We believe there should be a higher standard for everyday products.

There was a time not that long ago when "better-for-you" products and clean label choices weren't accessible to most people. You had to go out of your way to special stores. That's not the case today. More and more people can now access clean label products everywhere they shop. While this change is a good (okay, great) thing, people now have far more options and choices to make when shopping for everyday products than they have time to sort them out. That got our founder David Mayer thinking: In our current "there's an app for that&qupt; world, how come there wasn't already an app to help people navigate this new consumer reality?

Then David met Joe. Before becoming a Co-Founder of Merryfield, Joe led the Global Quality Standards Team at Whole Foods Market. Joe's team set the quality standards for the products sold in their 500+ stores across the country, and Joe played a key role in developing industry-leading standards like USDA Organic and The Non-GMO Project Verified program.

All of us are more aware than ever before about what goes into the food and products that we buy. People want products using ingredients that don't harm people or the planet. Most are concerned about potentially harmful ingredients or unnecessary chemicals and often we don't trust companies to be transparent or put consumer health and safety ahead of company needs.

People want products using ingredients that don't harm people or the planet.

David and Joe agree that without store-wide standards at most every grocery store, the onus is now on all of us to research and read every product label on our own. Choosing well among all these new product options has become our responsibility as shoppers. Those of us that want to know what's in the products we buy and which brands to trust are being asked to do work in stores. It's work that wasn't expected of people that shopped at those special stores. Surely, our Co-Founders thought, there already had to be an app to help people filter their options and make it easier for people to know which brands they can trust — then reward them for supporting them with their purchasing power.

Unfortunately, the only apps they saw were digital coupon apps, most of which were still mainly promoting the types of products with ingredients people are increasingly trying to avoid. That felt like a missed opportunity.

So, David and Joe decided to start a company and make an app that could help people trust what they're buying without doing hours of research and getting overwhelmed by all the information and options before them. They set out to make something new, something better, something they'd like to use themselves: An app that would reward clean label shopping. What would that look like? A few things for sure:

It shouldn't be so much work just to avoid chemicals and potentially harmful ingredients, right?

David Mayer, Founder & CEO, Merryfield.