of us have to pivot
their businesses. What were you thinking in terms of your
business because I feel like you would just sort of
elevated to this incredible point of Okay, things are going
well and then the world is shut down. Yeah, I
(18:42):
mean it was really tough for me. UM. I'll never
forget the date that it happened in Georgia, March eight
and I was in a position where I had raised
funding in two thousand and eighteen very little a million dollars,
and you know, I had ran my business for two
plus years at that time, and so I was really
essentially kind of running out of money. And it was
(19:03):
like I was trying to fundraise, and I remember one
of our investors sent this email out, which I'm hoping
he sent to everybody. I always wonder if he sent
it just to me, but it was very much like,
you know, you may have to close your business, you
may not be able to fundraise, you may have to
let people go, like these are the hard times. We
saw this happening three in the recession um in two
thousand and eight, and so it was it was a
(19:25):
scary moment. But then what I thought about is just
being a helper. I really went back to my roots
and I was like, Jasmine, you know, you know how
to help people, and you are gonna see a lot
of people in need during this time. And so I
started thinking about everybody that's going to need access to
food and how that's gonna change during this pandemic. And
the first you know group of people. I thought about,
(19:46):
of course, we're children, and I know that so many kids,
you know, depending on breakfast and lunch at school. And
now schools were going virtual, and so I reached out
to the then superintendent of APS and said, hey, good
Or can help you guys distribute food to your students.
And so that became one of our very first contracts
that really put us into a B two C kind
(20:07):
of a marketplace where instead of now delivering food to nonprofits,
we started delivering food directly to homes of students. And
at first it was just school meals, and then it
branched into keep these families. Everyone's lost their job, you know,
the mom isn't working. Is there any way you guys
can start delivering groceries or any other kind of meals?
And I just tweeted that and I said, hey, you know,
(20:29):
I've got some families their need of groceries. If you
guys purchased them or donate good Or will go purchase
groceries for them and we'll deliver them to their house.
And and it took off and we basically kind of
started a I guess you could say, a free insta car, right,
So for every family that didn't have access good or
became that access point to get food delivered to them
(20:49):
and help them shelter in place. And that's funds so
many additional contracts and really a whole different side of
our business, uh that is surrounding on how we have
of hunger solutions and how we're helping cities, counties, school districts,
on businesses and entrepreneurs and entertainers really address hunger in
their communities. And you know, it's it's crazy that it
(21:12):
took the pandemic for all of that to happen, But
I do think that people started to see that hunger
was real, that food waste was real, and that these
two problems should not be coexisting. You know, one of
them could definitely solve the other. And that was a
great year for us. You know, it really was the
start of where I think our our business will scale
(21:33):
in the future. Oh. I love that. And you know,
I think one of the things that really shedding a
light on how precarious food insecurity is for so many families,
right and just how close so many people were to
the edge of hunger and homelessness, and you know, so
being able to provide access to that through the pandemic. Like,
you guys did an incredible job. So tell me about
(21:54):
what's next for Good Or three point oh, Like, what
is your vision for this beautiful company you've created. You know,
I think good Or should be everywhere, and I'm really
working hard on that. We have launched. We've got some
really great customers that you'll be hearing big, big announcements
about pretty soon. We have done some deals with new cities,
(22:14):
so we are not just in Atlanta. We're working in
parts of Texas, parts of Pennsylvania, parts of Florida, North Carolina,
so we're really starting in California as well. So we're
starting to scale. You know, our goal for originally was
to be in twenty cities by the end of the
and then of course the pandemic hit, and so now
(22:35):
that's our goal still this year. You know, we're really
trying to be in twenty markets and we're probably one
or two away from that goal. And I want to
get to other countries and we really just want to
be I think we want to create a legacy of
a company that really put everything in into two in hunger.
We are trying to you know, we approach hunger radically
(22:57):
different than than you've seen in the past. You know,
we're not a nonprofit, we're not a big you know,
feeding American, you know, hunger fighting organization, but we believe
that we can solve hunger in different ways, and we're
trying to open people's eyes and minds up to what
hunger can look like if we solve it this way.
And so it's you know, it's a long journey ahead,
(23:18):
but I'm really excited and I still believe that we're
just at the beginning. Um what you're gonna see from
Gooder and in all the great things that we're gonna do.
