The Maui Hub began in response to an impending food security crisis on the island of Maui in the wake of COVID-19 business closures and slowing tourism. We spoke to Keith Ranney, Manager of Maui Hub, about the process of forming the hub, the bureaucratic and financial challenges they’ve faced, how they transitioned to LFM from another platform, and what he sees for their future using LFM for subscriptions and more.

LFM: Hi, Keith! Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed today. Walk us through how Maui Hub got started.

Keith: I had been working with Hawaii Farmers Union for around five years. At that time, lots of conversations were being had [in Maui] about food security. On the island, we rely on tourism. We’re 90% dependent on imports. People know that buying local from local producers  builds the local economy. So, everyone was behind the idea of a local food hub, and the Farmers Union had been talking about putting a food hub together. The Farmers Union looked at various proposals, but none of them were quite ready to pull it off.

But when COVID-19 hit, it lit a fire under us. We realized that local businesses were shutting down, farmers were suffering, and crops were rotting. Since our economy was based almost entirely on tourism, we knew it would be a nightmare. So we created the food hub.

After the hub was launched, I became totally focused on the customer experience and accounting. However, food hubs are complex; because we are basically unfunded and all-volunteer, we had to find partners to make it work. We partnered with other organizations and companies to get refrigeration, transportation, labor, and more.

LFM: What was your experience?

Keith: (laughs) It was horrible! We did two deliveries with it, and we immediately knew that it was not tenable. It was extremely slow; the reports didn’t even work. It was impossible to figure out what was happening with a particular customer or to even look up orders. When we had a question or an issue, we felt they were not giving us straight answers.

LFM: How did you find LFM?

Keith: It was a big decision to take on a whole new system that early. At first, LFM looked like a more mature system, but it turns out that the functionality of LFM has been extremely advantageous.

LFM: What was most attractive about LFM?

Keith: The reports are fantastic. The dashboard is fantastic. LFM has considered every possible situation and automated communications, so all we had to do was fill in the blanks and customize.

LFM: What particular feature of LFM has been the most useful?

Keith: It has greatly improved our accuracy. [Since LFM], we have to do less refunds on the back end. Any customer complaints get a refund and a note goes back to the producer. It’s also super easy for us to go through each section, review, customize it to our needs, and then not even have to think about it. It’s all there.

LFM: How do you plan on retaining your customers as time goes on? Perhaps even past the threat of COVID?

Keith: That is a really deep question, actually. We recognize that people will come and go from this business; for lots of reasons. Retaining our current business level will be unique, as we are usually entirely reliant on tourism here. So that’s a problem we need to solve.

But there’s an element of our customer base that really wants to buy local, doesn’t just want to go to the grocery store, and they’re going to appreciate [shopping online] and having someone put their bag in their trunk. Our average per-customer sale had increased from the 30’s and 40’s to around the 50 dollar mark. We’ll continue boosting our trajectory with our custom CSA boxes, which have proven to be a good strategy.

We are working on our approval for the SNAP/EBT program. A lot of people here are food insecure, so this is really important.  Continued growth will require some more outside funding. We’re being considered for some local funding and are hopeful that will come through soon, and we will be able to build out our team more.

Even when we mess up, there’s still a lot of loyalty. Our customers are really loyal to supporting the local economy.

LFM: If you were to recommend LFM to another market, what would you say?

Keith: The technical support at LFM is awesome. Sometimes you just want an immediate answer to your question, and LFM has been so helpful. Platforms need to evolve to be successful, and LFM does that.

LFM: Thanks so much, Keith!

The post Scaling Up to Address Food Security on the Island first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Vendors at the Boise Farmers Market

The Boise Farmers Market is a food-centric and agriculturally based market, meaning that 95% of the vendors sell food and agricultural products. They are focused on local food, cultivating new farmers, incubating new food ideas, and creating a community space to learn about food and sustainability. When COVID-19 shutdowns hit Boise, the market had to pivot to a drive-thru system with Local Food Marketplace. We spoke to Tamara Cameron, the market manager, about what that was like and their plans for the future.

LFM: Hi Tamara! Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed today! So for those of us that are unfamiliar with your market, could you give us a little background?

Tamara: We are in our seventh year, and we are an ag-focused farmers market. That means that at least 95% of our vendors are farmers or ranchers or producers of food/agricultural products…and all vendors are all required to use local ingredients or make it locally. One of our vendors even weaves her own kitchen towels! Pre-COVID we operated an outdoor walk-around market with 60-100 vendors, depending on the season. We also had an inside winter market that was a bit more holiday focused with arts and crafts.

LFM: When did you start using LFM?

Tamara: We just started using LFM as a result of COVID, this spring. We were getting ready to do our big spring fundraiser, Tree Fort (which is a Boise music festival), and we were putting on the final touches. I heard a rumor that local officials might cancel it because of COVID, so I knew that if they could cancel an outdoor music festival, then they can cancel an outdoor market.

We scrambled around looking at options – we looked at the National Registry of Farmers Markets Listserv, and we saw that some people were doing a walk through market, or some sort of drive-thru. At first, we were going to do a walk-through market and then local officials changed requirements from allowing 100 people in one place to 10 and we quickly pivoted to a drive-thru market and I started searching for online software.

LFM: Things shifted quickly. How did LFM come up in your search?

