There is so much exciting work happening behind-the-scenes and as we scurry to construct our new platform, we’ll press pause on updating content here. We will continue to curate discoveries and food news and culture on our social media spaces, however, so check us out on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

We cannot wait to share with you what we’re building as we look ahead to a May 2013 launch date. See you back here for our grand re-opening!!

(1) We’ll eat anything but: Puppies.

(2) The best city for eating is: NYC, for sure. Brooklyn bolsters that vote.

(3) Because we can never have too much: Kale. All day, every day, any way you make it. Kale.

(4) Our favorite farmers’ market is: Myanmar, Burma. Hard to make it there every week, so as a default we’ll say Santa Monica. Ugh, they have produce that makes the heart sing. Meyer lemons and avocados for 25 cents each? Umm, yes please!!!

(5) Our last meal would be: Whole roasted fish with lemon, rosemary and garlic + perfectly roasted potatoes. Then every single thing at Momofuku milk bar.

(6) Most exciting chef right now: We’ve got nothing by love for Dan Barber. That man is a genius who stands for the quality of the ingredients. He’s doing incredible, innovative things with food and the sustainable agriculture movement on a whole.

(7) If we weren’t in food, we’d be: Quinn: Gallivanting around around the world, working on different organic farms. Robyn: On an ashram in India meditating in full lotus for 10 hours straight.

(8) Street food is unbeatable in: Bali! The open air market cuisine is to die for.

(9) At 3am, you’ll find us noshing on: We’re health coaches, which means we’re usually in bed by 11. BUT if we were out having fun, and say, getting our dance on (which actually happens quite often), we’ve been known to come home and make a big, bad batch of oven baked french “fries” with a homemade dipping sauce (mayo, BBQ sauce… you name it!). Hey! It happens.

(10) Our current food obsession are: Quinn: Grain free waffles with exotic flavor profiles. Robyn: Sweet scrambled eggs. Don’t knock it ’til you try it! 1 grated carrot, 3 scrambled eggs, vanilla, tons of cinnamon and coconut oil.

Founded by local barista extraordinaire, David Donde, Truth Coffee’s specialty is in “producing artisanal style coffees for the coffee geeks out there in sunny South Africa.” Using a vintage probat roaster fitted with a cast iron drum, they roast a line of blends from a kick-in-your-teeth kind of espresso to a “forgiving” French blend that you won’t soon forget. And each of these blends is continuously tested, iteration after iteration, until the pinnacle of flavor is reached. Quality and taste are the driving vision here. Put away the sugar and don’t even think of adding whipped cream. At Truth Coffee, you’re promised an addictive cup of “flavour not bitterness,” as they say. We’re sold.

Ampersand the Conery are looking to change that. This fledgling food startup is, in their words, “re-imaging the cone.” The vision is to create a more dynamic, ice cream cone market. One where flavours on the cone serve to enhance the ice cream and vice versa. Pistachio, vanilla bean with toasted coconut, and honey lavender are the debut varieties on Ampersand’s hit list. Imagine a dark chocolate ice cream atop a pistachio cone? Or, a fig ice cream tucked into a honey lavender cone? (How have we not thought of this sooner?!)

Ampersand’s cones themselves will vary in shape too from petit-sized to waffle chips, designed for sharing and dipping into a heaping scoop of ice cream. And then there’s the “take-and-bake,” a package that allows you to buy flat cones, heat them up and roll them at home.

With the sunny days of summertime drawing nearer, Amerpsand is gearing up for their official launch soon. Say goodbye to the waffle cone as you know it.

After several weeks of rallying support, the exciting news is that we’ve raised enough to get started with the first iteration of our new site. More on that soon!

Thank you again from The Urban Grocer team!

Along the way we continued to author hundreds of articles on where to find the coolest foodstuff around the world. We tested theories about what you wanted to read, what you loved, what you didn’t seem to care about, and how we could frame our stories to matter more, to have value, to create an impact.

At the same time, we worked to develop The Urban Grocer as a brand: An emerging food media concept that was for and by young, urban professionals who love food. We went from a blog to taking ourselves seriously as a real, live media startup with global potential. Holy s@#?!

