In 2010 after living and working in California, Andrew and his wife moved to Florida with their dog Chloe. Seeing that Chloe wasn’t adjusting well to condo living, Andrew would bring in patches of sod for her to use on the balcony as a doggy potty. Despite enjoying the feel of the natural grass, this process soon got messy. From this, the idea of paying someone for the service to produce and deliver a natural grass patch was born.
With the support of family and friends, Andrew started Fresh Patch from a 200 sq ft storage unit. He delivered his hydroponically grown, Fresh Patch Grass pads from his own car. It was a slow start, but the feedback from his early customers kept him improving and developing the product and service.
Where did the idea for Fresh Patch come from?
It really was just one of those aha moments. And I'm so lucky I had it. I really was just solving a problem that I was having with my own dog. And when I had the solution, I just thought, you know, it's probably a lot of other people out there that would be willing to pay for something like this. And luckily, I was right.
Were you involved in a business before Fresh patch? If so, tell us about it.
I wasn't. I did study finance and environmental science in college and university. But, after college, I actually worked as an actor for seven or eight years. I worked on commercials, television shows, some movies, but mostly commercials. But one big thing you guys might know is the Train song “Hey, soul sister”. I was that guy cast in that music video, which ended up being the number one song in 2010. So that was pretty cool.
Did you imagine you'd be in business always?
No, no. I really enjoyed working as an actor. I made good money. When working on commercials around 2008 or 2009, there was a writer strike. And the industry kind of slowed down a lot. And that's when I kind of shifted gears. I was thinking maybe I should do something else around that time. And I'm glad maybe that happened. Because I'm pretty happy doing what I'm doing now.
How did I find out about Blend?
Well, I needed to upgrade my theme, which is Turbo from out of Out of the Sandbox. And I was just doing an online search to see what kind of agencies or services there were to get that done. I came across Blend, and I reached out to them, and agreed to work with them on upgrading the theme.
What was my impression of Blend when I first spoke with the team?
I've always been impressed with Blend. They have a very well rounded team. Everyone's friendly and they're nice to get along with. And you don't get that kind of run around you get when you deal with the bigger agencies. You know, I can send an email and usually hear back pretty quickly. You guys are in a different time zone, but I usually hear back pretty fast. And we're happy with that.
What were we originally looking for?
We originally wanted to get the theme updated. But we've since worked on site speed, SEO and we currently work on email marketing. And we work with Blend to get other custom projects done.
What's been the biggest win since working with Blend?
I guess the biggest win is that before working with Blend, I was on my own when I ran into website issues. We don't have our own in-house web person. So now, you know, if something pops up on the website, I can reach out to Blend and they're almost always able to help me out quickly and at a reasonable price. And we're always pretty happy with with that.
What changes have you noticed since you started working with blend and how they operate as a company?
Well, it's been a couple of years now that I've been working with Blend and they definitely seem to be growing. I'm always seeing some new employees around so they're obviously doing something right over there. And so we highly recommend working with Blend. And we're very lucky we found them.
Published: January 19, 2021
Last updated: November 16, 2023