Tamara: Well, there are a lot of different ones out there.  Our decision came down to a few main factors. First, many of my vendors were familiar with it because a local food hub used it.   I also love that the market pays a flat fee, and we get to keep the rest of the profit.

The other great thing that attracted us to LFM was the setup – I didn’t want my customers to have to pay each farmer individually. I knew it would never fly with our clientele. It had to be easy. It had to be one purchase for everything they were going to buy. And it had to have a storefront where they could literally see what they were going to purchase. It had to be really user-friendly.

LFM: Walk me through what your drive-thru market looks like now!

Tamara: Customers are assigned a pickup time, or they reserve a time. That means if you’re coming at 8:30, we have your order ready at 8:30. And our customers were really ready for that – they’re so eager! I finally had to tell some people; “Don’t come early, because you’re messing up the works!”

LFM: Have you noticed a change in your customer base?

Tamara: Our revenue is about the same as pre-COVID. You have to consider that we used to have 4,200 people coming every Saturday and now our market is entirely pre-order drive through.  We have found a new customer base that really wants to buy local food but hasn’t or doesn’t want to walk around a farmer’s market to get it. And of course we still have our old standbys, our staunch supporters…but we have found a new group of customers that really prefer it this way.

LFM: Have you guys thought about how to retain that new customer base, going forward?

Tamara: We have to keep the drive-thru. We have a large parking lot, so we’ll keep the drive-thru in the future, even if we end up going back to a walk-around market. These customers want to eat local and they want to buy directly from the farmers if they can. They love purchasing from our farmers market online with LFM.

LFM: How has using LFM impacted your administrative process?

Tamara: It’s been great. LFM is great because we are able to report on market sales. In the past we needed to know this for grants and other reporting, but it was always difficult (or impossible) to get that data from our vendors.

LFM: Has that saved you time?

Tamara: Most definitely. Now we don’t have to mess with collecting the sales through surveys and then figuring out how to put them into a spreadsheet and all that. With LFM I just run the report and know that the information is accurate.

LFM: What would you say to a market manager who was looking at online shopping platforms?

Tamara: Well, I point a lot of markets to LFM. I tell them that the reporting on the backend is super easy. You don’t have to send out tickets to the farmers, they get them automatically. They have their own access, and update their own inventory. And, you know, if they don’t like the picture of their onions that I pick out, they can add their own!

But, to the point, the backend is fabulous.

Plus, the customer support is great.

LFM: Thanks for speaking with us!

Curious to see what a drive-thru farmers market looks like? Check out this video of the Boise Farmers Market!

The Boise Farmers Market Reinvents Itself from Guy Hand on Vimeo.

The post A Drive-Thru Farmers Market: an Interview with Tamara Cameron of Boise Farmers Market first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

The Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market pre COVID-19. Photo courtesy of Rachel Beyer.

The Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market has been a central part of the city’s connection to local food for more than 45 years. Like many other markets around the country, they found themselves scrambling to safely open during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the LFM software to set up an online store has been essential to their continued operation this year. We spoke to Rachel Beyer at the market to get the inside scoop.

LFM: Hi Rachel! Thanks for speaking with us. We’re really interested in what it’s been like for your market since the shutdown. How has that been?

Rachel:  Market staff, vendors and customers have all had to pivot and be incredibly flexible during this time as we’ve experimented to maximize safety and deliver food in new ways. Overall, I have been really amazed to see how important local food is to people in our community. 

LFM: Wow – what was your market using before LFM? 

Rachel: Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bloomington Market had only ever operated as a traditional, in-person market with on-site sales. We knew we needed to use some kind of online ordering system to automate the process and compile the necessary data. I had heard about Local Food Marketplace in some research for a farm to institution project and when this whole situation came up, we reached out to Amy right away!      

LFM: What was the transition like?

Rachel: We launched our first week with over 40 vendors. Everyone  worked together, pushed through, and we made it happen, with a lot of wonderful support from the LFM team.

For the first month with the online store we also ran a drive-thru distribution. Vendors would upload what they had on a weekly basis, then drop off their products on Saturday mornings. Then we’d set-up a warehouse distribution system in a big building at one of our city parks and a group of staff, volunteers, and market vendors would go around with shopping carts to fill orders, pack them, and run them out to cars. It was challenging to do all this and keep the number of people working on site to a minimum. We had to cap customer orders each week to ensure that our small team could handle all of the drive-thru logistics.

In May, we decided to switch to a customer walk-through format with special safety protocols. As vendor and product counts continued to increase, we did not think the drive-thru was going to be a sustainable format to maintain. Now vendors upload their products to the online store at the beginning of each week. The store is open for shopping Tuesday-Thursday.  Then on Saturdays vendors come to the regular, outdoor market location and set up their booths in alphabetical order with extra spacing to maximize social distancing. Table coverings are not allowed, so that table surfaces can be frequently disinfected throughout the day.  Customers arrive according to time slots designated by last name. They receive a hard copy of their order form and are instructed how to walk through the market and pick up their orders with one-way traffic. We ask everyone to wear masks and gloves. Vendors are limited to 2 people per booth and customers are asked to send just one person per family to pick up. We limit the total number of customers in the large market area to 75 at one time. So far, this format has worked really well! We have capacity to accept a lot more customers than in the drive thru model!

LFM: As the state reopens, do you have plans for adding to your online sales?

