Maize app creates ‘local food map’ to combat greenwashing

​The term “farm-to-table” has become so embedded in food culture that it’s often abused and misused. A restaurant might say its beef is locally sourced and it costs a certain amount, but that’s not always truthful. 

“Greenwashing is actually rampant in the restaurant industry,” says Patrick Lagman. “Farmers hate this, as it slaps their name on a typically inferior, cheaper product.”

Meanwhile, for the restaurants that are actually sourcing locally and promoting their food ethically, listing every single farm each ingredient came from on the menu has fallen out of common practice. 

These realities are why Lagman created a mobile app, Maize, to help build what he calls a “local food map” that connects the dots between farms, restaurants and diners. He’s setting out to legitimize farm-to-table, calling it “farm-to-table 2.0.” 

His inspiration for Maize actually stemmed from his perspective as a diner. In 2023, Lagman was on a corporate work trip and having a hard time identifying good food options while in an unfamiliar city. He had also recently undergone a mental and physical health transformation (which led him to a stint on “American Ninja Warrior”), so finding real, local food was important to him. 

“I decided that I needed an app that would help me find legitimate, scratch, farm-to-table food while traveling for work or competitions,” he says. 

So he teamed up with his wife Bailey Lagman and friends/business partners, Ryan Knuesel and Jacob Farwell, to solve his own problem. Patrick Lagman, who studied web design and development at Edgewood College, has built several other apps with Knuesel, including Backspin, a social platform and score-tracking app for tennis leagues and tournaments. The four of them launched the Maize app in October 2023.

“The first version of the app was just manually researched farm-to-table listings, farmers’ markets, etc., but we quickly realized that we needed to put the actual ingredients on the restaurant profiles to create true legitimacy,” Lagman says. “What we didn’t realize is that no one was doing this, and what we further didn’t realize was how valuable that seemingly simple feature would be.”

For farms, Maize offers technology that allows them to see how their products end up being used in restaurants, home kitchens and elsewhere. For restaurants, Maize gives them a stamp of approval for being a true farm-to-table restaurant. For diners, it helps them find restaurants that are actually sourcing locally and see where the ingredients on their plate came from. 

[As a diner,] you can immerse yourself in the local food map and see exactly what’s in your food that night, know exactly what you’re putting in your body and know exactly who you are supporting,” Lagman says. 

App users are able to browse for free, but a weekly app subscription that offers expanded search and other app functions costs $1.99 per week, or an annual app subscription is $34.99.

The app now has 2,000 businesses listed in the U.S. The Maize team has only just started to create direct partnerships — they currently work with 26 entities, including nonprofits, food advocacy groups, Edible Madison, REAP Food Group, Burn Boot Camp, Peter Kraus Fitness and others. Two Madison restaurant partners are Cadre and Bandit Tacos & Coffee.

Maize partnered with Pasture & Plenty and Cadre recently on an interactive event that ended with a dinner at Cadre. The courses came out — a deviled egg, salad, soup, Lake Superior whitefish and rhubarb ricotta cake — and the Maize app showed diners where the ingredients came from: bread from Madison Sourdough, chef’s mix salad and shiitake mushrooms from Vitruvian Farms, dapple grey beans from Meadowlark Farm and Mill, beets and parsnips from Driftless Organics, and more. 

Farms previously had very little insight into how their products were being experienced at restaurants, in home kitchens, and elsewhere, Lagman says. “Now, Vitruvian Farms, for example, can see how many people have tapped at the Bandit Tacos & Coffee experience and then proceeded to click on their oyster mushrooms.”

He hopes Maize opens a door for food businesses, farmers and diners to collaborate and connect, and take local food marketing and advocacy farther than it’s previously been able to go. “Local food should be easy to find, and the Google search rabbit hole is oversaturated with pay-to-play results that don’t offer any validation against greenwashing,” Lagman says. “Eaters deserve so much better.”

Andrea Behling is editor-in-chief at Madison Magazine.

COPYRIGHT 2025 BY MADISON MAGAZINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.