Our Story

---

 That time is filled with birthdays, double shifts, awkward first dates, and quiet late-night leftovers, yet the systems that move food to the plate are often invisible and brittle. The commercial food supply chain shapes those moments long before anyone sits down at a table.

 A handful of broadliners and intermediaries often decide what shows up on menus, which producers get a chance, and how much risk restaurants must carry when something breaks. When those systems fail, operators, workers, and guests pay the price.
 

 Six years ago, we founded Artisan Affiliated with the intention of transforming how restaurants connect to the people who grow, move, and make their food. What began as a plan to build better software became a broader investigation into power, choice, and resilience in food. 

 Their scale gives them leverage to limit options, control information, and resist any change that might introduce more transparency or choice into the system. The more we learned, the clearer it became that real change would require independent, rigorous research into how the commercial food chain actually works.​ 

 We listen to operators, drivers, warehouse teams, and small producers, collect their stories and data, and build experiments that test how modern logistics, data, and automation can reduce waste, protect workers, and expand choice without dehumanizing anyone. Each pilot is a question about what a fairer, more resilient system could look like, not a foregone conclusion 

 Imagine a supply chain where local producers can compete on real terms, restaurants are not punished for trying something new, and technology serves people instead of the other way around. That is the world we are working toward, one careful study and one honest partnership at a time