Loamy raises $6M to flag out-of-spec produce before trucks dock

Los Angeles startup Loamy raised $6 million in seed funding on Oct. 27, led by Zeal Capital Partners, bringing total backing to $10 million. Slauson & Co., Supply Change Capital and Amplify.LA also invested in the round.

Loamy sells operations software to produce growers, packers and distributors. Its target is the costly gap between a field assessment and a receiver’s decision: after a load ships out of spec, a grower has about a day to find another buyer, and the fruit often goes to the trash, Loamy says.

Charles Julius, Loamy’s co-founder and CEO, said: “A strawberry grower puts about $35,000 into every acre and can still watch a $40,000 load go in the trash because nobody knew it would miss the buyer’s spec.” One rejected $40,000 load can outweigh the stated $35,000 investment in an acre.

Retail buyers set specs for color, size, testing, volume and delivery day. Weather can breach them: freezes last winter cost some Central Florida strawberry growers about 20% of their crop, while other produce remained at risk of scarring and smaller sizes.

What does this change for produce shippers?

Loamy’s answer is to move the rejection decision upstream, weeks before a truckload reaches its intended buyer. Satellite imagery tracks customer field lots, while infrared analysis detects browning before the human eye can. Its app then scores produce condition from photographs taken at receiving, cooling and shipping.

It also reads supplier documents delivered by email, reviews inspection forms and runs on a phone or tablet without a cell signal. Software, at least, remains useful beyond the reach of a weak signal.

Loamy says the system has cut product rejections in half for customers. That could let growers redirect fruit to a processor or juicer weeks before a buyer rejects it, preserving a sale rather than sending the load to waste.

For shippers, carriers and forwarders, the practical change is earlier disposition of perishable truckloads. That is an operations change, not a disclosed rate or capacity move: the announcement supplied no freight rates, lane volumes, truck counts or carrier commitments.

Federal rules sharpen the timing. Under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, a receiver generally has up to eight hours after being told a truckload has arrived to reject it; the window extends while the receiver awaits federal inspection under 7 CFR 46.2.

Loamy says the surrounding work still runs through WhatsApp messages, spreadsheets and email threads. Early warning cannot repair a fragmented inbox, but it can move the sale upstream.

The app also traces each order back to its field lot using Produce Traceability Initiative case labels. It collects records required by the Food and Drug Administration’s Food Traceability Rule, known as FSMA 204.

The rule covers foods on the FDA’s Food Traceability List, including fresh leafy greens such as lettuce. Handlers must retain lot codes and data for harvesting, packing, shipping and receiving.

During an outbreak or recall, companies must give the FDA a sortable spreadsheet within 24 hours. Congress directed the FDA not to enforce the rule before July 20, 2028.

Commercial traction has been strong on the company’s account. Annual recurring revenue grew more than 30 times over the past year, Loamy said. Net revenue retention, a measure of expansion among existing customers, exceeded 500%, with no customer churn, although the company disclosed neither revenue nor customer counts.

Customers include lettuce producers and distributors that sell produce, meat and grains. Loamy says the platform usually pays for itself in the first month.

“Margin pressure and labor constraints are accelerating AI adoption across the food industry,” Qadree said in the release. The statement links Loamy’s product push to the food sector’s margin and labor pressures. It does not quantify how much demand comes from each driver.

Loamy says about 40% of food is lost between the farm and the consumer, with roughly 75% of that loss occurring before the produce reaches a retailer. ReFED’s 2026 U.S. Food Waste Report estimated that 70 million tons of U.S. food, about 29% of the supply, went unsold or uneaten in 2024.

ReFED says most of that loss occurs at consumer-facing businesses and in homes. The broader waste problem is therefore larger than the dock-side rejection Loamy targets, though dock-side losses remain expensive.

Julius previously worked on Procore’s app marketplace and later led a new verticals enterprise unit at Motive. He co-founded Loamy in 2024 with Jason Pesek, Motive’s former head of product for mobile and the core platform.

The new capital will support engineering and go-to-market hiring, broader AI products and expansion into new food categories. The company has moved from two founders to a seed round with $10 million in backing, a familiar sprint with paperwork attached.

Julius calls missed-spec loads an information problem that can be solved. He argues that when growers see trouble weeks earlier, the fruit can go to a buyer who wants it.

Still, the evidence remains mostly company-supplied. Loamy’s claims of halved customer rejections and strong revenue performance lack a public baseline, leaving avoided rejections and preserved produce value difficult to test.

Federal traceability enforcement may support adoption from July 20, 2028, but the near-term case rests on preventing rejection losses and protecting produce value. With FDA enforcement deferred until July 20, 2028, Loamy’s next test is whether growers and distributors will pay for earlier rejection decisions before compliance makes the case for them.