New App Makeena Seeks to Level the Playing Field for Natural Foods

March 15, 2015
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Makeena on the iPhone

If you shop at natural food stores, you’ve heard them before: the tongue-in-cheek references to Whole Foods as “whole paycheck,” the lamentations that while eating healthfully is a worthy goal, it doesn’t pencil out in the monthly budget.

Karen Frame, a Boulder-based web developer, is all too familiar with these refrains, and she’s designed a smartphone app to bridge the natural foods affordability gap. It’s called Makeena, and it allows users to access discounts, specials and rewards from their favorite natural food companies with the touch of a button. After searching for discounts by brand, category, store or product attribute, you purchase your items, email Makeena a copy of the receipt and get a partial refund deposited directly to your bank account.

The overarching goal: to make niche natural food brands competitive with their mass-market counterparts.

“Imagine a world where healthy Udi’s gluten-free bread costs the same as Wonder Bread and where Pirate Brands Veggie Booty costs the same as Cheetos,” reads some text from Makeena’s recent—and successful—Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Download the app and such a world could be at your fingertips. Makeena.com