I love that, so Jasmine, and I loved having you here,
and I'm gonna ask you to come back for a
deep dive segment where we talk about fundraising, so where
you can possibly share some tips and tricks on how
(23:38):
you were able to raise money, continue to make money
and make revenue. But I'd be remiss if I didn't
talk about your sweet baby girl, because I know you
had a baby girl during the pandemic, and I think
it's always incredible to share stories of motherhood and being
a boss woman entrepreneur. So you're in your office right now.
How old are your daughter now? She is almost nine
(23:58):
months you she's eight months going on nine months, So
you her possibly thinking your business was gonna go out
of business and had a baby at the same time. Yeah,
I mean I went from being very worried about how
my business was gonna survive to you know, having a
business that was thriving, and you know, getting engaged, buying
(24:21):
a house, having a baby. Just life just really came
at me fast. But it's it's been a blessing. Um.
I get to bring my daughter to work with me
every day. Um, even though good Or has like a
hybrid remote model, so we're not in the office every day,
but we are in the office a couple of days
a week. And when I'm here, I bring my daughter
with me, and I have a nanny that meets me
in the office, and I built a little playground um
(24:43):
in the office, and it's you know, it's working really well.
And I just enjoy being able to come downstairs and
just go get a hug and a high five now
and you know, just get to see her. And so
where I could have been missing that or having her
like in daycare, she's here with me. I I hope
that is our team grows and our office grows. You know,
(25:04):
I'm hoping to build and in office daycare for any
of my employees they ever have children. Um, I want
everyone to be able to bring their kid to the office.
And and so those are the things that I'm excited
about because it's made me really think of what good
or can look like for my employees as well. And
I love that. And it was really intentional about asking
you that because I feel like the more and more
(25:25):
women we see in you know, at the c suite
and executive positions as founders of company, these are some
of the things that we change because they're important to us,
and it's you know, we're really changing and shifting the
landscape of what entrepreneurship, what business ownership looks like. And
I just I just love that. I love that your
daughters at work with you, you know, at the same time,
you're running a company that is feeding you know, all
(25:47):
of Atlanta or and you know, so I just I
really commend you all that I think is the plan.
So I commend you on that too. Jasmine. Thank you
so much for joining us today. It is such a
pleasure having you here and being able to share your
story of good Er and the good that you're doing
not only in Atlanta, but across this country as you
expand and grow. I'd love for you to come back
(26:07):
and join us for another segment where we do a
deep dive into some more talk on Gooder and your
fundraising journey. I can't wait. Thanks so much, Daniel. Okay,
Money Movers, please stay tuned for another episode and more
of Jasmine Crow. We're going to talk about fundraising and
how you too can fundraise for your company and build
(26:27):
your successful dream. Thank you so much for tuning in
Money Moves audience. If you want more or a recap
of this episode, please go to the bank Greenwood dot
com and check out the Money Moves podcast blog. Money
Moves is an I heart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood
(26:48):
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Hey money Movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. Hey money Movers, Welcome
to another episode of the Money Moves podcast powered by
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Green One. Our next guest is a social entrepreneur and
the founder of good Or, a startup based here in
Atlanta at Georgia that is leveraging technology to combat hunger
and food waste. Good Or collects circlus food from organizations
like Turner Broadcasting Systems, Heartsfield, Jackson International Airport, and many
others throughout Atlanta and other places across the US, and
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redirects that food to nonprofits who distribute the food to
people experiencing food hunger. She has collected and donated more
than two million food items worldwide and fed more than
one hundred thousand people through the Sunday soul Enless feeding
initiative as well. Jasmine Crow is an incredible entrepreneur and
I am so excited to have you on the podcast today.
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You were also one of my favorite people to follow
on Twitter, y'all. Jasmine Welcome to the Money Moves Podcast.
Thank you so much for having me I'm so excited
to be here. I am so excited to have you,
and I am so excited for all the wisdom and
just to share your story with so many because you know,
on the Money Moves podcast, what we really like to
do is enlighten our audience with people's story of how
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they did it, the resilience that it took, and the
money moves that they're making to build and create wealth generationally.
