Rob Barreca

Chief Technology Officer at Farm Link Hawai‘i

Waialua, Hawaii, United States

About Rob Barreca

Rob Barreca is Chief Technology Officer at Farm Link Hawai‘i. Location: Waialua, Hawaii, United States.

I spend most of my time as the CTO of Farm Link Hawai‘i, a mission-driven local online grocer delivering the best food to the savviest eaters on O‘ahu. I spent 15+ years of my professional career as a full-stack software engineer, engineering manager, and product manager. I moved to O‘ahu in 2007 to help lead Sprout (previously ChipIn), an interactive rich media ad design platform, to acquisition by one of the world's largest independent mobile advertising networks, InMobi. In 2014, I left InMobi to put all my energy into what I'm passionate about: improving local food systems. A year after leaving InMobi, I founded Counter Culture Organic Farm, once a 40-acre USDA certified organic farm on the North Shore of O‘ahu. That farm has since been subsumed by Hawaiʻi Banana Source, which I help run as General Manager alongside our other co-owner and amazing Farm Manager, Gabe Sachter-Smith. After starting the original incarnation of farm, I saw local farmers had a shared need for marketing and distribution support. So I founded an online local food marketplace and distribution service called Farm Link Hawai‘i. Farm Link continues to grow and supports 300+ local farmers, ranchers, and food makers. Customers using SNAP-EBT can use their food benefits at Farm Link and get an automatic 50% off all produce and poi through the DA BUX program. Interlude: At the beginning of its life, Farm Link was using a software platform called Local Orbit to power its online marketplace. In 2018, after many conversations with Local Orbit's CEO I ended up taking over the underlying software platform to help improve it for customers across North America. Ultimately, I couldn't save the platform from its eventual demise and helped its 50 food hub customers find alternatives.

Skills

  • Organic Farming
  • Mobile Applications
  • JavaScript

Additional experience

  • Founder & Chief Executive Officer

    Farm Link Hawai‘i

    August 2015 – October 2021

Education

  • AgPro Certificate, GoFarm Hawai‘i
  • BA, UC San Diego