diff --git a/.tugboat/config.yml b/.tugboat/config.yml
index 594a1044ac..b8c3c127c8 100644
--- a/.tugboat/config.yml
+++ b/.tugboat/config.yml
@@ -12,3 +12,6 @@ services:
       build:
         - yarn install --frozen-lockfile
         - yarn workspace example-app build
+      start:
+        # wget the endpoint. Will retry every 2 seconds. 30 retries = 1m for service to come up. Plenty.
+        - wget -O /dev/null -o /dev/null --tries=30 --timeout=5 --retry-connrefused http://localhost:7000