Tomatoes, Sunflowers and Modernizing the Farmers Market Business Model

On this month’s episode of Wharton Global Youth’s podcast, Future of the Business World, meet Dylan DeLeon, a high school student from Illinois, U.S., who has used his time in various Wharton Global Youth programs and courses to refine and build his business, Fresh Cornucopia. Be sure to click the arrow above to listen to how Dylan is using technology to improve farmers market profits, connect communities, and reduce food waste. 

An edited transcript of our conversation appears below.

Wharton Global Youth Program: Hello and welcome to Future of the Business World. I’m Diana Drake with the Wharton Global Youth Program at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Each month, our podcast features a conversation with a young innovator thinking about business and life in a new way. Trust me, you will discover something remarkable every time.

Today’s topic is farmers markets. I happen to live in the Garden State, (also known as New Jersey), and am very familiar with this business model. Each Saturday, I head to the local market in our town to buy fresh cilantro, tomatoes, ginger, apples for sale by area farmers. Shoutout to my favorite vendor Nine Acre Farm. Their sunflowers are spectacular.

Our guest Dylan DeLeon loves farmers market geeks like me. His business, Fresh Cornucopia, is an online platform that connects local shoppers with vendors. I met Dylan this past summer while he was participating in Wharton Global Youth’s Leadership in the Business World program and one of our credit courses in marketing. Last year, Dylan also attended our Essentials of Entrepreneurship program. Soon after, he started Fresh Cornucopia.

Dylan, welcome to Future of the Business World!

Dylan DeLeon: Hi. I’m happy to be here.

Wharton Global Youth: Let’s start by finding out more about you. Tell us about yourself. Where do you live and where do you go to school?

Dylan: My name is Dylan DeLeon. I am a senior at Barrington High School in Illinois.

Wharton Global Youth: Why did you start thinking about ways to energize this particular business model? Do you have farmers markets in your community? Are you connected to agriculture? What was the inspiration?

Dylan: It all started back when I moved into my new house. My family is big on gardening. Every year, we would have a bunch of produce at the end of the growing season. While we would give as many tomatoes and zucchinis as possible to friends and family, we would still inevitably have some left over. We were trying to figure out a way to get rid of it. So, we just ended up giving it away. That’s when I started to notice how there’s a bunch of leftover produce at the end of every growing season. And that came into how the farmers’ market in our town, Barrington Farmers Market, closed down due to an actual lack of customers. Even though there were still people going there every week, it just wasn’t enough, and the vendors were simply losing too much money. So eventually, it shut down. That’s when I thought, well, if they are still selling a bunch but they’re not making enough, what’s really the problem here? I [talked] with some vendors I know, and they were saying about how, while they grew a bunch, they just needed to sell more. And so, it got me thinking. How could I go about fixing this problem in my community?

Wharton Global Youth: You describe Fresh Cornucopia as an online farmers market pre-order service. That really suggests to me that I won’t have to spend much time at the market itself, which seems to detract from the experience. As I said, I love shopping for my fresh ginger and sunflowers. How does the platform work?

Dylan: You go onto our website, www.freshcornucopia.com, and then you can look at all of our available produce. We have macarons, fish, microgreens, almost anything you can imagine. You place an order beforehand for your upcoming farmers market, and then you go there and pick it up. You might think that, well, I’m not going to be at the market as much since I’m just going to be in and out. It’s kind of the opposite, right? Instead of wasting time by being in line, you’re really going to be saving time and just enjoying the market itself. There’s a local market where I live called The Dole, and it’s a really big market with a bunch of fun little activities each week to do. Instead of having to wait in line for my tomatoes that I want, I can instead be hanging out with my friends or doing the activities at The Dole instead.

Wharton Global Youth: I feel like in developing this idea, you must have had to spend some serious time at farmers markets. It sounds like you did. And as a frequent customer, I don’t often see a lot of 17-year-olds there. Is that something that is part of your mission? Trying to infuse a youthful vibe into this space. And do you have a team helping to grow the concept who is also in high school?

Dylan: To start with my team: it’s me Dylan, and then we have Julie Gonzalez, Sree Nara and Rishi Patari. We all work together to build this business up and try to connect communities as much as possible. In regards to the younger generation and farmers markets, I don’t think we’re ever going to have a full [interest from] youth who want to go to farmers markets, but I think it provides an avenue for people to get healthy food, and, support their local community, and that is mainly appealing to the older generation. As we’re seeing now, millennials and Gen X are more online. Millennials are really online, and we’re providing this avenue to buy local, shop local, eat healthy, all things they care about, but they just don’t know [how to do].

Wharton Global Youth: So, you’re helping to connect the dots and give that extra edge to technology. Is that right?

Dylan Yeah. I think we’re modernizing farmers markets, this age-old business, which hasn’t developed much in the past few thousand years. We’re trying to add a new aspect to that which can draw in more people and hopefully strengthen our local ties as much as possible.

Wharton Global Youth: You touched upon this before, but can you talk more about why farmers need your platform? Can you give us an example of a farm you’re working with and how it is improving the business?

