Jesse Leadbetter & Erin Bradley: Freshlist (Charlotte, NC)

There is some delicious restaurant cooking happening in Charlotte, NC, and when I talk to many of the chefs responsible for it, more often than not, they point to Freshlist as one of their day-to-day partners making that possible. CEO Jesse Leadbetter was in sports licensing when he started growing his own food and it opened his eyes to the supply chain issues connecting Carolina farms to Carolina restaurants. So, he decided to build that connection. Freshlist is a food hub, started in 2014 to shift food production back to small-scale family farmers. Jesse and and his team, including director of operations and farm coordinator Erin Bradley, connect both home cooks and professional chefs to the products of more than 200 local farmers. Chefs (and those in Freshlist's delivery area) simply use an app to order fruits and vegetables from a variety of local farms, and then Freshlist delivers. In short, they've built a virtual farmers market,, and they're part of a growing number of food hubs in the country doing just this. But what happens at Freshlist and other food hubs isn't just about getting the right cantaloupe to the right chef -- it's about building community and strengthening it, one fruit and vegetable at a time.