Rachel: As the state economy slowly reopens, we are looking at adding onsite purchases alongside LFM online pre-orders. 

I do want to say that our market would not have been able to open without LFM this spring. The online platform has made a huge difference for a lot of small businesses in our community that rely on our farmers market as an essential part of their income. Our market staff, vendors, and the broader community want all of you to know how grateful we are. You guys are a great team!

The post Saving Time and Staying Safe: an Interview with Bloomington Community Farmers Market first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

The crew at Sara Hardy Downtown Farmers Market

The Sara Hardy Downtown Farmers Market was started in the early 80’s by a group of farmers, and has grown into a 120+ vendor market that serves seven surrounding counties. They were introduced to LFM by our friends at Taste the Local Difference (TLD), and the rest was history. We spoke to Nick Viox at the market to learn more.When we spoke with Nick in May, their physical market had not yet opened – it has since opened and they are now offering online market sales for their midweek market and in person sales on Saturday.

LFM: Hi, Nick! Thank you so much for speaking with us. Tell us a little bit about your farmers’ market!

N: The Sara Hardy Farmers Market was started by a group of vendors in the heart of downtown Traverse City in the 1980’s. In 1984, the DDA (Downtown Development Authority), took it over. It’s a huge benefit to having the market in our city; it’s a huge traffic driver to downtown, and it pairs well with our downtown businesses. So we took it over, and we’ve been running it since.

Now we have over 120 local area farmers, serving a seven-county radius in northern Michigan. We are producer and farmer only – which means, we do not allow anyone to resell product at our market – and it’s something that we take pride in. We happen to be in this pocket of northern Michigan that produces over 75% of our crops, and we’re really fortunate to have the local growers that we do.

We sell cheese made with local milk, chutney made from rhubarb grown at that same farm; everything is as local as it can be. We believe a farmers market is a place to create relationships [between local farmers and the community], and those relationships are based in honesty and transparency.

LFM: I’d imagine that a lot got turned around when the shutdown orders came in Michigan. What was that like? 

N: We definitely needed to reconfigure. Essentially, our entire market has gone online with LFM! A lot of our operations have shifted to our online market, all while keeping our Saturday morning outdoor market.

When we got the shutdown orders, markets were considered essential businesses, so they were able to stay open. When all of this happened, we were working with Tricia at Taste the Local Difference. We wanted to figure out a way that we could operate safely. Luckily, TLD had already done the research on online marketplaces, and they introduced us to LFM!

Having an online market is something we always wanted to do, and now that we have the platform it’s something we plan on doing in perpetuity. We were looking at our physical market, and we were wondering how we could do both together. LFM has allowed us to operate online and host an in-person farmers market seamlessly!

LFM: How have your vendors handled the new platform? 

N: It required some hand-holding, and I want to credit LFM and TLD with helping bring our vendors online. We have 65 of them online now, which is excellent. Ultimately, we’ve gotten a lot of people more familiar with the digital way of doing this. Many of them are very grateful. We heard that a lot of our vendors are actually doing better on the online platform than they would have in a physical market in the month of May! 

LFM: What has the response from your customer base been like?

N: We’ve definitely seen a broadened customer base; more people are getting exposed to products that they otherwise wouldn’t know were there. Sometimes a farmers market can be an overwhelming place. LFM allows us to reach that audience that we otherwise wouldn’t reach.

Some folks are eager for the physical market; they miss seeing everyone’s faces. But there’s a tremendous amount of support from the people that have turned to our online market. They’re spending more than they used to. They feel like they know exactly what they’re getting, they know that it’s seamless, easy to purchase.

There’s a lot of love for the LFM interface itself; people are saying it looks so good! It’s so clean! It’s so easy! Which I love hearing, of course.

And finally, they’re enjoying the fact that they can get local food without having to be in a crowd.  They feel safe and protected and they appreciate being able to support local farmers as much as they can. We are able to provide local food to those who cannot access the Saturday market, otherwise.

LFM: So now that you’ve moved online, how does your market work?

N: Right now we are a pick-up market – we thought about delivery but we just weren’t ready to take that on. We also operate our Saturday morning outdoor market.

When we launched the online market, we really didn’t know how many customers we would get; it was like diving into the unknown. But, within our first week, we had nearly 400 people sign up! So, we really had to modify how we managed our pickup system to accommodate all those new people.

Our vendors show up with all of the products on their pick lists. We have a designated volunteer for each type of product. For example; all your breads products will get checked in with one person. All of the vendors that require a cooler are checking in with one person. Like that. Once it’s checked in, all that product goes into our stock area.

We are partnering with a Goodwill Food Rescue Truck (it’s a cooler truck) and it’s been excellent. We are able to store all of our refrigerated product in their truck, and at the end of the market (if no one has come to claim their products or somebody brought extra product) then we donate all of that to Goodwill Food Rescue.

LFM: If you were going to recommend LFM to another market, what would you say?

N: Working with LFM has been a dream, it’s been exceptional. We’ve really loved the tech support, the trainings, the feedback that you guys give us. It’s been incredibly helpful. It’s been above and beyond what we expected.