Dylan: I think this platform is needed now, especially since almost everything in the world is being modernized; it’s being turned into a very straightforward, streamlined process. To stay competitive with that, we need this platform to help keep the farmers’ markets up to date with the current times. Grocery stores have unbelievable amounts of behind-the-scenes logistics that help them coordinate all the different orders and shipping. Farmers’ markets don’t have that. They just have: I’ll show up on Saturday and hopefully, I sell enough to make a profit. These pre-orders are trying to help vendors predict more what’s going on, and then also provide them with a way of earning consistent income, since they’re not going to know what people are pre-ordering ahead of time [without the platform].

A farm that we’re working with right now is Arlington Crest Farms. They’re a farm run by this man called Dan. He’s very nice, and he grows microgreens. Recently, his family has wanted to start expanding, but doesn’t really have the time or the manpower to do it. We’re trying to work with him to help make his current business as efficient and organized as possible, just so that he can focus on other parts of his life and not have to worry about: am I going to make money in this farmers’ market? Is everything going to go? Am I going to be there on time? And [so on].

Wharton Global Youth: Technology is a huge part of that, right?

Dylan: Oh, definitely. It really streamlines everything, right? Imagine if we didn’t have our phones and we just tried to figure out where the Palatine Farmers Market was. Sorry, that’s a town which I don’t live in, but it’s adjacent, right? And if I need to find information on that, and I don’t on my phone, I can’t access the internet. What am I supposed to do? I can’t just drive over there and ask around until I find information. All this technology is allowing this old idea of farmers’ markets and putting into a new modern era, which hopefully will let them continue to be a powerful force in the upcoming years.

“There’s never going to be a time when we don’t need farming. It’s as important as possible to make sure that our farmers get the respect and the money and the time that they deserve, since they are carrying the world on their backs.” –Dylan DeLeon

Wharton Global Youth: How are farmers responding to it? Do you feel as though there’s a learning curve? Because it’s not something that they have experimented with before?

Dylan: There’s definitely a learning curve. A lot of the older farmers need to figure out how to use our website. So, we’ve been trying to make it as accessible as possible. But we’ve also found that normally within farms, there are generations of people. So, if a really old farmer runs it, then his son, or his son’s son, could help him figure it out. That happened recently with, I can’t remember the exact farmer. However, he was out in Wisconsin, and his son was running the farmers’ market. We told him about it, and so he relayed that back to his father, and they’re now on our website. So, while there is a learning curve, I think there are ways to mitigate it.

Wharton Global Youth: Are you also focused on reducing food waste? Is that part of the mission?

Dylan: Food waste is one of the biggest parts of Fresh Cornucopia, because of what I mentioned earlier. I had a bunch of excess produce that I couldn’t even get rid of, and so it just ended up rotting in my garden, or I donated a bunch of it. But they eventually couldn’t take infinite amounts of tomatoes. So, what happens is they will buy local, they will shop local. And that means there’s no more food waste, at least for your local vendors. And that’s helping overall reduce food waste, since I think the statistic is that 40% of food is thrown out per meal, which is way too high. And even in addition to food waste, since you’re shopping local, you won’t be buying as much of these far-away, grown-in-Mexico avocados, right? That means you’re also going to be reducing overall carbon emissions, which is another big part of our business.

Wharton Global Youth: And, of course, supporting the local economy, which is great. I’m at the Wharton School, so business education is something I’m passionate about. I really want to talk to you about the business education around this. I remember reading that you started working on this concept in your high school’s business incubator class. I want to hear more about that. And then, of course, you took the next step of attending our Essentials of Entrepreneurship [program] on Wharton’s campus. How did these two experiences help to advance your innovative thinking?

Dylan: The incubator program is a class you can take at my high school. In that class, you’re tasked with creating a startup and then trying to grow it as much as possible within a span of three to four months. That’s when Cornucopia got started, and we were trying to figure out what we were doing. At the time, we knew we wanted to do something with reducing food waste and helping connect to local communities, but we weren’t entirely sure. And then, I went to Essentials of Entrepreneurship. I learned how to build a brand and how to find your niche within a market. After coming back and talking it over with my team, we found out that helping farmers markets and the local community would be the best way to go about solving that problem. Originally, Fresh Cornucopia would have been a platform to connect random gardeners like me with people who wanted to buy their produce. But we found that was, one, unsustainable, because people only have a little bit of extra produce. And then two, the actual logistics of that is way too complicated. So, we thought, tackling an established market would make way more sense.

Wharton Global Youth: You set it up as a for-profit business, correct? So tell me how the money flow works. Do you charge a flat fee, and do you pay some of the other students who help you out?