And I think this is exactly what you have accomplished
and continued to do every day. I think so too,
So we're gonna get to good er. But I know
that this is not your first foray into entrepreneurship. Jasmine.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and
how you sort of broke into entrepreneurship. Yeah, I like
(01:51):
to think that I have been an entrepreneur since I
was thirteen. I used to kind of have my own franchise,
if you will, of a company call Tumble Tots. I
was a gymnast, and so then I started teaching gymnastics
to basically preschoolers inside of daycares, and so my mom
would drop me off and it was basically like every
parent would pay five dollars for their kids to take
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my class and I would go to different years and
teach the class. So that was when I was like thirteen.
I did that all throughout high school and um, like
I said, I really feel like that was like my
first kind of foray into entrepreneurship. What led me to
good her As. I actually had a consultancy called Black
Celebrity Giving. So it was one part media, one part
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kind of consulting and planning, and I used to work with,
as you can guess, black celebrities to really define their
star power and define what would be they're kind of
giving blueprint. And I worked with you know, countless celebrities
Candy Burris, um singer, songwriter, television star, to hip hop
stars like Future and Young Jeezy, and I would help
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them really with their nonprofit outreach and hosting their events
and whatever that looked like. And I would often say
to my clients, you know, the same people that are
hungry during Thanksgiving are hungry throughout the year. And it
kind of not that it fell on deaf ears. Their
big goal was obviously maintaining whatever it was they were doing,
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whether they were a basketball player, football player, singer, actress,
and so what I decided to do was start feeding
people on my own. And I started that right here
in Atlanta, started feeding downtown at Peach Tree and Pine
Tree and just cooking out of my apartment and going
out and feeding people, and it became just an an
amazing passion of mine. I always get asked the question,
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you know, what made you start doing this? And I
really don't have an answer, but I will say that
those moments, I feel like changed me and it really
just began to order my steps into what would I'm
eventually be good. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot
about that, no, And I love that, you know, I
think it's incredible because, you know, not just in Atlanta,
but all across the country there's this epidemic of food
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and security. And know oftentimes people are like, well, is
this philanthropy? Is this charity? But you've also created a
for profit business from something you're so passionate about but
at the same time gives back to so many So
I think this is, you know, just such a beautiful thing.
And I'd love to dive into how you founded good
Or because it really is a startup. You know, it
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started as a startup, cooking out of your house. Um,
so take us back to those early days. Well, you know,
a video of one of my pop up restaurants that
I used to host for people that we're experiencing homelessness
and hunger actually went viral on Facebook. And one morning,
you know, I was up really really late, like three
hours of the morning this was and I started reading
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through the comments, and amongst the praise, people were saying,
this is so amazing who donated the food? And the
truth was nobody. I was keep finding price matching, taking
five and ten dollar donations and really making all this
food myself. And I started thinking, like, I should really
just start getting the food donated. This is like a
no brainer. And a simple Google search, you know what
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happens to access food at the end of the night
really led me to stumble into what would be food waste.
And I go down this rabbit hole and I'm seeing
how much food is going to waste while so many
people were going hungry, and I just thought that that
was a problem. I think, you know, easily I could
have created good or as a nonprofit. That was my business.
I helped so many celebrities create their nonprofits. But what
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I knew about nonprofits is that you were always kind
of focused on like fundraising and getting donations in and
not so much focus on the problem. And the other
thing that really stood out to me is that businesses
were already paying waste management companies to throw this food away.
And there was a lot of value in that food,
not only in it going to somebody in me, which
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was priceless, but there was tax incentives. There was a
lot of value in the data knowing what are the
items that you're consistently wasting. And that's what made me
decide to start good Er as a for profit business
that was going to essentially serve as a food waste
management company. Twenty seven percent of everything that goes into
landfill is actually food. In the waste industry is a
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trillion dollar industry globally. Um it's a multi billion dollar
industry just in the United States alone. And that's what
made me say, Hey, you know, I am gonna be
here and I'm gonna candle food waste. And that's how
it got started. I love that because you know, I
speak to so many entrepreneurs and it's like there's this
light bulb moment and you know, oftentimes it happens in
the wee hours of the morning where you go in
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and you just start googling down this rabbit hole, and
I think, you know what the successful ones really say
is like you learned everything about that industry and how
you could make a profit in it, and there was
just all this pathway that took you to lall, okay,
people are paying to throw away food, Like that's so incredible.
So fast forward. Now you've been like, I think there's
something here. How did you go about, like what was
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the next steps in terms of like building the business?
Was it finding the wasted food? The you know what?