The post Above and Beyond: Going Online with Sara Hardy Downtown Farmers Market first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Caroline Pam and Tim Knox of Kitchen Garden Farm

Kitchen Garden Farm is a fifty-acre farm in the Pioneer Valley, the prime agricultural region of Western Massachusetts. They produce veggies, as well as making their own incredibly successful line of hot sauces and salsas. Caroline and Tim started the farm in 2006, and began using the LFM platform in 2014. However, when COVID-19 hit, Caroline and Tim realized that they needed a new solution to make it through without restaurant sales, and they needed to make a change quick.

They immediately teamed up with Riverland Farm and Warner Farm in Sunderland and Queen’s Greens in Amherst to create Sunderland Farm Collaborative. We spoke to Caroline about pivoting from a solo-producer to a farm collective and beginning sales all within one week using their LFM platform.

Download the Kitchen Garden Farm Case Study

LFM: Hi Caroline! If you would, give me a little background about your farm?

Caroline: My husband and I own Kitchen Garden Farms in Sunderland, MA where we grow fifty acres of certified organic vegetables. We make products like hot sauce, salsa, pickled vegetables, and tomato sauces from our own ingredients…we make all that on site at the farm in our kitchen. We have been selling our produce and products to restaurants locally – but also in New York and Boston through distributors, and to Rhode Island, Western Berkshires, etc. We sell a lot of vegetables. We also sell our products to the Whole Foods throughout the Boston region (also, now in New York) and we ship directly to retailers all across the country.

LFM: How long have you been using the LFM platform?

Caroline: We’ve been using LFM since 2014. We were one of the first farms that used for just our farm because it had the capacity that I needed. At the time, we didn’t need any of the foodhub features for multiple farms – but the order management was essential. By adding online ordering, I didn’t have to type up invoices. Then, being able to sort it out into harvest lists, a pack list, then to the washroom, then to create case labels using my dymo thermal label printer for all the boxes – these have been essential to us being able to scale up to the volume of orders we manage daily without going crazy.

LFM: What was that process like, pre-LFM?

Caroline: In the old days, I would send out an email twice a week to my customer list and then I would receive dozens of emails for every harvest day. I’d have to type all that into QuickBooks to generate invoices, and I would separately have to type them into a spreadsheet to tally up the harvest totals and separately I would format that into a different type of spreadsheet based on what was getting packed for whom. So that was hours of labor at my dining room table- basically all night before harvest.

LFM: The next piece I wanted to ask you about was how the COVID-19 epidemic has impacted your farm. What has that been like?

Caroline: When the stay at home orders came into effect and the restaurants were told to close, we were facing a very uncertain market for our products. Typically, we sell fifty percent of our vegetables to restaurants. We realized that we were going to have to find a new way to sell vegetables – because we wanted to continue growing all the vegetables we can grow on our land, and we knew that there would still be a need for folks to get access to the food but…. it wasn’t really possible to expect to sell the same kind of volume to restaurants that were closed.

But we were familiar with [the LFM] software, and we knew it had the capability to do direct to consumer sales collaboratively with other farms. [This is when Kitchen Garden Farm teamed up with Riverland Farm, Warner Farm, and Queen’s Greens to create the Sunderland Farm Collaborative.] Within literally a week we were able to launch a live site with twelve producers, and make the first delivery to individual consumers through a couple of pickup and delivery sites.

LFM: That’s so great. How’s it been since the transition?

Caroline: It’s been a wild ride. We’re currently fulfilling 800 orders per week. It’s a lot!

LFM: In general, does it feel like LFM gives you and the other farms in the collective a competitive edge?

Caroline: From the beginning, I felt like having the professional online storefront made us seem like a really forward thinking, professional business. With COVID-19, our ability to harness the platform so quickly put us out ahead of everything and drove a lot of the immediate demand our way. Having the system already built for this purpose (and knowing I could implement it quickly) was definitely key to our quick ability to capture these sales.

LFM: Is there something you would tell another farm that is considering using LFM?

Caroline: I have personally sent dozens of businesses to LFM. I think that it’s the right tool for the job! It has all the capabilities that you need.  Once you invest the time to get it set up – it can honestly save you ten to twenty hours of manual work every week.

The post From a Farm to a Collective: an Interview with Sunderland Farm Collaborative first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

Oliver Gubenko, the founder and CEO of Harvest Drop.

Harvest Drop is a foodhub based in the great state of New Jersey, and it was founded by Oliver Gubenko with a passion for – not just local – but quality food. He found a gap in the local wholesale market for selling produce to a NJ restaurant. Once he was able to hook up the farmers to the chefs, the rest was history…until COVID-19 hit, and his entire business model had to change. Harvest Drop pivoted almost overnight from wholesale to retail, and LFM was there to help them do it. We spoke to Oliver to learn a little more.

LFM: Hi Oliver! Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, we really appreciate it. For those who don’t know Harvest Drop – give us a little background!

Oliver: Sure! I started Harvest Drop five years ago. I actually have no background in food; I’ve never worked in a restaurant, and I’ve never been on a farm in my life before starting this business. My background was finance. While I was still working full time, I was walking door to door to restaurants on the weekends and meeting chefs. I’d say, “Hey, I want to start this company where I aggregate food from fifteen different farms in New Jersey and sell it to you, is that something you would be into?” And with just that pure curiosity I got my first customers.

The difficult part was finding the farms. It’s easy to walk into a restaurant; you just walk in, ask for the chef, and there he is. I called up every farm that I could find on Google in New Jersey – and obviously nobody knows who I am, and nobody picked up the phone. I was emailing all these people and like…farmers don’t check their emails! They want to be outside, they want to be on the farm. It’s my responsibility to transact the food and list it and let the customers know how much there is and what the price is. So it was difficult at first to find supply, but I was going nuts because I really felt like I could sell it!

