Logistically Sound
The newest addition at Hatch in Richmond’s Southside is Hatch Logistics, a co-warehousing space that gathers and integrates multiple companies under one roof with climate-controlled storage and inventory management. Zach Trotta has joined the team as the Director of Operations for Hatch Logistics. Trotta brings a strong food systems background to Hatch with five years as Director of Buying at Rudy’s Produce and three years as the Perishable Purchasing Manager at Relay Foods. His intentions are simple: to build a logistics and storage network that benefits small to mid-sized businesses.
One of the first customers at Hatch Logistics was PastryBase, owned by Jill Donaldson. PastryBase began in 2016 as a home-based food business, and their Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Mixes and Kits quickly took off. With that growth came the search for a larger warehouse facility with storage space, a loading dock, an area for pallet wrapping, and more - quick! PastryBase considered leasing their own commercial warehouse, but the thought of hiring staff, buying equipment to store and move pallets, and paying high monthly rent in a very seasonal business was daunting.
The Hatch team noticed that many small to mid-sized food and beverage businesses struggled to find storage and inventory management suited to their needs. Hatch Logistics, a 20,000 sq ft climate-controlled warehouse, was created to meet those needs. With large-scale cooler space and fully customizable packages for clients, the goal is to make growing your business easier.
“We are able to utilize their suite of services to gain back literally hours of time and focus on our growth,” Donaldson says. “No more waiting around for hours for the freight trucks to come pick up our pallets of merchandise to ship to our retailers, no more wrapping pallets, no more waiting on deliveries; we are able to pay monthly for the amount of space we need and are invoiced for the specific services we need and use, so it’s totally customizable to our needs and budget.”
PastryBase can now accept orders from new accounts like Crate & Barrel, Wegmans, Whole Foods, Food Lion, and even international orders to Dubai, Canada, and the UK because of Hatch Logistics. Director of Operations Zach Trotta says, “Small businesses are often marginalized into small, inconvenient warehouse solutions that prohibit growth; Hatch Logistics aims to solve the most important stage of a startup which is scalability of space."