How Josh Domingues Built Flashfood: From Losing His Only 2 Customers to $1.5M ARR in a Year

TL;DR: Flashfood is a mobile marketplace that lets grocery stores discount food nearing the end of its shelf life — usually up to 50% off — instead of throwing it out, with shoppers paying and reserving it in an app and picking it up in-store the same day. It was founded in 2016 by solo founder Josh Domingues, a former hockey-agency family-office manager with no grocery or food background. After two and a half years of pitching grocers, Flashfood ran small pilots with two retail chains and lost both of them because the ROI wasn't big enough at their scale. Then, in 2018, Loblaws — one of Canada's largest grocers — signed on with the exact same product, and Flashfood went from 3 stores to 400 in six weeks and roughly $1.5 million in ARR within a year, as Josh shared on the show. Flashfood later raised a $12.3 million Series A in February 2022 led by S2G Ventures, and as of August 2026 it partners with more than 2,000 grocery stores across North America and reports having helped shoppers save over $370 million. Josh moved into the Executive Chairman role in January 2025 when Nicholas Bertram was named CEO. He told the whole story on The Product Market Fit Show.

What does Flashfood do?

Every grocery store throws away food. At the end of each day there's a shelf of produce, meat, dairy and bakery items with two or three days of shelf life left — not spoiled, just not what a shopper reaching to the back of the shelf will pick. Historically, stores donated it, recycled it, or paid a waste-management company, by weight, to haul it away.

Flashfood's product is simple: store staff mark that food down and post it in the app; shoppers get a notification, pay through their phone, and pick it up in-store the same day.

"So we took the discount food rack, made it look cool, put it on your cell phone and all the foods up to 50% off. Most of it is 50% off." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

The business model is a take rate: Flashfood takes a percentage of every sale and remits the rest to the retailer. For a grocery chain running on 2-3% margins, that's money the store was already throwing away, now landing straight on the bottom line — plus lower disposal costs, since haulers charge by tonnage.

Notably, the company doesn't lead with the environmental pitch anymore, though Josh assumed food waste and sustainability would be the hook.

"The market that we're in, people, consumers buying food care about affordability. So we actually went through like a full rebrand a couple times through the iteration, but our most recent was probably two years ago now. And it was more about the joy of landing a deal and what you can provide for your family." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

Key stat: As of August 2026, Flashfood reports partnering with more than 2,000 grocery stores across North America, having diverted more than 175 million pounds of food and helped shoppers save over $370 million — figures the company has published itself.

Who founded Flashfood?

Flashfood was founded by Josh Domingues, and it wasn't an obvious path into grocery tech. Before Flashfood, he worked in banking and then ran a family office for NHL players — handling cross-border tax, pensions and the day-to-day financial affairs of professional athletes. He'd also already tried and failed to start a Wealthsimple-style robo-advisor business, and told himself that the next time he had real conviction, he'd go all in without a fallback plan.

The idea for Flashfood came from his sister, a chef, who called him distraught after a catering event.

"She's like, I just threw out $4,000 worth of food. And I'm like, you are an idiot, why would you do that? She's like... this feeling sucks. I feel horrible." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

That call sent him down a research rabbit hole, and in March 2016 he read a National Geographic article that crystallized the problem's size — food waste, if it were a country, would be the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions behind the US and China. Within a month or two he quit his job and went all in, no salary, on an idea he'd validated mostly by talking to strangers on Facebook.

How much has Flashfood raised?

• ~$450,000 CAD, raised around the end of 2016, before the first pilot store — Josh's figure on the show. The first app version cost about $15,000 to build.
• ~$750,000, raised around November 2017, including $100,000 in non-dilutive prize money from winning Startup Fest in Montreal, leaving $753,000 in the bank. Flashfood also went through the Techstars accelerator around this period.
• A $3 million Seed round led by General Catalyst, which closed at the end of 2018 — the same period the Loblaws deal was signed — as Josh shared on the show.
• A $12.3 million Series A, announced in February 2022, led by S2G Ventures, with participation from ArcTern Ventures and existing investors including General Catalyst and Food Retail Ventures — verified as of February 2022 via multiple outlets including BetaKit and Grocery Dive.

Despite those rounds, Josh has been candid that the company nearly ran out of money more than once. By the time the $3 million seed round closed, he personally had accumulated real debt keeping the company afloat.

"By the time we raised our seed round of 3 million, I had like 35K of line of credit debt, five grand of credit card debt and like no money in my bank account." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

There's no evidence of a funding round after the 2022 Series A as of this writing (September 2026); recent news has been leadership changes and retail expansion, not new capital.

Losing his only two customers: the two-and-a-half-year grind

Before any grocer would say yes, Josh spent roughly two and a half years being told no. His validation process leaned on cheap, fast, slightly unhinged tests rather than research decks. He posted the idea in a 60,000-person Toronto Facebook trading group and got dozens of comments within hours. Then he set up a small table on a busy downtown Toronto corner with about $200 worth of near-expiry groceries, priced at a dollar each, with no permits and no ads.

"I put it at a dollar, a dollar per item and it was like within like 20 minutes everything was sold." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

That test, plus a janky first pilot at a Western University campus — a pizza party that converted roughly a third of attendees into repeat app users despite a fully manual, no-notifications process — convinced him consumer demand was real. The much harder problem was getting a grocer to say yes at all.

