Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / Stretch your grocery budget - Andy Ellwood
Transcript
- Marci Grossman (00:01) Hello, I am MoneyMarci. Welcome. I am thrilled to welcome today's guest, Andy Ellwood. Andy is the founder and CEO of Stretch, an AI powered grocery platform, re-imagining how families navigate the rising cost and complexity of feeding their households. With a career spanning consumer tech, mobility, coaching, and community building, Andy has a track record of turning everyday problems into empowering solutions. A serial A serial entrepreneur behind companies acquired by Facebook and Google, Andy has helped build products used by millions, launched global learning communities, and led teams dedicated to unlocking human potential. His core philosophy, Make Room for Many, shapes how he builds and leads using technology as a bridge to expand access, clarity, and opportunity. With Stretch, Andy is tackling one of the most universal challenges Americans face, groceries. By giving families real-time visibility into prices, savings, and smarter choices, he's building a platform designed to reduce financial stress and return power to everyday consumers. Andy is a passionate home chef, storyteller, and community catalyst. He lives in New York City with his wife, daughter, and rescue dog. Welcome, Andy. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (01:34) Thanks so much for having me, Marci. It's fun to have a conversation about all the things that you talk about that are very relevant to a lot of people that we're working with as well. So, great to be here. Marci Grossman (01:46) Well, I'm really interested in hearing this whole big story. What led you here? How did you end up in groceries? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (01:53) Yeah, you know, I am the oldest of four kids. So I have big, big brother energy and, you know, being growing up in a family in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, we always had enough, but in hindsight, like we had just enough, like in hindsight, as a parent now, I know that there are times looking back that my parents were just making it, you four kids and, and, you know, my mom was a stay at home mom. And so t some of what I got out into the world and I started to build a family of my own and just thinking about all the complexities of something as simple as this week's groceries. And I think the big aha moment was when I thought of the fact that I'm writing my grocery list and I'm saying, this is what I want to purchase this week. There's no source of truth for me to look at what the trade-offs are for people who would be willing to sell it to me, like there is for every other industry in the world. I wanna go buy a flight, I can go to Expedia. When I wanna get a new apartment or get a new home, I can go to Zillow. There's sources of truth for most major purchases, most of the things that we spend our money on. But with groceries, we go to a local store that has refrigerators and fresh produce, hopefully, and walk out guessing what we were gonna pay and hoping that we were correct. I'm not gonna walk into that store and stand with the cash register and be like, it's $87. And I'm like, ooh. I wonder how much it would be if I went to the store that's down the block. I'll be right back. And so being able to have that source of truth before you actually go to the store that doesn't exist for groceries. And we all know that grocery prices are up 25 % since the pandemic. We all know that it's really challenging to have 40 different items in my basket and find what's the total price for that basket at one store. And the information exists, but it's not organized very well. And that seemed like a really really exciting thing to work on. And as I was putting together the plan for what this would become, I interviewed over a thousand shoppers in 2025 and 17 % of them had skipped a meal in the past 12 months in order so that somebody else in their family didn't have to. And that really played at my heartstrings and you know, in the richest country in the history of the world, we have people that are skipping meals. And that just seemed silly to me with the technology that exists, with the infrastructure that exists, with the knowledge that exists. But could we create something that was simple for people to use so they could have that source of truth for this week's grocery list? And so that's what caused me to go to launch Stretch. Marci Grossman (04:33) Okay, so when did you launch Stretch? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (04:35) 2025. So we decided to incorporate April of 2025. Marci Grossman (04:41) Okay, so you've almost a year it's been out there in the public. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (04:44) We started building ⁓ quietly ⁓ and then we came out of stealth mode in October of 2025 and said, hey, this is what we're going to build. And we put out our wait list and said, if this is exciting to you, sign up so that you know when we launch. And we have about 8,000 people on our wait list before we rolled out during the holidays. And so really, really grateful for all the shoppers who have already found Stretch. But it's available for download today and we're available nationwide. And the basic idea is if you give me this week's list, I'll tell you every store that's close by that's on the platform that carries all of those products or similar products, because we know there's a of different store brands, or regional brands, and national brands. And we'll show you what the trade-offs are from one store to the next. So it's $87 here, it's $96 there, it's $110 there. This store maybe has your favorite type of peanut butter and this store has a similar brand. And so, you all those trade-offs are things that people wrestle with every day, but now there's a platform that helps you do it. Marci Grossman (05:51) Is it a subscription service? or? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (05:54) No, it's free app. So it was important to us to not add another expense to families. But there's a lot of things that we're able to do to help businesses in the future understand more about what people buy, when they buy, what they're excited about that allows us to keep it free for the shoppers. Marci Grossman (06:14) Okay, so you've got what, an advertising on your platform or a sponsor of some kind? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (06:18) One day, one day, but we're working pretty hard to make sure it's not the current advertising models. The joke of the past 20 years is that if the product's free, you are the product. And I think that we just want to be honest with our shoppers about that. So we've been playing around with what does it look like to have a data co-op where if you choose to let your data be used in the platform, could you get a data dividend at the end of the year? Where we actually understand that there's a value exchange that's happening. So that's something that we're working on figuring out how we could launch that. We think that the current advertising model, especially with the advances in technology and the way that AI and AI agents are gonna be browsing the web for us, the current advertising model is gonna have to change them. so we wanna be a part of that change. Marci Grossman (07:08) That will be interesting to see where that goes. There's many things in the world, we know we're on the cusp of change, but we don't know what direction it's going to go in. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (07:11) Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's where, you know, when we think about the way that we want to build this, you know, this company, you know, the retailers and the brands have lots and lots of technology that's on their side. And shoppers don't have a whole lot. And can we be the beginning of the shopper tech revolution where the shoppers are empowered with information and they actually know what the trade-offs are this week. And they may buy from their home store. They may buy from the store that they, you know, that they go to most frequently, but at least they know what their choices are and what those trade-offs are. I always joke that I'm pretty loyal to American Airlines. I grew up in Dallas. I've had status with American Airlines for a long time, but I don't start my flight purchase path by going to americanairlines.com. I go to Expedia or Kayak to check what all of my options are. And I'm probably still going to pick American, but at least I know that it's not twice the price of Delta or United. And so I think that that's something that I could imagine ⁓ Stretch serving that purpose in people's grocery lives. Marci Grossman (08:23) Information is so empowering and we know that. So Finances are obviously a huge concern for so many. Did you discuss money growing up? You didn't realize that they were necessarily struggling to pay the grocery bill but did you have other general topics around finances? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (08:44) Yeah, every Sunday afternoon after Sunday dinner, my dad would go back to my parents bedroom and balance the checkbook. And starting around age 12, he would bring one of the kids back and we would balance the checkbook with dad. I didn't fully understand what all the numbers meant, but we would see the checks that mom had written that week, checks dad had written that week, and we would be doing the math. I was homeschooled, and so this was a part of my education, a part of it. The math program at my school was working with the family bookkeeping. But I also started my first company when I was 12 years old, a lawn mowing and landscaping company. And so my dad helped me keep very meticulous books around who owed me money, how much had I made that week, how much had I made that month. I filed for taxes for the first time when I was 12. We did not know how the full tax code worked so I filed with the same forms that my dad, who was a full-time employee at an architecture firm, filed. So I paid way too much in taxes when I was a 12-year-old because I didn't understand how the tax code worked. But eventually, an entrepreneurial friend said, no, Andy doesn't need to pay the same income taxes that a full-time employee makes. He's got business expenses and he can write more things off. And so from an early age, I was exposed to a lot of financial management. And actually, that was, My first job out of college was working in financial management with an insurance company. So it's been a part of my world for a long time. And I think that that, again, kind of goes to the reason why I'm so passionate about this space. Marci Grossman (10:21) And what is your degree in? it is finance. Okay, I didn't know if it was technology with some of the jobs that you've taken. How old is your daughter? Okay, so she's way too young to start helping you balance the credit card statement. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (10:23) Finance. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. She's eight months old. That is true. That is true. I fully expect that my wife and I will be very hands-on in that way. My wife comes from an entrepreneurial family, very different than mine. And so she's always known about her dad and his endeavors and her mom was in real estate. so ⁓ Fun for us to think about it. And my wife is a small business owner. So we do a lot of balancing and bobbing and weaving in our household already. Marci Grossman (11:04) So do you have money dates where you talk about money and where you're going and what's going on? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (11:10) Yeah, typically it's her birthday, which is in May, and then end of the year. That's kind of our two bookends of, all right, here's the things that we need to talk about. Let's have a big conversation. But we talk about it a lot. She's very involved in the business decisions that I make because they affect us and vice versa. ⁓ So very grateful to have a partner who's very open to those conversations. We have an eight-month-old. had a lot more of those conversations than we used to. Prior to Eloise coming along, it was a little bit easier to have it be the May and the December conversations. But I feel like we talk about finances all day, every day around, what are we doing for school, for childcare, for the new thing that she needs to buy so she can be safe while she starts crawling around the apartment. These are all discussions and decisions that we're making on a pretty frequent basis these days. Marci Grossman (12:08) Wow, babies are expensive, that's for sure. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (12:12) Absolutely. Marci Grossman (12:14) Anyway, Back to financial education kind of as a whole. How do you feel about how financially savvy can make the difference for people and how maybe they can, how your app will help them to get there? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (12:32) Yeah, I think that one of the things that we've heard from shoppers over and over again is they feel like they're alone in this process that a lot of our shoppers, it's them late night filling out a shopping list of, you know, like looking through the pantry, looking through the fridge, you know, and they're like, all right, I got to figure out what to do with this. I spoke with one shopper and she said after she used Stretch for the first time, she said, I get my Saturday mornings back. used to, you This used to be one or two hours on Saturday morning before the kids woke up or before they got back from soccer practice with their dad. I would just be pouring through like, right, how much did it cost last week? How much did it cost this week? Another shopper that I spoke to, and this was actually a recurring trend last summer was, we downloaded all seven apps for the seven grocery stores that are within 10 miles of us. And we rebuild our shopping list in all seven of the apps every week, which is pretty arduous process. And then we take those numbers and we put them into a spreadsheet. And then we decide, all right, we're going to this store for these things. We're going to this store for these things. We're going to this store for these things. And they're creating their own source of truth. They're creating a trade-off balance for them. But it's taking a lot of time. And I think that what my hope is that Stretch gives people the confidence that they have somebody with them who's gone out and scouted the stores, who's gone out and looked at the prices on their behalf, brought all that information for them. And they can be like, all right, this store for this, this store for this. Or we can actually achieve the same amount of financial savvy by just going to one store who happens to have the four things, five things on sale this week that really make a difference for us. And so Stretch being able to kind of scout that information for you and give it all to you when you're making your decisions before you even go to the store is a big mindset shift. But the first time you do it, it feels a little bit like magic. Marci Grossman (14:25) I'm trying to ⁓ kind of comprehend the magnitude of what you're doing. I live in a suburb of Detroit and I've got grocery stores, if I say within five miles, I've got many grocery stores, some of them from the same chain. And I know if I go to buy bananas at the store that's a mile closer of the same chain, the bananas are 10 cents a pound more than if I go to the other store. So when I think just in my area what your app would need to do and so are you location limited at this point in time? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (15:04) No, so there was a big technology change that happened because of the pandemic. So before the pandemic, the price that you would see online was different than the price you would see in store. So if you were willing to pay the online price, the store would sell it to you at that price. That's not really what we're here to do. So grocery was kind of the last industry that e-commerce took over because of the logistics of tens of thousands of products at local stores. But because of the pandemic and curbside pickup and delivery, grocery stores went through a big overhaul where they had to get zip code specific pricing and inventory on every product in every local store. So that if you wanted to pay for delivery service to come ⁓ pick up your food, there was the base price and then there was the delivery charge on top. Or if you wanted to do curbside pickup, you had to have inventory so that if you said, you know, I'm going to come pick up these groceries in two or three hours that you knew that that was actually available at that store. And so because of that shift in the way that stores did their inventory and their pricing. So now the online price matches the in-store price. That was what caused there to be the ability for us to gather information. So we're in 28,000 stores across the country already. And like I said, we're only eleven months old. ⁓ And so we're growing very, quickly. So we're adding a few retailers every month. And we've been really excited about the response that we've gotten. There's still a few stores that we have not been able to find a way to work with. And we're hoping that as more more shoppers start to use the platform, the retailers will understand that if they want to be considered for a potential choice for the shopper, that they're going to need to work with us. And so that's kind of the game that we're playing. I'll tell you, not every retailer is excited about the idea of pricing transparency. The status quo has been pretty good for a handful of them for a long time. But we think that there's going to be a new equilibrium that puts information in the hands of shoppers in the same way that the stores and the brands have had information on their side for a long time. Marci Grossman (17:17) Well, mean, AI is reshaping a lot of industries and I think you're bringing it into the grocery industry because this real-time live comparison, all I had before was the ads or the apps to, know, and how much time was I willing to spend on that and what was my time worth versus just choosing a store because of its proximity or that it had most of my preferred brands. When people are using your app, can they say, okay, Andy Ellwood - Stretch (17:41) Exactly. Marci Grossman (17:46) peanut butter, I want it to be plain but I don't care about the brand, but crackers, I want plain crackers but they have to be this brand or this flavor so you've got to have that level of choice for people as they use your app. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (18:02) Yeah, that was actually that has been one of my favorite things that we've been able to do is start to build out our preferences. So that Stretch actually, you know, as if it was your friend who knows a lot about you and your household says, you know, Marci cares about this brand when it comes to crackers, but she doesn't care about brands when it comes to peanut butter. And so if it's not that brand, don't show it to me for crackers. But as long as it's creamy, not crunchy, she's open to peanut butter brands. And so we save all of that. And the more that you use Stretch, the more it gets to know you and your household's preferences. So, you know, my, sister-in-law who's lactose intolerant, right? When she writes milk, she, she means something totally different than when I write milk on my, shopping list, but we're still probably both writing milk, ⁓ you know, and, and, and I think that that's one of things that we started to learn. It was a design decision that we made is that we're building a shopping list inside of Stretch, not a shopping cart. Because with a cart, the e-commerce experience, you're saying, I only want this product, this specific product. But most stores don't carry every product. And so being able to translate this is a good substitute or swap from one store to the next so we can actually compare full basket purchases at each different store with the swaps and the comparisons that we need to has been a really interesting challenge. But to your point, AI has been helpful in helping us understand and map this type of peanut butter equals this type of peanut butter at two different stores with two different brands. And so we can actually give you the closest comparison and then you can make the best decision from there. Marci Grossman (19:43) Wow, it's all about decisions in life, figuring things out, whether it's peanut butter or jobs or all the different decisions we make. ⁓ So You've been an entrepreneur most of your career, all of your career. ⁓ What made you, so You've started a company, you've left a company, you've sold a company, you know, what... Andy Ellwood - Stretch (19:46) Hahaha. Pretty much. Marci Grossman (20:07) What was that journey like? What types of companies have you built? I don't I don't want to get into anything that you're not allowed to say, I started XYZ, but the types of things you've been involved in. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (20:17) Sure sure. Yeah, I think that from a very early age, I mentioned I was 12 years old and my $1 a month allowance wasn't enough for me. so I said, mom and dad, I'm going to go start mowing lawns for people in the neighborhood. Living in Texas, nobody wants to mow their own lawn when it's 108 degrees outside. And as a kid, the idea of making 20 bucks for being sweaty for 30 minutes sounded like a pretty good trade off to me. And so I was kind of always the kid who who had a little extra cash from a pretty early age. I paid cash for my truck on my 16th birthday. I started saving when I was 14 and my parents were like, all right, you've been saving up. Here's the responsibility, here's the insurance. But for me, it was an expansion purchase, right? Because if I had a truck, then I could mow more lawns and I could go to other neighborhoods that I didn't have to walk to. And so from starting to understand that pretty early age. I studied finance in college and then was in sales through the early part of my career, financial sales and then luxury sales after that. But when I had the opportunity to jump in and join my first startup, it was right after the iPhone had launched and the App Store was out there for the first time. And so we were one of the first apps to ever be featured by Apple in the App Store. And that company ended up being acquired by Facebook. And so I was an early team member there and that was great for our investors, it was okay for the team. And I learned a lot in the process. And then I joined another company, which a lot of people have actually heard of called Waze, the traffic and navigation app. ⁓ So I was an early team member there, opened the New York office for them. And then we were acquired by Google. And I was like, this is great. My first company got acquired by Facebook. My second company got acquired by Google. Startups are easy. And then I quickly learned that that's not always true. I just was fortunate that my first couple of startups, you know, went well. But I think, you know, the thing that I am most grateful for about the entrepreneurial path that I've been on is finding ways to bring things into my control because it feels like there's so many things in this world that are out of our control. And there's something about the mindset of I can impact the outcome of this company and therefore I can impact the outcome of my family's financial situation Um, you know, is exciting, but it also means that, that I'm taking responsibility for when things don't go well, right? That I am taking risks, um, that, you know, as a new dad, you know, I rethink all the time, uh, maybe differently than I did when I was, uh, you know, as a single kid in his thirties. And I was just like, yeah, let's put it all on red, do it again. Um, And so, so I think that, you know, there, there's, there's a little bit more sobriety in the way that I, you know, take risks these days. Um, but. Nevertheless, I feel like taking risks is something that is not always appreciated the way that I think it should. I think more people should take more risks. I think that living too close to the comfort zone can be just as risky as living too far outside of it. Marci Grossman (23:28) Well, you miss opportunities if you don't try, but on the flip side, with your first two startups being acquired by Facebook and Google, you kind of think putting it all on red is a good strategy just because experience says, look what happens. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (23:43) Exactly. Exactly. Marci Grossman (23:46) but I want to come back to your philosophy, make room for many. That's a term I've heard used before, it's used in different ways. ⁓ What does that mean to you and when did you develop that? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (24:02) I was reading an essay called Power by ⁓ Emerson. And it was the phrase that jumped out to me was, "there's always room for a man of force, for he makes room for many". And I was thinking about the responsibility of being somebody who is forceful in the world. And I said, you know, the opening of show that I have Big Brother energy and and I mean that as like your best, your favorite big brother, right? The one who helps you reach the thing on the top shelf or get over the fence, or maybe just gives you the big bear hug that you need after a tough day. ⁓ That's the role that I've played in a lot of my friends' lives, really a lot of companies that I've been a part of. ⁓ But, you know, I think about it that I've been blessed with a lot of skills. I've been blessed with a lot of experiences. And what can I do to make room for other people to have similar level of success was one of reasons I started an entrepreneurship academy 15 years ago. We had about almost 2,000 students go through the program before the pandemic kind of shut us down. But it was just looking for ways to say, I've been able to build some extra capacity in my life. How could I be generous with that? How can I open up those doors? How can I take something that might be hard for somebody else, but it may be easy for me at this point? And create a new opportunity for somebody to step into something that's exciting for them or something that's new for them and maybe just give them little bit of boost, a little bit of encouragement. And so my newsletter, which I write with a good level of frequency, makeroom.fm is the website for it, makeroom for many, it's always kind of just trying to be an encouraging word to say, hey, here's something that came across my desk this week. Here's an experience that I had. Here's something that was a reminder of in my journey so far. And hopefully it's a timely word. And that's how I kind of try and show up in that way. ⁓ As being a man of force, I want to make room for many. Marci Grossman (26:09) That's awesome. ⁓ I just love what you're doing. I love this journey that you've had. It's inspiring and a little bit scary because when you have that much luck at the beginning, it's easy to say, take risks. ⁓ I want people to know you have to take calculated risks. You have to get information and use your strengths. You do have to take risks. The opportunity is when you step off the path, the road not taken as it were. But Do you still do coaching or not really anymore? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (26:47) Yes. Yeah, no, it was a great in between. Speaking about taking risks, my last company didn't work. The one that I had built up, that I was working on up until the pandemic. The pandemic knocked it out and I put a lot of it on red and then that didn't pay off. And so I needed to take a break because at that point I was about 12 years into building companies and with three early successes and one big not success after that. So coaching was a good breathing, a good catch my breath moment. But it kept me close to the crazies is the way that I kind of think about it. It kept me close to people who were out there building their company, who are out there making their dent in the universe. But it was a really, really fun opportunity for me to be able to sit and hold space for other founders the way that I wish somebody would have held space for me when things weren't working out at my last company. I kind of tried to become the executive coach that I wish I would have had. And as a result, I've been able to bring a lot of what I think I learned from coaching into the new company that I'm building. And I'm very grateful for my executive coach and the way that he continues to show up for me. He's actually from the Detroit area originally and so lives in Los Angeles now, but incredible entrepreneur who is kind of my intellectual sparring partner. ⁓ Who says things that nobody else would say to me and lets me know when maybe I'm ⁓ believing a little bit too much of my own hype. ⁓ And he's like, all right, let's play that out. Is that actually true? Is that actually what's going on or is that just what you're telling yourself today? And so grateful to him for doing that for me and grateful that I had the opportunity to do that for others. Marci Grossman (28:47) It's important to have those people in your life, the ones who hype you up and the ones who pop the balloon if it gets a little too big. Andy, before we close up, do you have anything else you'd like to mention that maybe we haven't covered? Andy Ellwood - Stretch (28:52) Absolutely. You know, I think that we're in such an interesting moment and you mentioned there's so many things that are changing. I think that the best thing that we can all do is if you see the opportunity to be a part of that change, lean into it, even if it is a little scary. As you said, take a risk and ask one more question. Take a risk and show up one more time than maybe somebody else would. Because there's a lot of people that are dealing with a lot right now. And so think that if we can, if you have a little bit of extra capacity in life, be generous and hopefully we can all just play the part that we can play. I think that because of the spread of information, because of the accessibility that technology has created, we feel like we're responsible for everything and that's a pretty weighty place to be. ⁓ I don't read or watch the news very much because every time I see something on the news, I'm like, oh my gosh, what can I do about this? And I know the things that I can control, and those are the things I'm focused on. And I think that if you have the opportunity to put yourself in a situation where you can take something that you're in control of and be of service to others, that's what I would love to encourage your listeners to do. Marci Grossman (30:19) Okay, that's a great message. Andy, thank you so much for being my guest today. We appreciate you taking the time to join us here. Andy Ellwood - Stretch (30:27) Thanks so much for having me. Marci Grossman (30:29) And To my listeners, I will be sharing a link to the Stretch website information in the show notes. And Please check it out. There is a lot of interesting stuff to see there. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks Money (and Life). You got this.