What it was? It the supplier demand? It was a lot.
I think the demand was not the issue. You know,
they are still nearly fifty million people this year in
the United States alone that are going to experience some
level of food and security, which means they don't know
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when and where their next miller is coming from. So
I knew that the demand was there. I knew that
people were gonna need the food. What I really needed
to focus on was the supply. Where was I going
to get it from? And so that took about a
good almost a year and a half really of I
guess you could say customer discovery UM. Obviously at the
same time, I didn't have the technology built. It was
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an idea. It was things that I was working towards.
But I was spending a lot of time discovering the
customer So asking businesses what do you do with your
surplus food? And I would find out that they would
throw it away and I would ask them why is that?
And they had learned about, hey, you were fearful of liability,
or we usually don't have food that's ready for pick
up until eleven o'clock and there's nobody to donate it to.
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And there were just all these things that became really
what was my service? And so now I was like, Okay,
I've got solve for the liability. I've got to have insurance,
I've got to solve for the logistics. We've got to
have cars that are available at any time to pick
up this food. We need to know, we have to
have a massive nonprofit network where we could get this
food donated to. So those are the problems that I
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think I started solving for UM. It definitely wasn't an
overnight thing at all. You know, I think the video
of of my pop up restaurant actually went viral in
sixteen in February. I didn't launch Gooder until seventeen, so
I really spent that entire year just kind of thinking
about it and trying to understand it. And even once
I launched the company, I still spent the next year
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still trying to get customers, still trying to raise money
um to build the technology, and so it's you know,
hard to fundraise. But what I turned to at the
time was pitch competitions, and so I started entering pitch
competitions and using that prize money to build my m
v P and kind of get the product to market
until we landed our first kind of landmark customer, which
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as you mentioned was the Atlanta Airport. And so once
the airport came, I think it really helped to kind
of open more doors, and so I'm always so grateful
to them for for taking taking a chance on you know,
I just love hearing stories like this because you know,
people think that oftentimes, you know, they're getting nose fundraising,
they're getting knows this, But I mean the nose and
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entrepreneurship starts so early. Well, we can't do this because
we're scared of liability, we're scared of this, and you
know your mind how you were like, Okay, I need
to solve for all those problems. That's my job as
the entrepreneur. Like that, I think is something that is
so special to the entrepreneur mindset because you're like, Okay,
people are telling me no every step of the way,
it's my job to solve for it. Exactly exactly, that's
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what you have to do. You have to solve for
their problems. And I think any entrepreneur knows that what
problem are you solving is the question you've got to
answer for fundraisers, for customers, what problem are you solving
for them? And that's what I really focused on, not
only the problems that I was solving, but I also
wanted to really back into why my solution was the
best and why I was the best, why our company
(10:04):
was the best. And so those are the things that
I think in those times when I was, you know,
hearing no, it really only motivated me to kind of
go back and just prove to people that that this
was gonna work. Yeah, And I remember, so let's get
to we'll talk about fundraising a little bit, because I
remember those early days. I remember a lot of like
nose and nose and nose. But I want to come
(10:25):
back to fundraising and let's get back to just continuing
to build the business. So now you've got one big client,
can you talk about how it was landing that big client,
because I think that's something that so many people wrestle
and they're like, oh, am I ever going to get it?
Am I ever going to get it? Especially as a
black woman. You know, there's always this, you know, idea
that it's harder for us to raise money get clients.
(10:46):
But your success, you know, was hard fought for. Tell
us a little bit about getting that big first contract.
Must have. I think the one thing that I had
to do is I had to do a lot of research.
So one of the things first and foremost, I researched
everything I could about the air port. They put out
a sustainability report. I looked and I read that sustainability
port report, you know, from front to back, and it
(11:07):
was very, very massive. And so I took all the
data that they had already put out about their waste
and I came back to them and said, you guys
are wasting ten million pounds of perfectly good food, and
your airport is in a food that there where so
many people are going hungry. So I really kind of
talked to them about this issue and this problem, and
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and also that airports were a huge you know, carbon
jet fuel emitters, so that they were really part of
the problem of climate change, and so how by reducing
their food waste they could be part of the solution.
