This started at a farmers market.
Standing at a stall, buying something made by the person handing it to you, it's hard not to think: this is wonderful, and I only found it by accident. I happened to be in this town, on this day, walking down this row.
And then the uncomfortable follow-up thought — how many others are there? Hundreds of towns, hundreds of markets, thousands of small brands that are brilliant and completely invisible outside a fifteen-mile radius. Most of them I will never know exist. Not because they aren't good enough, but because they don't have a national distributor, a shelf-space budget, or a slot in the aisle at the store where I actually shop.
The grocery store is not a list of the best food. It's a list of the food that could afford to be there.
Every brand here is small. That's the whole rule, and it's the only one that really matters: if you can already find it in Whole Foods, Target, Kroger, Costco and Walmart, it doesn't belong on this site. Not because those products are bad — because they don't need our help, and their presence would bury everything that does.
A brand selling at one regional grocer, or a handful of independent shops, or only from their own website — that's exactly who this is for.
Every product is checked by hand before it goes up: who actually owns the brand, whether it's sold in national chains, and what's really on the label. Nutrition and allergen information is read from the brand's own packaging and marked when it hasn't been verified by a person.
We get things wrong sometimes, and when we do we take them down. If something here is inaccurate — or if you make something that belongs here — please tell us.