I got really lucky. A friend of mine told me about an upcoming NJ Farmers Association meeting, so I got out of work early, I flew to Hackettstown, and there were about 150 farmers in the room. I said, “ I have customers and chefs that are interested in buying your product. If you’re interested in selling to me, I’ll be in the back.” And that night I met our first three producers.

LFM: Were these folks new to wholesale?

Oliver: Yes, in some capacity. One of them was a pretty big farmer down in South Jersey –  to this day, I’m buying millions of dollars’ worth of food from him and I’m little to this guy. But the beauty of this is that he still treats me like gold. He stills gets me the best stuff, he still fills our order in full, we’re always the first people to get product.

LFM: How did all that effect your producers?

Oliver: They are benefitting. A number of farms use Harvest Drop as a very significant form of revenue.

But listen – one thing people know about me is that I’m extremely pragmatic. I’m here to put really good food out there. If I can get you a tomato that was picked off the vine today into your kitchen tomorrow, that’s going to be a damn good tomato. If I can get you chicken that was slaughtered today into your kitchen tomorrow, it’s gonna be fresh. That’s why I do what I do.

LFM: Walk us through how Harvest Drop changed due to the COVID-19 shutdowns – how did you manage?

Oliver: When this crisis started, half the farmers in NJ were calling me asking if we were still in business. They were facing losing 40% of their revenue.

By March 16^th, I knew we were walking into a bloodbath. The entire industry knew it. At first, I just sat back and watched. I watched sales plummet, I watched chefs scrambling trying to figure out what to do. It was very serious. On Wednesday of that week, I sat down with my entire team and showed them – to the penny – how much money we had in the bank; a basic snapshot of all of our financials. At the time, about $200,000 was sitting in restaurants that weren’t operating. And I told my guys: kiss that money goodbye. I have a small team, it’s just five guys, it’s us against the world. But, at the very least, we had enough cash to survive for 18 months. We were gonna be OK. After we got over that initial shock – once we understood that we could survive – then we could start coming up with ideas. Then we could get creative.

That same week, a few chefs that we knew called us up and wanted to place an order for a single box – for their home. And, you know, sure; I need that order. By then, the answer is hitting us in the face. The few people that know us are asking us for home delivery, and these were our first real direct-to-consumer sales.

LFM: So, you guys had never really operated that way before?

Oliver: I never wanted that kind of business. Originally, I just wanted to sell to chefs.

We spent two days converting everything to retail. That meant calling up all of our producers and saying, “We need retail packs! We need retail mushrooms, we need retail chicken, we need retail salad greens, we need retail everything!”

LFM: Wow – how did your producers react?

Oliver: For some of them, it was easy. Lou (my mushroom guy) already does a lot of retail packaging. So that was super simple.

But for my chicken guy, it was different. I told him, “Listen, we need packages of 2 lb. breast, 2 lb. thigh, single birds, etc. This is what we gotta do to survive. It’s gonna be worth it.” So my man starts hand cryovac-ing each bird, and he worked 48 hours straight to fill that first round of orders. Finally he was able to get some machinery in the door, and he literally dropped 20 grand to support all this new retail business.

LFM: What happened next? 

Oliver: That first weekend, I posted about our new offering on Instagram. And it goes absolutely wild.

Do you remember JWoww from that TV show, Jersey Shore? JWoww starts hitting me up on Instagram. And at first I thought she was messing with me. But she was asking me for a box of produce! Side note – I LOVE JWoww; I’m literally her biggest fan now. She’s so cool – so nice and considerate. She’s been ordering for two months now, and she is definitely invited to our company Christmas party. So JWoww runs with our post. And then The Situation [also from Jersey Shore] posts it on his stories. And I swear, then Deanna [also from Jersey Shore] places an order and posts it. That Saturday morning we launched home delivery – and now the whole eastern seaboard knows we’re doing it. So basically, the Jersey Shore crew saved Harvest Drop.

Right now, we’ve finished up our eighth week and we’ve had 22,000 people create customer accounts. We’ve been selling our six truck loads full of food in 29 minutes. I swear, 29 minutes. That first Thursday (our ordering period opens at 8am that day) people were setting their alarms to place their order with us. All of a sudden, its 8am, and you see all the open orders start. It takes 4 or 5 minutes for the first few orders to be submitted. Then, at 8:04 or 8:05, you hear a ding or two [the sound of a customer placing an order]. Then it’s “ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding” and all of a sudden it’s 8:29 and you’re thinking – we’re done, we can’t move any more food! It was wild.

LFM: What part did the LFM software play in your transition to a retail model?

Oliver: We launched with LFM about three years ago, but only wholesale. And I’ll tell you, it was absolutely critical that we had.

I took on LFM when we were a lot smaller.  It was a huge investment. But we still have competitors that are still throwing around PDFs and spreadsheets, and that’s crazy. And honestly, that sucks for them. It sucks for them that they didn’t purchase LFM like, a year or two ago like we did. Because doing all this without LFM [would be] so hard to do. So, step two [after getting our producers ready for retail] was calling LFM. Thankfully we had LFM in place going into this. When all this went down, I was calling Amy for like little tiny tweaks; like, how can I sell out this subperiod, how do I manage this better, etc.

