STARTUP LAB – Ep. 10: Growington

3 Comments by Startup Lab on 9th Dec 2011

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Growington (www.growington.com) provides a food-mapping system which allows the public to track locations of where food is being grown. The idea is to promote the sharing, swopping and trading of vegetables within local communities by sharing photos and encouraging discussion of different herbs, fruit and vegetables. As this paradigm becomes a contagion Growington hopes that cities can compete with each other based on how many food growing locations they have. We spoke with Darren Smith, one of the co-founders of Growington, to pick his brains on the company.

Growington Food Map

What exactly is Growington?

Growington connects you with those in your community who are growing food so that you can share, swap and trade vegetables, fruit and herbs with your neighbours. It’s for back garden enthusiasts, community gardeners and allotment owners etc. You don’t have to be a real farmer! We’ve mapped 200 growing spaces worldwide in the 2 months we’ve been launched- there’s a long journey ahead!

How did the Growington get started? Who started it and what was their inspiration?

I came up with the idea at the end of last year. The ‘ah ha’ came when I was attending a Future of Food seminar listening to a ‘Food Futurologist’ at The School of Life in London. That, and my previous web startup experience gave light to the idea around mapping food growing spots in a crowd-sourced manner. Why can’t I easily and simply find where food is being grown? Surely this is interesting, no?

I should add that I’ve watched (on average) 1 TED talk a day for 2 years. This has helped me understand global trends such as food security, climate change, the power food suppliers have, health issues and collaborative consumption to just name a few.

Growington won a Social Entrepreneur award from UnLtd. Darren & Rey picked up the award in July

Who are your directors and employees? What is the total size of your team?

We’re a boot strapped early stage startup and the team of 3 co-founders have been working on the business in their free time for 9 months.

Other than mapping where food is being grown do you have initiatives in place to encourage the very ‘grow your own’ movement?

Without a doubt! ‘Mapping food’ isn’t too inspirational so we obviously need to give value to our users in order to encourage and get them excited about growing food! The 4 main areas of the site will be as follows:

A simple share/swap/trade mechanism. How unbelievable cool is it to get hold of some vegetables for your dinner party that were grown down the road?!
The growers’ log lets gardeners share photos of their plants and talk about their adventures in the soil. We want to make it easy for you see the progress of other gardeners’ plants so that you can compare, contrast, help and support each other. Especially those that live nearby!
A crowd-sourced knowledge base for as many vegetables, fruits and herbs as our community want to discuss. If you have a question- ask, it will get answered, rated and kept for reference for future growers!
Points and Badges. We want to make growing food fun for the young and old alike by awarding them points and badges based on their progress, what they’re growing, and where they are. We also expect to compete cities against cities based on how many people are growing food in different locations around the world.