Jasmine Crowe-Houston is scaling her efforts to combat food insecurity.

As AFROTECH™ previously reported, she is the founder of the Atlanta, GA-based startup Goodr, which leverages technology to reduce food waste and distribute it to those in need.

“[Goodr] uses technology to solve hunger — that’s our big focus. I think we are taking a radically different approach to how this country solves hunger and food waste,” she previously told AFROTECH™ in an interview. “A lot of times people say to me, ‘How is this a business? How can this be profitable?’ But the main thing is people have to understand that billions of dollars get spent every year on food insecurity and trying to make sure people have access to food. But, it typically only goes to the same organizations.”

She continued, “And what we’re trying to do is come in and kind of disrupt that and say, ‘Listen, we’re getting a lot wrong about solving hunger if we’re always going to give money to the same people. We’re going to keep on having the same results.’ Give Goodr a chance to come in and do what we do, which is innovate and use technology and data to solve this problem at scale. That’s what I’m hoping will continue to happen for us.”

Goodr secured $8 million in funding for its efforts in 2022 in a round led by Precursor Ventures and with participation from Collab Capital, Gratitude Railroad, Emerson Collective, Backstage Capital, Innovations For Impact, and other investors, per a press release on its website.

Thanks to the startup’s impact, several projects have emerged, including a mobile grocery store and free grocery stores at Ronald E. McNair Middle School in partnership with rapper Gunna in 2021 and at Gideon’s Elementary earlier this year.

Goodr will continue to scale its work, which includes delivering over 1.3 million pounds of food from landfills and aiding nearby communities with more than 1 million meals, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

The company has leased a nearly 10,000-square-foot industrial park located near the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, GA, per the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Crowe-Houston aims to expand the company into disaster relief with the new property and extend Goodr’s reach with food manufacturers.

“I can’t over describe how big of a deal that is to be able to accept truckloads of items,” Crowe-Houston said, per the outlet. “We’re going to be able to do a lot more work feeding more people. We’ve always been kind of a scrappy startup company. So it’s been a blessing.”