Foodstalk was founded by Tyler Mintz in 2010. Farming has run in the Mintz family for four generations starting with his great-grandmother, Barbra, from Hungary. In the early 70s Tyler’s father, Andrew, worked as an Agricultural Extension Agent in cocoa production in Colombia. When he returned to the States, Andrew started to farm organically on his own gentleman’s farm, before organic was “cool.” On land once used as an apple storage facility, the Mintz family farm was home to the community’s “u-pick” raspberry patch among other vegetables, honey bees and some livestock like chickens, ducks and goats.

Growing up, Tyler was surrounded by small-scale agriculture and livestock. His childhood was full of picking berries, making and jarring tomato sauce, getting eggs from the hen house, feeding animals and watering crops. From ages 12 to 17 Tyler was sent to live with his grandparents every summer to work at the family bakery, The Nantucket Bakeshop. There he sliced thousands of loaves of bread while working side by side with three generations of his family. Of the many Mintz family rules, two stood out and heavily influenced Tyler’s attitude toward food: “Make sure to be home for dinner,” & “You have to try every food at least once.”

When Tyler moved to an urban environment in 2001, he realized not everyone grew up eating home-grown food for dinner. People in Brooklyn weren’t going to their backyard to fetch the eggs for breakfast. Baffled by the distant relationship between people and their food in NYC, Tyler founded Foodstalk.