Crisis Management #36: Yellowbird Foodshed's Benji Ballmer on growing and sustaining amid the pandemic - Women Of Influence

Benji Ballmer would like nothing more than to put himself out of business.

That’s how he’ll know he did a good job.

The founder of Yellowbird Foodshed started his produce and food delivery business in 2014 connecting a handful of Ohio growers with a couple hundred customers.

Today the company is working with 150 growers and food producers in the state and serving 1,500 customers, predominately in Central Ohio.

But his ultimate goal isn’t a successful business, it’s changing the food system, at least in the geography within his reach.

“I’m trying to build a system that will put us out of business,” Ballmer said. “I’m not in this for how big can the Yellowbird be. Can we save the frickin’ planet?”

Yellowbird is having its best year ever. The growth is fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic as customers sought out providers with produce and meat in stock and delivery services that allowed them to side-step the store.

Ballmer’s business hasn’t missed a beat despite that surge in sales — weekly home deliveries, for example, rose from 60 pre-pandemic to a peak of 660 over the summer.

“We were prepare for the pandemic because we were preparing for something else,” he said. “I always thought that the thing that would put us over the hump would be there would be a climate disaster in California, a drought that lasted for four or five years, and all of the stuff that’s coming from out there that’s on our shelves in our grocery stores, as organic would cease to exist. That isn’t what it took. It was a pandemic.”

Ballmer talked with Columbus Business First for the latest edition of Crisis Management. In addition to detailing how the pandemic has impacted his business, he also shared the origins of Yellowbird, how the company has evolved over the years and why he feels poised to hang on to many of the new customers gained this summer.