Q: What is Cureate?
A: Cureate is a woman-owned, food tech business that operates in the Mid-Atlantic and Heartland regions with a mission to shift dollars back into our local communities by building an empowered food & beverage supply chain to meet changing consumer demand. We accomplish this mission by providing tools and training to uplift and educate small to medium-sized food-based businesses while increasing the availability of nutritious, locally sourced foods in institutional food service operations. These are our two programmatic verticals: Cureate Courses (education) and Cureate Connect (procurement).
Through our proprietary Cureate Connect platform, we serve as a centralized resource for institutional food buyers, granting them easy access to locally produced food items. By partnering with small businesses, we cureate and expand product offerings, all while saving our buyer and vendor partners valuable time and resources. To date, we have shifted over $2M into locally grown and produced products through our platform.
Q: Why did you decide to create this company?
A: I have worked in the food industry in local government, Fortune 500 retail management, and at a food tech start-up. Through these experiences, I met numerous talented and innovative entrepreneurs who developed exceptional products but often struggled with business management and building the right connections to bring their products to market. This insight ignited my passion for providing small businesses with the essential tools needed to thrive.
At Cureate, we focus on fostering meaningful connections—sharing the heart and soul of food with our community. We are committed to empowering local small food businesses, giving them the support they need to succeed and uplifting the entire community in the process. With every sale, we enhance the reputation, network, and growth opportunities for these businesses. Even when immediate sales are not realized, we are actively laying the foundation for a robust ecosystem that nurtures the long-term success of small businesses.
Q: What makes Cureate unique?
A: Cureate is the only organization doing what we’re doing in the markets in which we operate. We go beyond traditional teaching by fostering a collaborative environment where small business owners learn from one another and share their experiences. By empowering local food entrepreneurs, Cureate helps business leaders confidently articulate their unique selling propositions and importantly, we are helping these businesses establish new sales channels. Empowering local supply chains, democratizing access to knowledge, and ultimately, shifting dollars from larger corporations back to local operators simultaneously offering healthier food options to underserved communities.
Q: What does Cureate’s success look like?
A: Our commitment to our mission to build more interconnected, economically vibrant communities is seen through our growth and success. We are proud to share that our revenue increased by more than 30% since last year. We have also deepened our public/private partnerships across institutional foodservice operators, economic development departments, city governments, and community development financial institutions (CDFIs). Since 2020, Cureate Courses has graduated over 200 entrepreneurs with over 60% of those being womxn-owned, and more than 30% being BIPOC-owned (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color). On average, those businesses saw a 16% revenue increase from the quarter before they took Cureate Courses, to the following quarter. That is not only a win for our participants, but it’s a win for us.
Q: What are your growth plans for the future?
A: We are actively looking to expand the Mid-Atlantic and Heartland regions through both Cureate Courses and Cureate Connect. The goal is to launch a third region within the next 6-12 months and expand within a 3-hour radius of our current operations to grow our geographical footprint of impact. If you are in an office of a Governor, Mayor, food policy council, and/or economic development who is looking to build a more interconnected, economically-vibrant supply system within their region to foster more cash flow between big and small, while continuously empowering small businesses to survive and thrive — look no further than Cureate.
