Ran the numbers on this for a while before building FarmLink, so sharing what I found:

Most restaurants and independent grocers pay a 25-40% markup on produce through traditional distributors. That markup pays for warehousing, trucking fleets, and a sales layer — none of which adds freshness. Meanwhile the farm growing the product often nets less than 50% of what the end buyer pays.

Cut the distributor, and both sides win: the farm captures more margin, the buyer pays less for product that's often days fresher (picked this week vs. sitting in a distribution warehouse).

The friction has always been discovery and trust — a restaurant buyer has no easy way to find 5 small farms within 100 miles who have what they need this week, and a farm has no easy way to reach 20 local buyers without a sales team.

That's the actual problem we're solving with FarmLink Co-op — a direct marketplace connecting small farms straight to restaurants and grocers. No distributor markup, no middleman. If you're on either side of this problem, worth a look.