In a hyper-connected era, access still matters. After 10 years in the food & beverage industry, working in government to Fortune 500 retail management to food-tech startups, Cureate CEO Kim Bryden observed that many food businesses were struggling to make the leap to long-term sustainability, and that this was partly due to access. “Sales at farmers markets and a core group of loyal customers can keep a passionate business owner going, but it won’t pay for health insurance or give the flexibility to make new hires,” said Bryden. “Oftentimes, the only way to make that leap is to secure larger business contracts to maintain a stable cash flow.”

At the same time, Bryden was consulting for major institutions with new initiatives to source from local food & beverage businesses. Management accustomed to procuring all their on-site goods from one faceless distributor were excited at the prospect of buying local, but daunted at the logistical task of finding and sourcing local suppliers to meet their demand. “I saw there was a way to systematize this process,” said Bryden, “and give all the people at the table a frictionless, equitable way to meet their goals.”

DC entrepreneur Kim Bryden has taken her decade of experience in the F&B industry and applied it to her startup, Cureate. This platform connects small businesses to local food and beverage providers. Check out the video here that we shot at the WEDC house at SXSW17 and for more info visit http://nibletz.com keyword: Cureate

Food and bev entrepreneurs have a lot of places to sell what they make, but Kim Bryden knows that stable cash flow from deals with bigger buyers is key to growing.

In organizing events like the Made in Baltimore vendor fair, she put small businesses and big buyers in the same room together and found that similar pain-points emerged: The entrepreneurs often needed help with business development and marketing; likewise, the buyers, ranging from grocers to hotels to event planners, want to work with local businesses but need to find the right way to make it a part of their process.

So that’s where Bryden’s Cureate Connect comes in. The matchmaking platform is launching publicly today.

Kim Bryden’s big dream is to help with the “redistribution of wealth in America.” But that, in and of itself, is not a business.

So Bryden has decided to operationalize one piece of the big dream by helping small food and beverage businesses make connections with large buyers like corporations or universities or stores. Since 2014, when she launched Cureate, Bryden has been doing this herself, by hand, as a kind of consultant.

We hope that a growing number of buyers in Philadelphia and across the country – including large businesses and institutions non-exclusive of hospitals and universities – will recognize the economic and social opportunities in sourcing from local small businesses, joining the movement to repair a broken system.

Baltimore startup wants to connect food vendors to big buyers - Baltimore Business Journal

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