Foodem receives $75K funding commitment from TEDCO, will launch beta version this fall

Foodem, the online food marketplace being incubated in Baltimore, has received a monetary commitment from the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) worth $75,000. The $75,000 investment sum comes from TEDCO’s Maryland Technology Transfer and Commercialization Fund.
The Foodem platform allows wholesale buyers — like hotels, restaurants and catering companies — to connect directly with food manufacturers and distributors, and do it all through a single web interface where buyers can compare prices across distributors for up to 50 different products at one time.
The idea is that food buyers can make cost-effective decisions about, say, how many pounds of chicken they need to order and do it quickly by cutting out the time that would normally be spent on the phone calling several different food vendors.

Watch Foodem CEO and founder Kash Rehman present at July’s Baltimore TechBreakfast.
http://www.youtube.com/v/Ie8bcoPjxRY?version=3&hl=en_US
“Foodem empowers small businesses and local farms through technology, which dovetails nicely with our mission,” said TEDCO president and executive director Robert Rosenbaum in a press release. “We fund transformative innovations, and Foodem is poised to provide a novel solution to the marketplace.”
Launched in 2010, Foodem is also a member of the business incubator program at the Emerging Technology Center. At July’s TechBreakfast, Rehman said Foodem will release in beta version this fall in the Washington, D.C., food market. His goal is to have 26,000 restaurants in the D.C. area using Foodem.
With the additional $75,000, “Foodem is poised to launch Foodem 2.0 in Q4 of 2012,” according to the press release. The company is also looking to raise $250,000 in seed funding, which will be put toward sales and marketing, in addition to TEDCO’s investment. Last year, Rehman told the Washington Post he was seeking $1.5 million in angel investment.