While attending CU Boulder, recent graduates Eddy Connors and Luke Siegert noticed the lack of affordable food options in the surrounding community. In the summer of 2022 they had the opportunity to attend the Silicon Flatirons Startup Summer Program, a ten-week intensive course that teaches the basics of building a business where they ideated a business to combat food waste and insecurity - A marketplace platform that connects local shops’ perfectly good unsold food to customers at a discounted price for pickup. 

After winning Silicon Flatirons, the duo created a modest first iteration of the platform and launched it in January of 2023 at the local pizzeria Luke worked at, Barchetta. With one partner and a couple hundred customers, they saw immediate traction. Barchetta was listing their surplus lunch slices as “goodie bags” and sure enough, hungry community members were buying them. 

Goodie Bag has since grown to service 30 shops between Boulder and Fort Collins, where over 2,500 meals have been diverted from the landfill and redirected to 700+ “goodie baggers”.