This YouTube interview (Natalie Jill with Gunnar Lovelace, founder of Thrive Market) traces the origins and mission of Thrive Market: Gunnar's early exposure to food co-ops inspired grassroots group-buying experiments that scaled into an online membership marketplace. Thrive negotiates direct agreements with brands (about 500 brands) to cut out middlemen and lower prices, enforces product standards (non-GMO and other filters), tags products with roughly 80 qualities to support dietary filters, and pairs paid memberships with donated memberships to groups in need (e.g., teachers—10,000 memberships given away in one week). The conversation emphasizes accessibility, transparency, and the social mission behind making healthy products affordable.
Questions this video answers
500 brands ("We literally went one by one to 500 brands").
Products must be free of GMOs (non-genetically modified).
About 80 qualities/tags ("we tag every product that we have by like 80 qualities").
For every paid membership, Thrive Market gives a membership away to a low-income family, a school teacher, or a military veteran.
10,000 memberships ("last week we gave away 10,000 memberships to public school teachers").
Chapters
Hi, guys. Natalie, Jill here, and I'm so excited because today I'm with Ginar, who is the founder of Thrive Market. I know I asked you a lot of questions before, but I want to do this again for my audience, and I'm still curious about quite a bit. So I guess take us back a little bit about you and why you founded Thrive Market.
It's a very, very personal mission for me personally. I grew up with a single mom, and I saw how hard she worked to make healthy choices. And then actually she remarried later in my teenage years, my stepfather, who was running a food co op. So I got to see firsthand the power of group buying as a way to make healthy food more affordable.
I want to get into more of what a food co op is first, because I know to us, we know what that is, but somebody listening to us right now may not know, and I want to take them back so they can fully appreciate the whole story here. So what is a food co op?
Yeah, I mean, effectively, it's a group buying club where people can access healthy food for less.
Yes. And a lot of people don't have that food co op in their neighborhood or even know what that is, or they don't have healthy and natural food stores nearby.
Correct.
They're too costly. So what were some of the things that happened before you actually started Thrive Market that turned into this incredible, incredible space and reaching so many people? How did you go from having the idea of, I want to help people and co op and to this, to this big market?
How did that happen? It was actually really organic. I would just, like, pick a brand that I really loved, and I would offer it to my friends on Facebook and say, hey, who wants to buy this brand this month at wholesale prices?
Okay.
And I would literally go set up up a wholesale account with that brand, and then I would just put it out to my friends and say, who wants to buy it? And there was so much demand for that that I was like, wow, this is like the demand for being able to access these healthy living products.
Did people start requesting brands like, hey, can you get this one?
Can you get this one? And then it was like, it just snowballed, and it was obvious that there is an opportunity to create a platform online where people could access all of their favorite brands.
So how did that happen? How did you go from, I'm gonna help my friends, I'm gonna get the brands they want, the ones that I like to. To I'm gonna take this online and really reach more people.
I Mean, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, so I'm always like, if there's demand, I'm always thinking about that. So for me, the idea of making a business around making healthy food less expensive is a really exciting thing.
I look at thrive now, and I think Thrive market as it's almost like the Costco of Whole Foods and farmer's market combined. That's kind of how I would. Maybe I'm not describing it right, but it's like this massive reach, but. And then you can just do it online, which is so, so cool because everyone's online.
Yeah. I mean, it makes it easy. Right.
So did you ever expect it to get as big as it did? Was that always your vision?
Yeah, I mean, we wanted to take it big. I didn't expect it to go as fast as it's gone. The beautiful thing about health and wellness is it transcends the normal, like, divisions in this country. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, liberal or conservative, if you're an investment banker or like a fitness coach, like, everybody wants to be healthy. Everybody wants the same thing for their children. So to be able to make these products available for less, we knew it was going to be big.
So it's interesting because I think everybody out there would say, okay, I get the value of healthy living, I get the value of healthy foods. But then right away you get into. It could be so expensive. I don't have access to them. They're too far. You know, my kids won't like the taste. I'm just thinking of the things that I hear. I think it is knowledge to some, but there's just so much out there where people, they want to do healthy and the right things for their family and their kids and themselves, but they don't have that access. So how does thrive help address that?
We literally went one by one to 500 brands and put agreements in place to sell their products into a membership community. And what that does is it allows us, by having a direct relationship with the brands, it allows us to cut out all the middlemen. And so by cutting out all the middlemen, we're able to make the prices so much better.
You pass the savings on to the market?
Yeah, we pass the savings along to our consumer.
I also love. I think there's a lot of information overload out there, and it's very hard for the average consumer to go into a regular grocery store and pick up food and read labels and know what they're actually getting. And what I also love about your concept and thrive market is the standard of the products that you allow in, whether it's for skin care or cleaning products or food that you're eating, all of it, you have standards. Can we talk a little bit about that and what you look for?
I think that, I mean, the product has to be free of GMOs.
Okay, so all GMO, non GMO, no genetically modified.
No genetically modified. And all of the related, like chemicals that would come in that process. And then we merchandise the catalog in such a way that you can filter quickly based upon your preferences. So if you're really into like paleo or gluten free or vegan or raw, whatever it is that you're interested in, you can instantly sort the entire catalog. And then we tag every product that we have by like 80 qualities. So if you're like, I can't have anything that has any risk of allergens for my children.
Yeah, that's huge.
You can instantly just filter the entire category.
You say, I just want things that are no nuts or no gluten. You must have some feel good moments, like some people's lives you changed or some success stories you've heard that you didn't even know. I mean, I always love that when I hear that something I've done has really changed somebody and I didn't even realize it until they tell me anything you want to share with that.
I mean, we get stories every day from people, but our model is for every paid membership, we give a membership away to a low income family, a school teacher or a military veteran.
That's great. I love that. It always bothers me when someone does say, well, if you have such a mission, then why do you charge your membership? Well, hello, so much of what you do is free and giving and sharing and you're not trying to make a profit on that. So I do support businesses making some money to sustain. Of course you have to. So I think that's a very reasonable fee. And I love that you're giving back and giving other families and we have.
A real way for families. This week, for example, last week we gave away 10,000 memberships to public school teachers.
Wow. So I think this is fabulous and I love your whole mission. I love what you've done. And I think this is a true, true story of somebody that really is taking their knowledge, their experiences and giving back and helping others reach the goal of being, I would say, happy, healthy and fit. Because that's what you're helping with. Eating the healthy way and having the non chemical, non toxic cleaners, everything. It's all a part of us being healthier.
So thank you so much for this, so appreciate it. For me it's like the critical thing is why do products with lots of chemicals and processing cost less than ones with no chemicals and processing?
That's not fair.
It's just like totally backwards. And the truth is that when we vote with our dollars and we support conscious companies, the prices come down and, and that's really what it's about. So like we're together, you know, when we work together to do this, we're actually making a huge shift that makes it easier and easier for people over time. So really appreciate your support.
Thank you Ginar so much for joining me. Thank you and sharing your story and your honor, it was awesome. I hope you found this informative and interesting. You can learn more about all of this@nataliejillfitness.com Thrivemarket.