There’s a number of things that LFM was able to customize for us. I think a lot of the options that you see behind the scenes now are because we bugged Amy for it! I remember asking Amy, “Hey, if you’re not a producer [or a] customer, can you log on and see my prices? I need to be able to turn that on and off.” And that was one of the first customizations that LFM did on our behalf. And now it goes out with every license. The level of customization for LFM is key.

LFM: Tell me about that initial decision to purchase the LFM software – what else were you looking at, and what persuaded you to make the jump? 

Oliver: Here’s the backstory: Amy cold called me.

As a general business rule, I am open to every conversation. So, I talk to Amy and I tell her what I’m doing and what I’m trying to accomplish. I think that she saw something special in us. I mean, frankly, I’m not the first person running around trying to sell a tomato. But right off the bat, she invested her time and her energy into giving me the best possible solution. And once I saw that – I mean, that was it.

And it feels good when you have smart people like LFM in your corner. It’s not just the ability to customize, it’s the level of care. I know if I’m gonna hop on the phone with Amy, she knows and understands our needs. She’s smart, she’s gonna make suggestions, and she’s always able to help me in a really genuine way. LFM helps us make the software do what we need it to do. Not only do you guys know your own product very  intimately – I mean, you built it – but what makes it really great is that LFM knows my business really intimately.

LFM: Was there a particular feature of LFM that was most attractive?

Oliver: In the end – the basis was necessity. And LFM has all the features that we need. I want my customers to have the best online ordering experience, I want my customers not to have to use a PDF, I want my customers to be able to order when I’m sleeping.

I have competitors that are 2-3 times our size that haven’t invested in this stuff and it’s killing them. Some people in my industry are still in the dark ages – it’s all so antiquated! I mean, I work with some farmers that don’t own a cell phone! I work with farmers that don’t use email. It can be a very antiquated industry.

Had I known what this industry is like, I might have been too scared to start this business. But as a customer – of course I would want to order online. I don’t know why these other [businesses] don’t have online ordering, yet, especially with LFM. They’re just not making it happen!

The post How the Cast of the Jersey Shore Saved a NJ Foodhub first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

The Troy Waterfront Farmers Market in the summer, pre-COVID-19.

The Troy Waterfront Farmers Market has provided local food to the Troy, NY area for the last twenty years. They’ve grown from a 10-15 vendor operation to a 110-vendor, multi-street, year-long market – but when COVID-19 hit, they had to figure out how to continue as an essential business, despite a shut-down order from their county health department. We spoke to Steve Ridler to learn more.

LFM: Hi Steve! Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed – I know you must be very busy these days!

Steve: Yes indeed – very busy.

LFM: To start things off, could you give us a little background on your market?

Steve: Sure. The Troy Waterfront Farmers Market turned twenty last year – it started out in a small waterfront parking lot – hence the name. We had between 10 and 20 vendors, and we had a regional grant to help us get started. We started off like most markets at the time: fruits, vegetables, and a little bit of prepared food. Then over time, the market got bigger and bigger, and then we moved to a waterfront park and got even bigger. Now we’ve expanded from 10-20 vendors to 110 vendors, and we are located (in the summer) on a city street extending three to four blocks and around a square, with a hub of prepared food vendors in the middle. [Pre COVID-19] any given Saturday we were getting between 12,000 and 18,000 people in a five hour period. It’s a big market. We’re also a 52-wks-a-year market, so in the winter we move indoors and we keep about the same number of vendors.

We are a 501c(6) organization, so we operate on behalf of the market members. Our board is made up of vendors and community liaisons. That board oversees the operation of the market which is staffed by a market manager, and up until recently one market assistant.

I’m actually Liz’s replacement! [Editor’s note: Liz Hammond has been the Sales and Marketing Coordinator for LFM for two years, and previously she was the Operations Manager for the Troy Waterfront FM.] Liz left the market, and I said “Oh, you know, I’m just retiring from my State job, so I’ll help you guys out.” And now here I am! And now, obviously, we’re dealing with the COVID-19 situation.

LFM: Walk me through your experience with COVID-19 – what happened, when, and what changed for your market?

Steve: We changed very abruptly. We saw it coming, but we didn’t know quite what it was going to do. We knew we would attract the attention of the regulators, and say “Hey, we’re a pretty big market with lots of people coming in – what’s going to happen?”

Although our governor established that farmers markets were essential (and could remain open) our county health department did not want us open because we were too big of a regional attraction. We don’t just pull people from Troy – we pull people from all over the capital district. At that point there were a limited number of cases in the towns around us so they didn’t want people moving from one town to another town. So we closed down because social distancing would not be possible during the height of infections in our area.  So we thought that was time to revisit this long-standing idea about creating an online platform.

LFM: What brought you to LFM?

Steve: We knew about LFM because of Liz, but we’d looked at it before and had been thinking about going in that direction [before COVID-19 hit.]

We were looking for a system that offered aggregation. We were also looking for something that was already a success and that worked. We wanted robustness, we wanted a sound platform. Some of the platforms out there are more suited to individual farms. But we didn’t just need an online store, we needed more.

LFM: Was there a particular feature of the LFM platform that you found essential? 