Dylan: We currently have a bunch of different avenues to make money, since markets need a bunch of different types of help in order for them to fully achieve their potential. The first and most prominent part of our business is the pre-order service, and so we take a 15% commission of all of the orders that come through our business, so the customer doesn’t pay anymore. We take a small cut of [the vendor’s] profits, so that we’re able to keep the website running. After that, we also offer a market subscription in which we do marketing, along with some other slightly more specific pre-order service back-end stuff, so that helps them grow their customer base. And then finally, we have the hired help, where we connect vendors with people who want to work and get a job, and so the vendors have people who run their stands, and we take a 15% commission on the wages of the hired help.

Wharton Global Youth: Interesting. Do you think your tech-driven update to the farmers market model will be sustainable? Are you hopeful that you’ll be able to keep this going?

Dylan: Yeah. I think it can only grow from here, because as the world develops and as we get more and more advanced, we’re not going to shy away from technology. It’s becoming integrated into our everyday lives. When I wake up, my phone is my alarm. No longer do I have an analog alarm clock when I go to school. I use Google Maps, right? I’m not using an old map like we used to, or my car’s infotainment center. Even our toothbrushes are getting electric. My washing machine has wi-fi now, which boggles my mind. As we continue to grow as a society, we will get more and more technologically advanced. So, I think Fresh Cornucopia will only develop from here and further our need to continue supporting local and have these in-person meetings through farmers markets.

Wharton Global Youth: I love this idea of the old with the new, right? The farmers market is a model that’s been around, has been very simple and untouched, but then you’re bringing technology into it. And I hear what you’re saying, right? It’s connecting everything, but it does make me want to ask the question of, why is community so important to you? I’ve heard you say a couple of times that you feel it’s important to connect communities through what you’re doing. Where do you see the value in that?

Dylan: I think a community is what builds you up. While it is possible for you to be good, because obviously everyone’s good, I think a good community will just help you excel into the best version that you can be. If you don’t have a connected community that encourages each other, and you’re very friendly with everyone, then you’re not able to get that feeling of closeness with all of your friends and all of your families. Connecting this community is important to me, because I think there’s been a decrease in the amount of connectedness as we get more and more online, with the lack of local events. And so, farmers markets are one of these last bastions of connecting us and community, and I really want to keep that alive. I think Fresh Cornucopia is a way of doing that.

Wharton Global Youth: And what have you learned about the business of agriculture along the way? Many see it as an industry that faces challenges. Do you feel like there’s a future in farming?

Dylan: Yeah, the business of agriculture is very random. It’s based on the weather, which is something no one can control. As much as we want to, we can’t predict what it’s going to be like. So when there’s a year-long drought that’s going to affect the production of apples, or that’s going to do this and that, it causes uncertainty. Certain vendors will do better or worse, depending on how that goes. There are a lot of problems that we’ve seen by directly talking with vendors. And I think Fresh Cornucopia acts as a way to mitigate at least one more of those uncertain factors. Farming will always be farming. We need food, and farming can go back as far as the agricultural revolution. There’s never going to be a time when we don’t need farming. It’s as important as possible to make sure that our farmers get the respect and the money and the time that they deserve, since they are carrying the world on their backs.

Wharton Global Youth: Let’s end with our lightning round. Please answer these questions as quickly as you can. What is your favorite farmers market product?

Dylan: I love macarons from Mama Bear Macs. They’re the best dessert I’ve ever had.

Wharton Global Youth: What is your least favorite product?

Dylan: The 3-D printed crafts. I think are kind of a weird choice to have in the farmers markets.

Wharton Global Youth: I haven’t heard of that one before. That is interesting. Okay, your best memory from Leadership in the Business World this summer?

Dylan: After my friend won the competition, we went out and got dinner on the last day, and it was just a magical experience.

Wharton Global Youth: What did you eat?

Dylan: We got hot pot at this Asian restaurant, and it was the best food I’ve ever had. I cannot recommend it enough.

Wharton Global Youth: Yeah, I love me some hot pot. It’s good. Your most useful business education moment from your Wharton Pre-baccalaureate marketing course?

Dylan: Hands down, it’s the learning of central and peripheral advertising, since that really helped us tighten up our brand image and our message within Fresh Cornucopia.

Wharton Global Youth: What is something about you that would surprise us?

Dylan: I can say the alphabet backwards.

Wharton Global Youth: I won’t make you do it now. What is something you would like to learn that you don’t yet know?

Dylan: I’ve always wanted to learn how to crochet, mainly just to knit myself sweaters.

Wharton Global Youth: I see a booth at a farmers market in your future. Which businessperson would you most like to take to lunch and why?

Dylan: Mark Cuban [the entrepreneur and investor who is a shark on the TV show Shark Tank], because he’s kind of a paragon of entrepreneurship, and I want to learn about how he figures out which entrepreneurs to invest in.

Wharton Global Youth: Dylan, thank you for joining us on Future of the Business World.

Conversation Starters

How are Dylan and his team helping to modernize a traditional business model?

Do you have a farmers market in your town? Do you visit it? How is it modernized, or could it use Fresh Cornucopia’s services?

Why is community important to Dylan? Why is it important to you? Why is it important to business? Share your thoughts in the comment section of this article.

Hero Image Credit: Laura Adai, Unsplash+