So it was a lot of research, and it was
really a It could have went either way. You know,
it could have said, we're not always seeing any food,
where did you get this information from? You know, get
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out of here. But instead it was like, well, where
did you get that information from? This is something certainly
that we don't want to do. We didn't know that
this many kids were hungry in our community. How can
we out be as solved to that. And that's how
that happened. And so it wasn't an overnight thing, you know.
I think I started talking to them and maybe like
June of seen. I think our first initial pick up
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and launch was probably in November of seventeen, and then
our full out scale launch was probably like in July
of because their government entity and so it was always
like right in the middle of their fiscal year getting
started so it took time, and it also took pay chats.
I think that's the other thing, to know that they
are gonna come and just not rushing the process. So
(12:36):
at this time, now you've got your first check, had
you been fundraising and doing pitch competitions, like what came
first for you? Definitely the prize money from pitch competitions
came first for me. And I just remember, you know,
in those moments, just really struggling. You know, I always
tell people I started good or with nothing. I had
just came out of almost a five year relationship that
(12:56):
that end it really badly and I just walked away
from that relate ationship with nothing, um but my vehicle
and like my clothes and furniture. And then I think
I lost the vehicle. It broke down like a couple
of weeks later. And so it wasn't tough A tough
time for me in teen and I remember winning that
first pitch competition and literally leaving and running out of
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gas like on the highway, just like feeling like I
had to just get there to get on time, didn't
have time to stop and get gas, and you know,
I called five one one. Literally it was on a
Friday afternoon. I'll just never forget on an Atlanta highway
when I ran out of gas on the side of
seventy five, and so I just stood there, you know,
for like two hours, you know, just waiting for for
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gas to come, but just believing in that moment that
even though you know, here I am in Atlanta traffic
on a Friday afternoon running out of gas, I still
had just one, you know, the first pitch competition that
was going to be the seed money to getting my
company going. And I just believed at that moment things
were gonna start to turn around for me, and they
(14:01):
definitely did. Oh my gosh, you're literally like making my
makeup tear up, Like that's such a beautiful story. If
that's not a testimony today, I don't know what is, y'all.
That is so beautiful. And the thing I love about
it the most is you're helping so many families feed
and sustain themselves. Like that's just the beauty and the
(14:21):
silver lining and what you're doing as well, Okay, it's
it's really the best job. That really is the best job.
So so people understand, for example, now you've raised a
little bit of money, you also have a technology component
to this. Are you technical or how did you go
about building out that aspect of the company. Yeah, I'm
definitely not a technical founder at all, you know, and
that was, you know, there were some roller coasters there.
(14:42):
Sometimes I would hire people I had hired a CTO
UM and then they weren't like a coder, so you know,
months had went by, they never built any tech and
so then that relationship didn't work UM, and then I
ended up hiring like a DEMP agency local to build
my first m v P. Then hired product manager is,
then hired some offshore teams and hired engineers. So it
(15:03):
definitely was a lot, you know, and I had to
learn a lot. I had to learn about repositories and
you know, you've seen get hub code come in and
seeing code be pushed since prints and how long things
were gonna take, and so it took a lot of education,
you know, especially not being a technical founder. I always
still say one day I probably might still go back
to school and learn how to code, just because it's
(15:24):
you know, if I had learned, if I had known
how to do and build my own apps and my
own dashboards and portals, you know, I could have probably
been a lot further along. Um, but I found help
and I asked questions, and when companies were having office hours,
I would participate and I would you know, get as
much as I could for as little as I could.
(15:45):
You know, I took if people were willing to meet
with me at eight am for breakfast, I was there.
And I'm not a morning person because oftentimes still three
four o'clock in the morning. But making those sacrifices to
get this technology built was really critic hole for me. Oh,
I love that. Okay, So now you've launched the product
and let's past forward. Now tell me about, like, um,
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step by step, how the process works. Delta Airlines or
whatever hearts Field International is throwing away? Is it steaks?
Is it croissants like you pick them up? Tell us
about the process. It's everything. I mean. We've picked up
twelve ounce phone in file AT's. We've picked up food
that's never even been you know, packaged that went to
a restaurant our went tip venue and wasn't used. Um.
(16:29):
You know, I think about at the pandemic, we picked
up freezer's fool from every corporate office you could think
of of the best food in in the city, and
so essentially how the process works is we've built an
app that inventories everything it is that a business cells um.