Steve: It was the ability to showcase all our producers on one site. [We needed] the ability to aggregate orders within the system and create a hub. It was also the pick lists, packing list options, and the ability for a customer to sign on and see [all our producers], from one shopping cart. We also needed the ability to offer distribution more than one day a week, plus we were thinking about doing deliveries.  Really, we were attracted to the robustness of the options that we got with LFM.

LFM: Going forward, what role do you think LFM plays with your market?

Steve: We’re also looking at the future, and thinking that we can become a hub for restaurants. There was a lot of flexibility among the packages and options that LFM offered that we could customize and choose what one made sense now and then expand later on. So that’s what we were looking for, and why we chose LFM.

And, we’ve got lots of customers who don’t actually want to come to a farmers market now. The market that we’ve reopened is a much reduced size; we’re at 600-700 customers on a Saturday, instead of 20,000. That leaves a lot of people that need to get their food from somewhere, and the online market continues. We’re adding vendors every week from our pool of vendors – we started with 30 and now were at about 45. So there’s a lot of continuing interest from vendors about being in it.

LFM: How has your customer base responded?

Steve: We had lots of people signing up and lots of orders being placed early on. We are at 3,500+ registered users right now… In our first week. we received 225 orders! The lines went down the street and people just kept coming. Now, our capacity is between 300-400 orders a day.  I know we can now handle a possible COVID resurge in the fall or any other market change, because we’ve created something that works.

LFM: How has your vendor base responded to using the LFM platform?

Steve: A lot of them said “Hey, this is another opportunity for us to sell, let’s jump right in!” They like it, they’re all very impressed. They like the ability to get a pick list with details, with everything that they need. We’ve managed to figure out the right drop off times for everybody. They’ve responded very well.

Something we found very helpful was this: [before we onboarded producers], our staff created the producer profiles and added the detail from each vendor. We created our own categories and subcategories and then sent the site to the producers with a lot of information already in place. They were given the [producer] manual in advance, but we had already done all the heavy lifting. All they really had to do was set their price, select their products from the list we had created, modify them accordingly, and then put in their inventory. It saved so much time for them.

LFM: What would you say to a market manager who is just starting this process?

Steve: I would say: step back and think about what you want to do and how you want to do it.

About halfway through planning, we had an epiphany; we thought “Oh my, we’ve created a monster! There’s going to be all these vendors with all this produce that we have to aggregate into all these bags for all these customers… how are we going to do that?” We realized that we needed some infrastructure and space to support the aggregation process.

Then, on the local news that night they featured a local restaurant wholesaler that was laying off their drives and emptying their cold storage unit.   So, I called him the next morning and  he agreed that we could take over one of his cold storage spaces and use it as our aggregation hub. So now we had refrigeration, a freezer, a loading space, and a massive parking lot. It’s a great partnership and hopefully we’ll be able to continue it.

But if you don’t have that facility, how do you aggregate? You have to think about the scale, how many customers you’ll serve and how much product you’re going to move in a day. You just can’t have fresh food if you don’t have the storage capacity or the storage facilities.

So everyone should think about how they’re gonna do this. I did a lot of research and [and I found that] LFM is flexible enough to meet the needs of a bunch of different models we might need.

The post Selling Online the Smart Way: An Interview with the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

The folks at Three River Farmers Alliance (Andre Cantelmo is second from the right)

Three River Farmers Alliance is a farm collective serving the NH Seacoast region. They began in 2015 when Andre Cantelmo and Greg Balog of Heron Pond Farm realized that entering the wholesale market would require a lot of smaller farms to work together. We got to speak to Andre about a wide range of issues; what it’s like as a small farm entering the market, online sales, the impact of COVID-19, and more.

LFM: Hi Andre! Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed today. For those of us that are unfamiliar with Three River Farmers Alliance and what you do, could you give me a little background?

Andre: I own Heron Pond Farm; we’re your traditional, jack-of-all-trades small farm. We farm about 60 acres of mixed produce, as well as a CSA, a farm stand, farmers’ markets and some wholesale.

Back in 2013, we looked at the shifting marketplace, the waxing and waning of the CSA/farmers markets, and we thought “How do we get more local food out there?” The wholesale model and all its logistics looked pretty rough: we’d drive up and see this stream of other farm trucks going to the same exact places. I knew we wanted to work together rather than compete.

So, we approached two other farms that had a small wholesale presence and said, “Listen, we want to enter the wholesale market. We think there’s an opportunity for a collective approach: we share our distribution and other costs.” And that’s the beginning of Three River Farmers Alliance right there!

LFM: Is that where LFM got into the mix?

Andre: We made lists of everything we needed make it more efficient – and online ordering was first and foremost. We searched through simple online ordering platforms, and there were a lot of other programs where you could just throw something on the net and sell it. But there was no room to expand. And their payment structures tend to end up with you working for them.

At the time, Local Food Marketplace looked like an aircraft carrier. We thought we would never use all of it. But then again, we were early adopters and we went in at an entry level. And LFM really had it figured out. It was really priced right.

But we’ve grown with it. We’ve added modules and all kinds of things to grow our wholesale and it’s really dropped the cost of distributing our wholesale product. Our partners and other producers see what we do with LFM, and the benefits we get – then they really want it, too.

LFM: For the folks just starting out, looking at all the online ordering options out there – what would you advise?