He got his first retail partner, Farm Boy in London, Ontario, by finding an executive's number in his email signature after weeks of being ignored, cold-calling him, and inventing a reason to be in the city that Friday. That grew to three Farm Boy stores plus three more at a second retailer. After roughly a year, both partners walked away — not because the pilots failed, but because neither chain was big enough for the payoff to matter.

"Look, the ROI is just not that high for all of our stores to do this. Like we only have 30 locations. I'm like, it's just not enough money." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

Losing both of his only customers, with no other pilots in motion, is the moment Josh has said he was ready to shut the company down. (Farm Boy was later acquired by Sobeys for almost $900 million, as Josh noted on the show — a sale he believes explains why Farm Boy needed its footprint clean rather than carrying pilot programs into the deal.)

The Loblaws breakthrough: same product, a company big enough to feel it

What changed wasn't the product. Josh is explicit about this when asked directly whether he'd altered anything about Flashfood between the failed small-chain pilots and the deal that finally worked.

"Nothing. Literally nothing changed. Nothing changed." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

What changed was the size of the counterparty. Through a former Farm Boy executive, Josh got in front of the person who ran Loblaws' entire discount division in mid-2018 and gave her the same pitch and metrics: roughly 70% of posted food sold, 25-30% net-new shoppers, and those shoppers spending two to three times more on full-price groceries than on the discounted items. Four Loblaws stores went live in September 2018. By January 2019, that was 400 stores in six weeks. By mid-2019, 750.

The economics only worked at that scale, Josh argues: at a 30-location chain, the total dollars are trivial to a busy executive's limited attention. At Loblaws' scale, the same waste becomes material money.

"These companies can lose $20 million in the couch in a year. Like even with the massive ROI that we're driving, now it's material." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

That single relationship took Flashfood from effectively no meaningful revenue to roughly $1 to $1.5 million in ARR within a year, Josh estimates — the number the episode title references — with the General Catalyst seed round closing at the same moment the Loblaws deal was signed.

Key stat: In the pilots that led to Loblaws, Flashfood was selling about 70% of all posted food, with 25-30% of buyers being net-new shoppers who spent two to three times more on full-price groceries during the same visit — Josh's figures on the show.

Key lessons from Josh Domingues's playbook

1. Try to get to "no" before you quit your job. Josh's early-stage rule was to actively hunt for the reason his idea wouldn't work — a sidewalk table, a Facebook post, a pizza party — rather than build first and find out later. If he couldn't manufacture a clear no, he kept going. 2. The same product can fail at one company size and win at another. Nothing about Flashfood changed between the retailers that dropped it and the one that scaled it to 750 stores in a year. What changed was whether the ROI was big enough to be worth an executive's limited attention. 3. Losing your only customers isn't always the end of the story. Josh has said he was ready to shut the company down after both pilot retailers walked away. The Loblaws deal that saved the business came from a warm introduction he was chasing anyway. 4. In enterprise sales, the champion's incentives matter as much as your ROI. Josh's read is that people rarely risk their careers for a vendor's upside — but several early Flashfood champions got promoted for backing the program, which he thinks mattered as much as the numbers. 5. Prove seriousness with a costly signal, not a pitch. To convince a reluctant first CTO to join full-time, Josh signed a three-year lease on a Liberty Village loft with only $50,000 in the bank and furnished it from Kijiji — before there was a real reason to have an office at all.

"I wasn't afraid to fail on this 'cause it was just too important." — Josh Domingues, Flashfood

For more on landing the first big accounts that make or break an early-stage company, see how B2B startups find their first customers, what it takes to land a first enterprise customer, and why founder-led sales works before you can afford a sales team. For another Canadian founder who took on entrenched incumbents, see how Neo Financial built a challenger bank after the SkipTheDishes exit.

FAQ: Flashfood

Q: What is Flashfood? A: Flashfood is a mobile marketplace app that lets grocery stores discount food nearing the end of its shelf life — usually up to 50% off — instead of throwing it out. Shoppers browse deals, pay in the app, and pick items up in-store the same day.

Q: Who founded Flashfood? A: Josh Domingues founded Flashfood in 2016, after his sister, a chef, told him about throwing out $4,000 of food from a catering event. He had no prior food or grocery background — he came from banking and from managing a family office for NHL players.

Q: Who is the CEO of Flashfood? A: As of January 2025, Nicholas Bertram is CEO of Flashfood. Founder Josh Domingues moved into the role of Executive Chairman at the same time, continuing to lead strategic expansion and corporate development, according to the company's own announcement.

Q: How much funding has Flashfood raised? A: Josh has said on the show that Flashfood raised roughly $450,000 around the end of 2016, about $750,000 in late 2017 (including a $100,000 Startup Fest prize), and a $3 million seed round led by General Catalyst at the end of 2018. In February 2022, the company announced a $12.3 million Series A led by S2G Ventures — the most recently confirmed funding round as of September 2026.

Q: How many grocery stores use Flashfood? A: As of August 2026, Flashfood reports partnering with more than 2,000 grocery stores across North America, including expanded partnerships with Kroger, Gelson's Markets, Busch's and Buehler's. On the show, taped in late 2024 / early 2025, Josh put the count at just under 2,500 stores.

Sources: Listen to the Full Founder Story

• Josh Domingues, Founder & Executive Chairman of Flashfood — went from losing his only two pilot retailers to scaling to 750 grocery stores in a year after Loblaws signed on, with the exact same product.

Listen to the full interview: He lost his only 2 customers & was ready to quit—then he grew to $1.5M ARR in a year.

Listen to the full episode at pmf.show for the complete story.

Last updated: September 2026