Forage's Ofek Lavian Is Solving the Food Insecurity Crisis
Elm's Evolv, Toast swaps white label deliverers, Cyber Monday stats
In the past few years, 3PDs and online grocers have finally embraced EBT / SNAP, also known as food stamps, with the likes of DoorDash and Uber Eats seemingly onboarding new participating merchants, and additional regions, every other week. This is great news for the 42 million Americans that rely on these benefits, with that number likely to grow as access rises and stigmas fall. One company, Forage, can take much of the credit for that growth, as it powers the backends of everyone from Albertsons to Gopuff, Giant Eagle to Uber Eats, and from Meijer to Thrive Market. We caught up with Ofek Lavian, the company’s founder and CEO, to learn more about his company’s vital mission.
Before we get to Ofek’s interview, we’ve got some other big news to mark the mid-week, including an eye-catching new delivery vehicle, a white label delivery battle rocking Toast’s merchants, and stats on Cyber Monday sales.
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Today:
Elm’s Eye-Catching EVOLV Secures Financing
Toast Swaps from DoorDash Drive to Uber Direct
Chart Time | A Muddled Cyber Monday?
Forage Powers More Equitable Access to Nutrition
VEHICLES | Elm Mobility Scores Financing for EVOLV Deliverer
British startup Elm Mobility, a joint venture between engineering firm Prodrive and the designers at Astheimer, have secured financing from banking giant Barclays to bring their new EVOLV vehicle to pilot. The L7e-classified vehicle can transport goods that meet the popular 1.6 meter Euro-pallet spec; Elm is set to produce 10 vehicles for client testing, with large-scale production due in 2028.
The Big Picture: L7e is the EU classification for a “heavy quadricycle,” meaning the EVOLV must weigh under 600 kg (1323 lbs) and stick to speeds of under 90 km/h (56 mph,) which Elm claims makes for a vehicle that’s 42% smaller than a compact van, while carrying the same cargo load. “Whilst other small, last-mile vehicles exist, EVOLV is addressing a gap in the market for a light-weight e-vehicle that can carry a Euro pallet, the most widely used exchange pallet globally. Unmatched for capacity and efficiency, and backed by two leaders in the auto industry, ELM Mobility will have a strong offering for a growing, last-mile and low-carbon delivery market,” notes Steven Poulter, Head of Principal Structuring and Investments at Barclays.
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WHITE LABEL | Toast Switches from DoorDash Drive to Uber Direct
White label delivery is by its nature discreet… the whole idea is for the 3PDs to more or less hide their brand, so the merchant or marketplace can just tap into their fleet of deliverers with the push of a button (or an API call.) So folks almost didn’t notice that POS giant Toast has quietly switched from using DoorDash Drive to Uber Direct. Toast quietly announced the change to its merchants in October, but the effects continue to linger. Restaurateurs have complained that they haven’t been informed of the change, while Toast reps admit that basic features like an FAQ haven’t been updated.
The Big Picture: Toast claims the change is a boon for its merchants, with per-order fees falling from $7.49 to $6.99, while offering enhanced abilities like a customizable delivery radius. Toast’s vendor tools set a default delivery fee of just $3.99, meaning merchants will still need to be cautious when calculating how delivery impacts their bottom line. While some merchants are still uncertain if they’ve been transferred from DoorDash to Uber, and others worried the change may inadvertently violate exclusivity contracts they’ve signed, Toast’s sloppy rollout is an important reminder of the value of over-communicating with your customers.
CHART TIME | Cyber Monday Stalls for Some
Cyber Week may still be going strong (remember to score our Curbivore ticket deal) but the “big weekend” is officially over, and new NRF data shows that total shoppers actually fell YoY, from 200.4 million to 197M. The top shopping destinations during Thanksgiving weekend were department stores (42%), online (42%), grocery stores and supermarkets (40%), clothing and accessories stores (37%) and discount stores (32%). Meanwhile, Adobe Analytics found that Black Friday shoppers spent a record $10.8 billion this year, up 10% YoY. Cyber Monday spending rose 7% to $13.3 billion. Mobile devices powered a record 57% of all online sales. Amazon hit a new sales record, while Walmart also noted that its third-party merchants enjoyed their best sales ever.
INTERVIEW | Forage’s Ofek Lavian Wants to Make SNAP Access Easy
Modern Delivery: Tell us about Forage, what’s your main product and your purpose as a company?
