Sharing the Harvest
We need a tomato break.” Hearing these words from his wife and children, Dushan Batrovic knew he had to do something about the fruits of his abundant home garden in Georgetown, Ont. It was the summer of 2017, and, as a hobby, Batrovic started growing vegetables in his backyard. By mid-August, the Cherokee purple tomatoes wouldn’t stop coming. Despite eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, his family couldn’t keep up with the volume.
But Batrovic had no desire to stop growing produce — he was struck by how easy and rewarding it was to grow his own food and wanted to try his hand at other vegetables, such as carrots, broccoli and lettuce. He also sensed that he wasn’t the only one in his neighbourhood with a surplus of homegrown fruits and veggies.
Then one day in the garden, he had an epiphany. “That’s where my business mind came up with the whole supply and demand mismatch. I thought to myself, 'there is an opportunity here to help people grow more things and be exposed to more great food.'” And so, the idea for Seed Voyage was born — an online marketplace that connects home gardeners with nearby eaters.
Batrovic has never worked in the food industry. He has an MBA and an engineering degree and has experience in the tech and finance sectors. But still, food is something about which he's been passionate from a young age. “I have fond memories of my parents’ food garden,” he explains. “I remember going out into the yard thinking, what can I pick off today? What tomatoes and peppers and onions are ripe?” It was this excitement for sharing homegrown food with others that helped him formulate a sales pitch.
He thought he had developed an interesting concept, but he had to do his research first. He approached a few trusted friends with the idea of the company to get feedback. “Initially, I just wanted to connect with people who were in the food industry, as well as friends and relatives, to bounce ideas off them and see if I was totally out to lunch. The initial feedback was great, and so I’ve kept pushing.”
Now, a little more than two years later, Seed Voyage boasts a few thousand users living in 39 U.S. states and seven Canadian provinces. While Batrovic notes that the company is still a fun side project, he is excited to see it expand to other countries and climates.
Toronto is currently home to nearly half of all Seed Voyage users. “Because the city is so vibrant and multicultural, people grow a lot of things that they used to grow in their home countries, often items that aren’t available at the grocery store,” Batrovic says. “The variety of produce people are growing that I’ve never heard of is amazing.”
Currently, the Seed Voyage team consists of Batrovic and three shareholders. He also has an advisory group that includes Wayne Roberts, a Canadian food-policy analyst, and Tammara Soma, an urban planning scholar who teaches about food security at the University of Toronto.
As Seed Voyage has grown, the emphasis has always been on simplicity. In this vein, the site’s fuss-free design, free membership and notification-based system are all part of the company’s ethos.
“As for keeping things simple,” Batrovic explains, “I tend not to want to be in the virtual world. I’m not a Facebook or Twitter guy, so I didn’t want to create the type of website where you browse and do online shopping. Instead, I created a site that’s notification-based, which means you don’t actually have to go online and search for things. When produce is available in your neighbourhood, you’ll get an alert, saying 'here’s the fresh food that’s available two blocks from your house — are you interested?'”
Pricing is another factor Batrovic wanted to keep simple. “Food pricing can be complicated — per pound, per gram, per dozen. I wanted to make everything the same price, so all produce is $5 per basket. It’s up to the grower to offer what they think is fair for $5 — a dozen carrots, a bag of lettuce or whole basket full of apples because they want to see them go to a good home.”
Despite the simplicity, starting the new enterprise hasn’t been without its challenges. “For me, the hardest part is getting in front of enough people and communicating my idea in a world where there are a million different messages thrown at you all day. The simple path to marketing is using social media channels, but they’re such a crowded place. That’s why I like to connect with people one-on-one.”
Challenges aside, Batrovic has managed to create an incredible community of gardeners for himself and others. “As I started chatting more with people in the neighbourhood,” he says, “I realized that there are a lot of gardeners out there who are very passionate about what they do. They garden because they think the food is delicious or because it’s an opportunity to get outside. For some, it helps relieve mental health and stress or they like the environmental impact and helping others get access to affordable, healthy food. Gardening can even be a source of income for a stay-at-home parent or elderly people who are doing something that they love to do anyway.”
For Batrovic, one of the most rewarding aspects of starting Seed Voyage is seeing how it has inspired people. “It’s the idea of creating a community and taking that lone gardener who’s toiling away in his backyard and connecting him to a group around him where they can share their passions in a very tangible way — growing, sharing and consuming food together.”
Seed Voyage
seedvoyage.com | support@seedvoyage.com | @seedvoyage
