Thrive Market Chief Executive Nick Green Talks Internet Groceries, Healthy Living, Food Equity, More In Interview

For Thrive Market CEO Nick Green, access to good food is personal.

Green grew up in the midwest in a middle class family. His mother, who’s Mexican-American, worked hard to get healthy, wholesome food on the table every day, but it wasn’t always an easy task. Without the modern marvel known as the internet to help guide them, Green’s family didn’t have the plethora of resources available nowadays on how to shop for healthful groceries. But Green’s mom was not to be deterred, as she watched her siblings and cousins cope with chronic conditions that were part about heritability and part about lifestyle. As Green explained to me in an interview earlier this week via videoconference, his mom’s overarching goal was to “break that generational cycle with our family.”

Almost three decades later, those experiences helped shape Green’s views on accessing good food and propelled him to start Thrive Market in 2014. His idea was there had to be other people facing similar circumstances to his growing up: a family, living in the middle of the country, surviving on a budget and perhaps not having a grocery store in close proximity nor healthy food options in terms of restaurants. That basic premise, Green told me, is what drives he and his team at Thrive Market to “[try to] break down every barrier to healthy living.” His company achieves this in two ways: financially and geographically. For the former, Green said Thrive Market’s membership model enables them to deliver products to customers at “significantly lower” prices compared to your typical supermarket. As to the latter, he noted Thrive Market has amassed over a million members that hail from coast to coast; 50% of its members live in the midwest or southeast, across every socioeconomic strata, with household incomes less than $100,000 annually. Green characterized Thrive Market’s user base as middle class families.

My conversation with Green coincided with the company’s recent announcement it now accepts SNAP EBT, colloquially known as food stamps, as a form of payment. Green said work on this has literally been years in the making, calling the news “a huge milestone for our business.” Until now, Thrive Market had devised a couple of what Green described as “workarounds” to help people more accessibly and affordably get groceries. One way is the donation of a membership, while another is called “Spread The Help,” whereby members pass along the savings on their bill to other people. Green said Thrive Market has raised a considerable sum, $13 million, towards these subsidies for people. All the while, he added, work was going on behind the proverbial scenes to officially be able to accept SNAP EBT recipients. Green told me there are 40 million Americans, 10 million of whom are children, who are on food stamps. Many come from marginalized and underrepresented groups and are single parents living in food deserts. People in these communities already have many factors stacked against them, Green said, and the company wants to alleviate their plight as much as possible by making it easier to find high quality, healthy food for their families.

Healthy living, Green told me, is not something favored only by the so-called coastal elites in San Francisco and New York. Everybody, regardless of their social status, wants to lead healthy lives. That Thrive Market now takes SNAP EBT is but one big way good food becomes more egalitarian. Moreover, as Green was very enthused to point out, it also serves Thrive Market’s ethos and business model to boot.

“We think it’s a big business opportunity, but even more so for our mission,” he said of taking food stamps. “Hopefully it opens the path for SNAP EBT recipients to have one more of those barriers broken down to having healthy, nutritious food available to them online.”

In a nutshell, what Thrive Market is all about is accessibility—in both senses of the word. In the literal sense, Green and team strive to make groceries more accessible to get their hands on. In the disability sense, which is more poignant for this column, Thrive Market makes groceries more accessible to those in the disability community. This, of course, is intertwined with technology. As Thrive Market exists only online, there is no brick-and-mortar location for someone to go to. For many disabled people, their health and/or logistical considerations may hinder their ability to grocery shop in-person at a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s or Safeway. Everyone needs food for sustenance, however, and the fact Thrive Market is a digital marketplace means a disabled person can use the app (available on iOS and Android) or the website to do their grocery shopping and rest comfortably in the notion everything will be brought right to their doorstep. This is yet another prime illustration of accessibility trumping convenience; most able-bodied people probably appreciate online shopping for how convenient it is. As Green said, that Thrive Market delivers may well be a “godsend” for many disabled people who are homebound or otherwise immobile. This is not a trivial matter, and is an example of how a basic activity most take for granted—online shopping—can actually be a life-changing assistive technology.

When asked why someone should choose Thrive Market as their grocer, Green told me there are multiple reasons. The main one, he said, is the company is “laser-focused on [offering] healthy and sustainable products.” Furthermore, Thrive Market isn’t in the business of being The Everything Store similar to Amazon; rather, Thrive Market “really wants to focus on the best items that have the highest quality standards that are sourced in the most ethical ways that respect the planet and our health for our bodies,” according to Green. To that end, green said the company relies heavily on artificial intelligence in helping people shop by learning their tendencies and even suggesting everyday essentials upon a person’s initial order. (This can also be an accessibility aid unto itself, insofar as helping someone with cognitive delays get started.)

“We’re helping people build those orders really fast [and breaking] down the barriers to building a healthy lifestyle,” Green said. “The way I often describe it is we’re purpose-built for healthy living… our goal is to break down every one of those barriers. Membership allows us to break it down from a financial standpoint, the curation allows us to break it down from the confusion, intimidation, and misinformation standpoint, because everything is high quality. Then the user experience breaks it down from an ease of access standpoint. That’s what makes us special.”

As to feedback, Green said the first thing Thrive Market’s customers rave about is how much money they save with the store. Especially for organic goods, prices are considerably less expensive compared to conventional retail. Moreover, Green said the platform itself has proven enticing for people to stay. In a nod to accessibility, he noted people have accepted online shopping as a thing they like; this has enabled them to be much more receptive about buying groceries on the internet because, as Green told me, “they realize how much easier it makes their life—to be able to know they’re shopping in a space where everything reaches this high quality bar [and] then filter the experience be personalized to their values, their health goals, and the needs of their family.” Finally, Green said many more people are becoming increasingly aware (and thus, appreciative) of Thrive Market’s sustainability goals, what with environmentally-friendly initiatives like carbon-neutral shipping and the like. Put together, Green said Thrive Market is helping people feel more like “they’re part of a community that aligns with their values.”

Looking towards the future, Green borrowed a metaphor from Apple CEO Tim Cook when telling me the company is still in the “early innings” of its game. He said Thrive Market is “just getting started” with its mission, citing how it took almost a decade to make SNAP EBT a reality, as well as how online grocery shopping has surged in popularity since the pandemic. Green and team are strong believers in the idea that people vote with their wallets and they want to do business with organizations like theirs that sit at the intersection of health and sustainability. Thrive Market, Green said, is steadfastly committed to providing genuine good for the world and will continue to innovate on ways to “break down those barriers” between people and good food.

“The future I envisioned is one where food equity really is a possibility… where it doesn’t matter where you live, it doesn’t matter what your income is, it doesn’t matter what your race or gender is, it doesn’t matter whether you’re able-bodied or not. Everybody will be able to have access to healthy products,” Green said of Thrive Market’s future. “We want to build a community where our paid members help support and sponsor or gets members where people can pay with the means of payment they have, including SNAP EBT, and where everyone is aware this option exists and therefore can get on and make the most of it. It’s a long way to go still… we’ve come a long way and we’re really proud of that. We’re not taking anything for granted, and we feel we’re just getting started.”