Full Harvest is the first business-to-business marketplace for imperfect and surplus produce. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Full Harvest founder and CEO Christine Moseley to learn more.
Christine Moseley’s Background
Moseley has over 15 years of experience in both Fortune 100 companies like Maersk and Procter & Gamble, as well as high-growth food startups.
“Prior to founding Full Harvest, I was Head of Strategic Projects and Business Development at Organic Avenue, one of the first cold-pressed juice companies where I helped double the company in size,” said Moseley. “I hold an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’ve also been recognized by Inc. as a Top 100 Female Founder, Fortune as the #2 Most Innovative Woman in Food & Drink, and was recently on the cover of Newsweek.”
Formation Of Full Harvest
How did the idea for Full Harvest come together? Moseley reflected:
Full Harvest was born out of my passion for the environment, affordable healthy food, and efficiencies. While scaling one of the first cold-pressed juice companies, Organic Avenue, I loved their mission for healthy food products but was frustrated that they were making $13 green juices. The high price point was due to purchasing expensive perfect-looking produce to then just immediately process it. I also noticed everything being done offline in the food industry, a critical market that we all rely on, while the rest of the world was going digital. In 2014, I moved to California to find a way to create a more sustainable, efficient produce supply chain leveraging technology and my previous operations and food experience.
During a farm visit, while watching romaine heart harvesting, I found myself stepping calf-deep on beautiful, edible romaine leaves that were about to be churned under back into the ground. Up to 75% of the romaine head was being wasted in order to pack the perfect-looking center romaine heart for grocery stores – more was being wasted than was being consumed. Yet, the wasted edible outside leaves would have been perfect for the green juices we had just been making. I was shocked to find out that more than 25 percent of all edible produce globally does not even leave the farm level, leading to on-farm food loss becoming the largest portion of the global food waste problem- now the #1 contributor to climate change.
This is when I realized that there were no scalable options out there for farmers to sell their surplus and imperfect produce and knew I had to do something about it. That is how Full Harvest was born.
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges you face in building the company and were there any surprises?
“One of the biggest challenges we have faced is bringing consistency to an inconsistent market and product. We are building the world’s leading produce business marketplace, which requires us to create universal ways of doing business in what has traditionally been an extremely fragmented market with many different ways of doing things. However, with all great challenges comes great opportunities, and we have leveraged these challenges to become our strengths and barriers to entry,” Moseley acknowledged. “We have spent over 7 years helping to streamline the industry to be easier to manage. As just one example, where off-grade produce previously did not have a standard way of sharing specs, we have created a universal way to share specs to reduce rejections by 90% compared to industry averages. At the same time, surplus and imperfect produce – our expertise- is inconsistent and our buyers need consistent, scalable supply. We have solved for this with our on-farm innovation and by leveraging our technology to create sustainable, scalable supply chains.”
Core Products
What are your core products and features? “Our core product is our online B2B produce marketplace that connects farmers with commercial produce buyers to purchase produce of all grades, including USDA Grade 1, surplus, and imperfect. Our platform includes features such as real-time market transparency, order management, and logistics support to help make the buying and selling process as seamless as possible. With our platform, we aim to reinvent the produce supply chain with technology to bring the industry online for the first time ever and maximize resources,” Moseley explained.
Evolution Of Full Harvest’s Technology
How has Full Harvest’s technology evolved since launching? “Since our launch, we’ve continued to invest in our technology to improve the user experience for both farmers and buyers. We’ve added new features such as data & insights, documentation management, and online logistics booking. We’ve also made our platform mobile compatible to make it easier for farmers to list their produce and for buyers to make purchases on-the-go,” Moseley noted. “In terms of product offerings, while we will always maintain our expertise on sustainable surplus and off-grade offerings, we’ve recently expanded our marketplace to now offer all Grades of USDA#1 produce, not just surplus. We now understand that in order to solve the food waste problem exponentially faster, we need to solve for all aspects of the on-farm food loss problem – including access and data. In order to solve for these, it is imperative to bring the entire produce industry online to ensure 100% full harvests. Expanding our marketplace capabilities to cover the entire produce market, not just our expertise of surplus and imperfect, is a crucial step towards creating a more sustainable produce industry.”
Standing Out From The Competition
What makes Full Harvest stand out from other players?
“There are many things that make Full Harvest unique. First, being that our core business focus for over 7 years was to help the suppliers on our marketplace sell their surplus and imperfect produce, we are and will continue to be the industry experts in the battle against food waste,” Moseley affirmed. “Due to our success in this, and primarily driven by customer demand, we’ve since expanded the marketplace to offer all USDA Grade 1 produce, not just surplus, in order to bring the whole industry online. We are currently the only fully end-to-end produce business marketplace to sell produce of all grades with an expertise on surplus and off-grade.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Full Harvest’s biggest milestones?
“Some of our biggest recent milestones have been hitting 100M pounds of surplus and imperfect produce sales as well as a billion pounds posted by suppliers on our marketplace. That volume of surplus and imperfect produce would likely have not otherwise been sold and has significantly helped our growers’ bottom lines as well as reduced GHG emissions and water wasted,” Moseley revealed. “Another milestone was when we secured our $28 million Series B funding round led by top Ag-tech investor Telus Ventures. This funding round has helped scale our business and get the marketplace to where it is today.”
Funding/Revenue
Upon asking Moseley about funding and revenue, she pointed out: “We’ve raised approximately $40 million in funding to date, and our revenue has grown significantly this year so far. However, we’re a private company and don’t disclose specific revenue metrics.”
Total Addressable Market
What is the total addressable market (TAM) size that Full Harvest is pursuing? “Now that we are going after the full global produce market to become the Amazon of produce for businesses, our TAM is the trillion-dollar global produce industry when you take into account the 25% unsold produce. We view this industry as one of the most impactful and largest industries, still almost entirely offline, left to digitize and bring into the 21st century,” Moseley assessed.