But it wasn’t all coming up roses. While going through this transition, we reached out to venture capitalists to raise funds that would allow us to get to that next place. You know those montages in movies when they show someone getting a door slammed in their face over and over and over? That was our 2012. A lot of this was our learning curve but a lot was also that it was hard to explain our blog wasn’t what we were looking to grow. “Prove it,” said investor after investor. There were many days and nights in 2012 when the process of fundraising was so overwhelming I could barely catch my breath and I wanted to throw in the towel. So we did just that on the VC part and looked at alternatives – like crowd funding.

We work 16-hour days, 7 days a week. Six if we’re lucky. For the entire month of January and February of this year, I worked every.single.day.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. But I wanted to share the story about The Urban Grocer to illustrate that we are a from-the-ground-up, labor-of-love brand. A homegrown, bootstrapped concept. This is pure passion and dedication. We don’t have investment behind us, or families that are bankrolling our growth. We are busting our bums to build this thing and we will not stop until we do. And we want to do it with you.

We want to bring our readers, like you, into the mix. Our IndieGoGo campaign is the best way we can do that. Each of our readers can be a part of what we are and who we are and what we have built.

If you like what we do or if you connect with our story, then donate at whatever level you can today. And let’s make it happen. Let’s make 2013 the year we did it together.

Thank you for listening and thank you for your support.

Catch Part I, II and III of our story too.

I started 2010 with the launch of The Urban Grocer. I had no idea that by the end of that same year I’d be in Buenos Aires filming a television special with the Cooking Channel. If you told me, I would have never believed it.

I have to spill the truth here: I pitched The Urban Grocer as a television show in May 2010 on a fluke. My sister and I wanted to go out to LA and so we used “meeting production companies” as the perfect excuse. On a hot May night, beside the pool at the Roosevelt Hotel, we pitched the idea to Shannon and Mike Demers of 2Tall Productions.

Everyone was immediately turned on to the idea. It was electrifying. On a Friday night, we brought 2Tall on board. That Sunday, I was filming a “sizzle” reel in our hotel room. I didn’t even know what that meant but there I was, camera in front of me, talking about why The Urban Grocer was worth making into a show.

Two weeks later they brought it to Cooking Channel and two weeks more passed before I had an email in my inbox saying the execs wanted to meet me. What?!?!?

After launching the website in January that year, we had some great immediate feedback. We had amazing coverage from trendspotting cultural mags like Flavorwire, one of our stories went majorly viral and a few blogs here and there were taking notice. But I was still finding my legs and so to be flown out to NY to meet the Cooking Channel was wild.

I have never been so nervous in my life as I was at that first meeting. I knew nothing of television and there I was at the Food Network in front of the Senior VP of Development. We chatted about why this movement in food was so particular and special. I shared why it meant something to me to give a voice to the incredible food finds I was uncovering around the world. Why I wanted to go from city-to-city showcasing amazing food pioneers who were changing the way we think about food. I successfully delivered some prepared jokes (I remember one about “bringing home the bacon…”), I was given some free Cooking Channel candy and we were off to the races. Shannon, Mike and I finished the day with a bottle of champagne.

Cut to several months later and we were in Buenos Aires, Argentina filming The Urban Grocer. We were meeting outstanding food players who were redefining their industry. And we were having a blast. It was at this moment that I knew I didn’t want to do anything else but make sure The Urban Grocer, as a concept, would excel. This experience was the equivalent of a wedding between my idea and me.

In April 2011 the show aired on Cooking Channel. Now, you have to understand, this was blood, sweat and tears. Pure love and passion went into making this show. We were so nervous but thrilled at what was happening. We had a lot of success and we had our share of not so nice reviews too (thanks, Facebook!). It was roller coaster and it lasted for the entire year of 2011 as the show aired nearly 40 times.

During this period, I downed a lot of Pepto Bismol and did a lot of soul searching. I believed thoroughly in what we were doing. I had a better grasp on how to do it, on what my voice was, where the gap in the food space was and how The Urban Grocer could fill it. I cultivated a strong brand identity and stronger personal voice during this time, but not before. It was a result of these ups and downs that The Urban Grocer grew-up.

Whatever would happen with the show, I knew we were in it for the long run. This wasn’t the end or the beginning of a career in television. This was the infant stage of an opportunity to create a game-changing food media brand targeting innovative players in food around the world. Creative, talented, global, young, urban: These aren’t words, they are our defining vision. And it is these words and the entire television experience that led us not only to what happened next but to where we are today.

To be continued…

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