video1.0<iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/e8b195f1d40f4c878131f26029cb6c5f" frameborder="0" width="1920" height="1440" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>14401920Loomhttps://www.loom.com14401920https://cdn.loom.com/os/loom-media-content/loom/a436116f-02ce-4520-8fbb-7301462a1674/1621dc1f-3702-4525-84ba-fad829566798/sessions-thumbnails-e8b195f1d40f4c878131f26029cb6c5f-4baaf6575e5c138b.gif/binary?authToken=eyJraWQiOiJtaWNyb3MtZ3JvdXAvdGRwLW9zLWFyY2hldHlwZS84ZWVhajBlaG1tN3Y5MGYwIiwiYWxnIjoiUlMyNTYifQ.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.hAE6Q-bSZ1Sud9OIkDZafLfgFZwAF54Si-Ph1R2RpVn34xGxkH4b2guFpJXzldgrQUdarGG4uNvDwMAQoahO7WXjoi1YZEj8TkUSJa2KPKkCTKAWvYvnLTe_B-FmPZIrmVZTyMbg0paTiiQZ_cJy1rtvbwvO5AQ720_ochZe17jbCfoiN2NE27NX1R_o_ZrmcYO_hDYXm44ttNTWdvE37NwNAasAiPGPekYMWrqRTiIqgc7QHteSD0trFsZxJYo_bEfyW5nH-5DxiqgAb6jcKR1GUR_viDrzsLQXk-r1kE0F-MKtIs0eo9c5tHFNivREOrvFfnBo3W0KI_lxNnPt1Q&Expires=1781246566&Signature=fCV6Pl-ybT4b4dSKa0gVyqAwifNSCN-Otp3DyIprHqZH0tZoCHL7LDunOVDHb4E-E6r9OIujLeoUJPGS9atp5RWqbXUnOZhJz6HpauluNLlAf9NFti7Kbr7JiL705Zcy0kL6TKila8U23xCd5vIZMtwg%7Eof1et7QWwB2MPXa5LHtxb87JzpZt5IH-OY-8qP67Uwb%7Ec2syadOt9PWyWdxQqH8uwubc3d4ViGogqeyesPgqhHX5EGv-uipoywsJilhBg%7EYlOsmclD6OlQLheF7f07-z8ek8Mx15tmCE8txHJ3rWNboEoqsu5Bb70jbHGBFYpRE5qnpqxOp1nrHES%7E-sg__&Key-Pair-Id=KQOSYIR44AIC08686.592Tasteport was founded to solve access to cultural groceries after user interviews revealed shoppers visit multiple ethnic stores for staples. The team built a multi-platform e-grocery stack, launched pilots in 2020, raised institutional capital in 2022, and now operates in ~15 Toronto-area cities with ~10 staff plus contractors. The company chose Atlassian (Jira, Confluence, Rovo roadmap) for scalability, global accessibility, security, and to automate and standardize SOPs as the organization expands. ### Origin and customer problem 1:21 - Founder discovered the problem at home: difficulty obtaining South Asian/ethnic groceries locally. - Conducted ~100 interviews with friends and family; discovered most shoppers use three separate ethnic grocery stores plus mainstream retailers. - Identified that cultural staples are critical to identity and were underserved by mainstream e-grocery offerings. - Decided to build a solution targeting multicultural grocery needs rather than general marketplaces. ### Operations, product scope, team, and funding 3:05 - Company began work pre-COVID, launched pilots in 2020 and built five integrated platforms (inventory, pickup/fulfillment, driver, customer shopping portal, stock/scanning). - Currently delivers in ~15 cities within the Greater Toronto Area, serving South Asian, Middle Eastern, and other communities with tens of thousands of SKUs not available at major retailers. - Offers end-to-end grocer support (e.g., ingesting an Excel file and handling the rest) and delivers to condos using driver contractors. - Team consists of just over 10 employees and contractors, plus driver contractors; co-founders and early hires have prior startup and marketplace experience. - Raised institutional capital and an angel/operator round in 2022; investor base spans North America, validating demand beyond Toronto. ### Choice of atlassian and scalability goals 6:49 - Selected Atlassian (Jira, Confluence) to provide an enterprise-quality, globally accessible platform that can scale with hiring and international expansion. - Atlassian for Startups offering (12 months for 50 seats) was a major factor in adoption to support rapid team additions and trial engineering resources. - Valued Jira's familiarity, mobile UI, integrations (e.g., GitHub), security posture, and global accessibility compared to platforms blocked in some countries. - Goal is to democratize e-commerce capabilities for grocers by acting as their e-commerce department and standardize SOPs at scale. ### Ai usage and rovo/agentic automation roadmap 8:39 - Company has used classical AI prior to ChatGPT for tasks like training models to classify and organize thousands of grocery products across stores. - AI reduced manual workload for grocer managers who otherwise would spend many hours categorizing items and resolving ambiguous category assignments. - Trained models learn from existing stores on the platform to accelerate onboarding of new grocers and improve catalog organization. - Interest in Atlassian's Rovo and agentic workflows: planned on the roadmap to automate complex multi-platform flows, ticket labeling, and SOP enforcement. - Intends to use Rovo and Jira automations to reduce senior engineering/PM cycles on repetitive flows, increase enablement, and maintain security and integration reliability instead of building custom solutions.