They can access it easily from phone, web point of
sell system. They click on the items that they have,
(16:50):
they tell us how many they have excess of, and
then our platform calculates the tax value of all those
items collectively, as well as the estimated weight value which
we've gleaned from our inventory, and then they request to
pick up. We work with a network of logistics providers,
including having some of our own drivers. A driver picks
that food up and then it gets delivered to a
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nonprofit that's usually within a five mile radius where that
business operates, and we do that purposefully to make sure
that not only the food travels efficiently and safe, but
also that that business is really kind of creating social
change right in their own backyard. And when the nonprofit
receives it, they signed for it like they would a
UPS package, and their signature generates a donation letter with
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a picture of that donation into our clients dashboards, and
so our clients now can see, you know a lot
of trends, like what are the items that are going
to waste a being donated the most Um, who is
the food serving how many meals have they provided? How
many pounds have they kept out a landfill? They can
generate sustainability reports from our system of community impact reports
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as well. And then again just looking at seeing a
lot of the data, that's incredible, I mean, and just
such great quality food are you getting cava? Have you
ever had to deliver cavea? I don't think that in
cave are yet? I don't know that. I mean we
we definitely cleared out, as I said, a lot of
great stuff UM at the start of the pandemic when
everything closed, So I could definitely say hundreds of nonprofits
(18:20):
received donations from us UM, as well as thousands and
thousands of families. So let's talk about the pandemic because
I know that was an incredible thing. We've all gone
through it and a lot of us have to pivot
their businesses. What were you thinking in terms of your
business because I feel like you would just sort of
elevated to this incredible point of Okay, things are going
well and then the world is shut down. Yeah, I
(18:42):
mean it was really tough for me. UM. I'll never
forget the date that it happened in Georgia, March eight
and I was in a position where I had raised
funding in two thousand and eighteen very little a million dollars,
and you know, I had ran my business for two
plus years at that time, and so I was really
essentially kind of running out of money. And it was
(19:03):
like I was trying to fundraise, and I remember one
of our investors sent this email out, which I'm hoping
he sent to everybody. I always wonder if he sent
it just to me, but it was very much like,
you know, you may have to close your business, you
may not be able to fundraise, you may have to
let people go, like these are the hard times. We
saw this happening three in the recession um in two
thousand and eight, and so it was it was a
(19:25):
scary moment. But then what I thought about is just
being a helper. I really went back to my roots
and I was like, Jasmine, you know, you know how
to help people, and you are gonna see a lot
of people in need during this time. And so I
started thinking about everybody that's going to need access to
food and how that's gonna change during this pandemic. And
the first you know group of people. I thought about,
(19:46):
of course, we're children, and I know that so many kids,
you know, depending on breakfast and lunch at school. And
now schools were going virtual, and so I reached out
to the then superintendent of APS and said, hey, good
Or can help you guys distribute food to your students.
And so that became one of our very first contracts
that really put us into a B two C kind
(20:07):
of a marketplace where instead of now delivering food to nonprofits,
we started delivering food directly to homes of students. And
at first it was just school meals, and then it
branched into keep these families. Everyone's lost their job, you know,
the mom isn't working. Is there any way you guys
can start delivering groceries or any other kind of meals?
And I just tweeted that and I said, hey, you know,
(20:29):
I've got some families their need of groceries. If you
guys purchased them or donate good Or will go purchase
groceries for them and we'll deliver them to their house.
And and it took off and we basically kind of
started a I guess you could say, a free insta car, right,
So for every family that didn't have access good or
became that access point to get food delivered to them
(20:49):
and help them shelter in place. And that's funds so
many additional contracts and really a whole different side of
our business, uh that is surrounding on how we have
of hunger solutions and how we're helping cities, counties, school districts,
on businesses and entrepreneurs and entertainers really address hunger in
their communities. And you know, it's it's crazy that it
(21:12):
took the pandemic for all of that to happen, But
I do think that people started to see that hunger
was real, that food waste was real, and that these
two problems should not be coexisting. You know, one of
them could definitely solve the other. And that was a
great year for us. You know, it really was the
start of where I think our our business will scale
(21:33):
in the future. Oh. I love that. And you know,
I think one of the things that really shedding a
light on how precarious food insecurity is for so many families,
right and just how close so many people were to
the edge of hunger and homelessness, and you know, so
being able to provide access to that through the pandemic. Like,
you guys did an incredible job. So tell me about
(21:54):
what's next for Good Or three point oh, Like, what
is your vision for this beautiful company you've created. You know,
I think good Or should be everywhere, and I'm really
working hard on that. We have launched. We've got some
really great customers that you'll be hearing big, big announcements
about pretty soon. We have done some deals with new cities,
(22:14):
so we are not just in Atlanta. We're working in
parts of Texas, parts of Pennsylvania, parts of Florida, North Carolina,
so we're really starting in California as well. So we're
starting to scale. You know, our goal for originally was
to be in twenty cities by the end of the
and then of course the pandemic hit, and so now
(22:35):
that's our goal still this year. You know, we're really
trying to be in twenty markets and we're probably one
or two away from that goal. And I want to
get to other countries and we really just want to
be I think we want to create a legacy of
a company that really put everything in into two in hunger.
