The next time you visit your neighbourhood grocery shop, glance around. Ever wonder whose job it is to ensure the shelves are always stocked? How did the vegetables get to you so ripe for picking?

Brandon Hill can answer that: his parents and people like them.

His mother and father were among the few Black founders in the grocery industry, and they spent more than 40 years working there, first in the corporate sector and then as proprietors of their grocer brokerage. As a result, Hill’s parents, who worked in the food distribution industry, were affected by the ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic’s main economic effects, especially supply chain disruptions.

“My parents’ business had so much demand, but just so little technology with the retailers, and so much was inefficient,” said Hill. “They said, is there a way you could help build technology to facilitate business and order flow between us and retailers and manufacturers? (So,) that’s what got us started exploring this problem,” Hill told Essence.

Alongside his friends that also attended Hill’s alma mater Stanford University, they launched Vori, a deep data-backed platform aimed at helping small and mid-sized grocers gain accessibility to product and predict and mitigate supply chain disruptions.

“Fundamentally, the big thing about Vori is how are we levelling the playing field between these small and medium sized businesses, these food entrepreneurs, these local and regional supermarket chains, and the big guys like Kroger, Walmart and Amazon,” Hill told Essence. “There’s nothing wrong with Walmart and Amazon, but they have technology and resources far beyond what most of these family owned and independent grocers have access to. And what we’re doing is building tools to help keep these businesses running, because they’re the ones that kept communities fed during the pandemic.”

Since its launch in 2019, the startup has raised more than $15 million in funding and are continuing to expand its team to help broaden its footprint in the supply chain management sector. “We’re hiring right now and have a number of open roles across design, engineering and product management,” Hill said in the interview.

Source: Essence