Interview #7: Michael Robinov

The way people shop for groceries is constantly changing. I had the pleasure of chatting with Michael Robinov, from Farm to People, which is one of the companies leading that shift. Thank you so much for joining, Michael! I am super excited to share this conversation.

This is the seventh conversation in an ongoing series with movers and shakers in the retail industry. Is there anyone you want to hear from? Please be sure to drop their names 👇

The following conversation has been lightly edited for context and clarity.

Michael Robinov: Farm to People is an online farmers market grocery delivery service. Our mission is to rebuild our food system from the soil up. We deliver seasonal produce, pasture-raised meats, and small-batch goods from local farmers and makers to homes across the New York City Tri-State area.

I grew up in this world. My dad opened some of the first natural food markets in the New York area back in the ’80s and ‘90s, and I spent my high school years working the Union Square Greenmarket. I started Farm to People with him and my co-founder Anina over a decade ago.

MR: The word I keep coming back to is intentional. People aren’t necessarily spending less on food, they’re reallocating. They’ll trade down on commodity items so they can trade up on what they actually care about: fresh produce, humanely raised protein, food with a story behind it.

The old one-store weekly stock-up keeps fragmenting. Our customers might buy paper towels from a big-box retailer and their vegetables, fish, and bread from us. Health is pulling baskets toward fresh and protein-forward eating, and trust matters more than ever. Shoppers increasingly want to know who grew their food and how it got to them. That’s a shift that plays directly to our strengths, but it raises the bar for everyone.

MR: Shorter, more transparent supply chains. For decades, grocery has optimized for shelf life and scale; the next five years will reward freshness, provenance, and resilience. Regional sourcing is becoming an operational advantage, not just a marketing story.

On AI: the biggest impact will be its impact on the unglamorous back office. Grocery runs on thin margins and perishable inventory, which is exactly where better forecasting and planning pay off. At Farm to People, AI is a tool for demand planning, data analysis and customer experience. Longer term, agentic shopping could reshape discovery and how we shop. If it does, trust and quality matter even more if an AI assistant fills your cart.

MR: For sure! Parts of the traditional model are totally ripe for disruption: supply chains built for shelf life over flavor, economics that depend on slotting fees and massive volume, and a middle tier of stores that are neither the cheapest nor the most special.

It’s always an exciting time when people are dissatisfied with the status quo and looking for something different. In the coming decade, the winners will either have enormous scale or a real point of view. What’s dying is the undifferentiated middle. The formats that feel alive right now, from great independent grocers to farmers markets to models like ours, all share one thing: a genuine relationship with the people they feed.

MR: How quickly regional food systems are becoming infrastructure rather than a niche. “Local” spent twenty years as a premium sticker. What’s underestimated is the operational case: shorter supply chains mean fresher product, fewer touch points, less waste, and less exposure to the shocks (climate, logistics, trade) that keep hitting the system.

MR: The pandemic was an accelerant for us. It changed people’s habits overnight. The permanent shift is that buying fresh food online stopped being weird. That psychological barrier broke in 2020. Home cooking also settled at a higher baseline than before, as did customers' expectation for convenience and flexibility.

The temporary part was the indiscriminate demand. In 2020, people accepted substitutions, waitlists, whatever was in stock. That grace period ended. Customers were retained because the food and the experience earned it. I think some companies mistakenly mistook pandemic demand for product-market fit.

MR: Depends. Retail that creates [a] connection is more vital than ever. But retail that competes on convenience alone is in a race to the bottom.

Food is the best proof. It’s the most frequent purchase there is and the most personal. The farmers market is one of the oldest retail formats in human history, and it’s still growing because it bundles groceries with community, discovery, and trust. That’s what we’ve tried to translate online. Customers tell us we’ve been part of their lives for a decade, through moves and marriages and kids. When retail earns that kind of place in people’s lives, it’s not just alive… it’s essential.

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