We are trying to you know, we approach hunger radically
(22:57):
different than than you've seen in the past. You know,
we're not a nonprofit, we're not a big you know,
feeding American, you know, hunger fighting organization, but we believe
that we can solve hunger in different ways, and we're
trying to open people's eyes and minds up to what
hunger can look like if we solve it this way.
And so it's you know, it's a long journey ahead,
(23:18):
but I'm really excited and I still believe that we're
just at the beginning. Um what you're gonna see from
Gooder and in all the great things that we're gonna do.
I love that, so Jasmine, and I loved having you here,
and I'm gonna ask you to come back for a
deep dive segment where we talk about fundraising, so where
you can possibly share some tips and tricks on how
(23:38):
you were able to raise money, continue to make money
and make revenue. But I'd be remiss if I didn't
talk about your sweet baby girl, because I know you
had a baby girl during the pandemic, and I think
it's always incredible to share stories of motherhood and being
a boss woman entrepreneur. So you're in your office right now.
How old are your daughter now? She is almost nine
(23:58):
months you she's eight months going on nine months, So
you her possibly thinking your business was gonna go out
of business and had a baby at the same time. Yeah,
I mean I went from being very worried about how
my business was gonna survive to you know, having a
business that was thriving, and you know, getting engaged, buying
(24:21):
a house, having a baby. Just life just really came
at me fast. But it's it's been a blessing. Um.
I get to bring my daughter to work with me
every day. Um, even though good Or has like a
hybrid remote model, so we're not in the office every day,
but we are in the office a couple of days
a week. And when I'm here, I bring my daughter
with me, and I have a nanny that meets me
in the office, and I built a little playground um
(24:43):
in the office, and it's you know, it's working really well.
And I just enjoy being able to come downstairs and
just go get a hug and a high five now
and you know, just get to see her. And so
where I could have been missing that or having her
like in daycare, she's here with me. I I hope
that is our team grows and our office grows. You know,
(25:04):
I'm hoping to build and in office daycare for any
of my employees they ever have children. Um, I want
everyone to be able to bring their kid to the office.
And and so those are the things that I'm excited
about because it's made me really think of what good
or can look like for my employees as well. And
I love that. And it was really intentional about asking
you that because I feel like the more and more
(25:25):
women we see in you know, at the c suite
and executive positions as founders of company, these are some
of the things that we change because they're important to us,
and it's you know, we're really changing and shifting the
landscape of what entrepreneurship, what business ownership looks like. And
I just I just love that. I love that your
daughters at work with you, you know, at the same time,
you're running a company that is feeding you know, all
(25:47):
of Atlanta or and you know, so I just I
really commend you all that I think is the plan.
So I commend you on that too. Jasmine. Thank you
so much for joining us today. It is such a
pleasure having you here and being able to share your
story of good Er and the good that you're doing
not only in Atlanta, but across this country as you
expand and grow. I'd love for you to come back
(26:07):
and join us for another segment where we do a
deep dive into some more talk on Gooder and your
fundraising journey. I can't wait. Thanks so much, Daniel. Okay,
Money Movers, please stay tuned for another episode and more
of Jasmine Crow. We're going to talk about fundraising and
how you too can fundraise for your company and build
(26:27):
your successful dream. Thank you so much for tuning in
Money Moves audience. If you want more or a recap
of this episode, please go to the bank Greenwood dot
com and check out the Money Moves podcast blog. Money
Moves is an I heart Radio podcast powered by Greenwood
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Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!