Ofek Lavian: 42 million Americans receive government assistance (EBT SNAP, FKA food stamps) to afford groceries. Hundreds of billions of dollars in these benefits are disbursed every year, and while shopping with EBT SNAP in-store has been accepted for decades, using those same benefits online is challenging. To this day, less than a percent of eligible retailers accept SNAP online, and a small, but rapidly growing, fraction of SNAP benefits are being used online. We founded Forage to solve this problem, and are the only USDA-approved third-party payment processor (TPP) that enables retailers to accept EBT SNAP and EBT Cash through a single integration. Our best-in-class EBT product, combined with an in-house team of SNAP experts guiding retailers through government approval, has made Forage the definitive EBT market leader. We are a mission-driven company, and our mandate is to democratize access to government benefits and feed families in need.
You worked in payments at both Uber and Instacart, what was it you saw there that inspired you to solve this problem?
I previously was the Head of Payments Product at Instacart, where my team and I built, launched, and scaled EBT, from scratch, into a multi-billion dollar business. At the time, I pleaded with the best payment companies in the world - Stripe, Braintree, among others - to build an integration that would enable EBT for Instacart. After being rejected, I instead was forced to partner with a legacy payments provider, where our EBT integration took more than 18 months to complete. Launching EBT SNAP for each retailer further requires careful approval by U.S. regulators, and even after 4 years of launching EBT, Instacart has only enabled ~10% of its retailers. Building modern payments infrastructure for low-income Americans is sorely needed, and it is the driving force behind inspiring me to found Forage and solve for it full-time.
What’s it been like building your own startup, as opposed to working at an established business that already has tens of thousands of employees and billions in revenue?
It really is all about the mission. The talent density at Forage is better than anywhere I’ve ever worked, and it’s because our mission’s gravitational pull attracts exceptional people … coming all the way from fintech and ‘Big Tech’ to grocers and the public sector. I’ve had the privilege of hiring some of the best and brightest people I’ve ever known, and working with them every day is an extraordinary privilege. We’ve expanded from 10 to 45 Foragers in the span of a single year, and the growth we’ve seen - in headcount, payments volume, and families fed - is exponential. Achieving and witnessing hyper-inflection in real-time is awe-inspiring, and something you can’t get at a mature company.
Forage has some pretty impressive merchant partners – DoorDash, Uber, Albertsons, Gopuff – how do you pitch these giant organizations and get them to trust an upstart business like yours?
At Forage, we’ve built the market-leading product for EBT payments. We pride ourselves on building a premium product, with best-in-class uptime, reliability, anti-fraud capabilities, and dashboard analytics. Our customers are eager to scale their EBT business, and believe Forage will help them unlock their full potential. We also personally guide and advise our retailers on achieving USDA authorization, and have played a critical role in accelerating approval and go-live.
Can you give some insights into traction, how many payments or customers are transacting through Forage each month?
We have signed hundreds of contracts representing billions of dollars in EBT volume. From leading platforms like Uber and DoorDash to local mom-and-pop shops, Forage is enabling EBT SNAP for retailers of all shapes and sizes. We are growing +200% MoM, feeding thousands of families every day, and are on track to launching new retailers every month … all while scaling existing partners like Gopuff, Uber, DoorDash, and Toast (among many others).
We think it’s pretty noble to help the 42 million or so Americans that use SNAP EBT, but some of your company literature – “Democratizing access to government benefits” – suggests even bigger ambitions. What comes next?
Our customers are already asking us to enable, integrate, and launch additional restricted payment methods. Ultimately, our long-term vision revolves around best serving millions of undeserved Americans. The product we’ve already built for EBT SNAP solves for challenges highly analogous to other restricted payment methods, collectively representing trillions in U.S. government spending. We are strongly positioned to continue to build and innovate in this space, and yes, absolutely – our mission, now and always, is to democratize access to government benefits. We’re beginning with EBT SNAP… and we’re just getting started.
A Few Good Links
DoorDash adds Five Below, David’s Bridal and Sports Basement. Hungriest Canadian got 176 poutines delivered. Instacart Health adds SCAN Health Plan. Non-alcoholic drinks and international ingredients on the rise. Pizza Hut gets into kiosks and drive-thrus. College campuses love boba robots. NY truck dealers push back against EV mandate. Verity drones come for UPS warehouses. Best Buy worries about tariffs. Dunnhumby ranks top natural grocers. Iconic hot dog retailer Pink’s looks to the future. Deliverect buys Tabesto. Deliveroo adds incognito delivery for forgetful holiday gift givers. Shared micromobility could replace 50% of English commutes. Revel adds TNC-focused EV chargers at JFK. Bolt launches Urban Fund. Workhorse electric vans head to FedEx in Minneapolis. USPS electric vans catch on. JOCO almost died. Unions challenge Amazon delivery service partner model. Walmart finalizes Vizio deal. Glovo Spain shifts to employees. GoTo Gojek revenue projections up.
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