A Lancaster tech agency with a penchant for sustainability and innovation, and a taste for fresh, seasonal food, is preparing to launch an app that will serve as a virtual farmers market.
“Fresh” carried Williams Forrest , in partnership with kbs+, a New York agency, to a win at last month's Sustainability Hackathon sponsored by BMW i. Now Williams Forrest is taking Fresh to market in March as a mobile app, website and through social media, says Louise Barr, the company's chief marketing officer.
Fresh will allow small farms, farm stands and other producers to post what is fresh and available and consumers to post where they found the juiciest tomatoes or the freshest eggs. The initial launch will focus on Lancaster County's bounteous agriculture, and Williams Forrest hopes in time to expand the concept to a larger geography.
Fresh is the first app to be developed by Williams Forrest, which was founded in 2007 and offers web design and development, quality assurance and other digital marketing services. Underlying all their work, Barr emphasizes, is a company ethos of sustainability.
With clients including BMW North America, Hewlett Packard and Puma, Williams Forrest has outgrown its space and is moving to larger quarters in Lancaster in the spring. The company has 17 employees and anticipates adding three to five new positions in the next six months. Besides releasing Fresh in the New Year, the company is also gearing up for a launch of an internal app for Hewlett Packard using Microsoft's SharePoint application, a new specialty area.
Source: Louise Barr, Williams Forrest
Writer: Elise Vider