Andre: I get a lot of calls from other aggregators saying, “what software are you using, and how is it useful?” [I tell them] that LFM has many different strengths, and first is the response of the LFM team.

When everything [with COVID-19] went down, we were thinking, “how are we gonna do all this routing?” Because routing used to be easy – it used to be a couple stops, only wholesale. But now we have 900 stops! How the heck do you put that together? We reached out to LFM, and in two weeks, LFM created a way for us to create our routes, download our orders into a program (it’s Routific ) and then it uploads back into LFM and prints out the invoices in the right order and groups them by route.  It’s pretty cool [to get this feature] when it didn’t even exist two weeks ago! Working with a company like LFM – a company that’s willing to respond like that – I mean, that’s a lot easier than calling up somebody that just really wants you to buy some package and do it their way.

A lot of the people that pivoted early [were able to do it] because the LFM software was so flexible. We talked to a couple other food hubs [that aren’t using LFM] and they said, “We can’t move that fast. We just don’t have the adaptability. We just can’t get it going that quickly.”

I probably bother Amy more lately than I have in years – I mean, I just email her when another thought comes up, like “hey, can the software do this?” And LFM is always responding. Like today, I got an email from LFM telling me they were already working on some idea I had just thrown out there. Basically, we were actually paying somebody to go through and highlight each packing slip to call out stuff like frozen food or eggs. And two days ago, I emailed LFM saying “hey, it would be pretty cool if you could highlight different groups of stuff and you could print it that way.” I thought that was the most obscure thing… and then I get an email back like “yeah, we’re working on that!” LFM is great. Honestly, I don’t know when you guys sleep.

LFM: How has using LFM impacted your costs?

Andre: It just builds a bigger network for us – and that’s our basic philosophy: the more food that’s on the truck the lower the cost is for everyone. And that impacts the cost of everything, from billing down to the aggregate cost of running the trucks or the coolers. I’ve been surprised where our costs really are now.

LFM: What was your process like without LFM? 

Andre: We used to do things totally backwards when we weren’t using the system. We’d calculate all the costs and deduct it from all our producers, instead of doing a markup. Which of course, is what every other institution is doing. We moved to a markup system and gosh darn I am glad that we did. We completely pivoted our business system a couple weeks ago. LFM is designed to accommodate changes like that – for example, LFM does all of the calculations for you, including payment. Then, week by week, day by day, you can now understand where your margins are fluctuating, and how much something is costing you to do in real time. And that’s not an available feature with a lot of other platforms.

LFM: What has the process been like with your producers?

Andre: Depending on the time of year, we have between 40 and 60 producers. We work with them a couple different ways. [Our Three River Alliance producers manage their own] Producer Profile, which is the standard model.

But for producers just wanting to dip their toe in the water – we don’t have to create a whole profile for them, we can just create a product and put their name on it. That allows us also to experiment with different producers before we make the commitment to each other. That function also allow us to up the level of produce diversity that we offer throughout the year. That’s been a real innovation for us.

LFM: Has LFM given you a competitive edge?

Andre: Well, if you have a map and you look in our area, [you’ll see] a lot of LFM pins popping up everywhere. Now everyone’s like” Wait a minute! What are you guys doing?”

We’ve definitely had a leg up. From an organizational point of view, you can end up lightyears ahead of others. And truth be told, Three Rivers Farmer Alliance – because of the explosion of the CSA market during COVID – our individual farms have grown so much that we’re all buying our own LFM license.

LFM: That’s awesome. So, obviously, lots of farms and markets have been feeling the impact of COVID-19. What has this been like for Three River Farmers Alliance?

Andre: When the stay-at-home order happened, all the winter farmers markets shut down. All of a sudden, it looked like we’re all going to be out [a lot of money.] My farm relies on those kinds of revenues to pay a year-round crew. It’s a fine living but there are low margins. We need that income, unless we want to start laying off people. So, we needed to keep going.

The first thing we did was come up with a plan: we’re gonna pivot, and we’re gonna do home delivery. Since we’d already had years of experience with LFM, we already had a system – so it really didn’t take much. It was done in four days. On the software side, it was four days.

And most of [those four days] was just us getting the producers to create all their profiles. I mean, developing a retail product looks different than your wholesale product, so we had our producers create retail versions of their wholesale products.

LFM: That’s amazing! How have your sales changed?

Andre: That first week we organized a popup farmers market and we advertised home delivery. And I figured, you know…we’ll deliver a couple hundred boxes, it’ll keep us going – right?

We started out with 258 boxes – it was crazy, and we only had two delivery days. The next week, it was 550 boxes and just as crazy. We decided, ok, week three? We move. We moved to a new building and bought three new trucks and two outdoor 24-foot coolers. That week we had 750 boxes! In the last two weeks we’ve had 900 orders a week – and now were on our way to 1200 orders with four delivery days. The numbers are better than any of our best numbers before COVID. March – when we barely had anything set up yet – was better than any August we’ve ever had. And April is gonna crush that Marsh – like, double it.

We’ve also had to hire 25 people; a crew of drivers, a sort crew, and a pack crew. When you service 1200 people a week, they all want to talk to you! So, we’ve had to hire some customer service as well. Back in the day we were texting the chefs. But now, the calls are crazy.

LFM: Wow. So, it sounds like the customer response has been overwhelming. Have you heard feedback from your new customers?

Andre: They haven’t had any trouble ordering anything – what they have trouble with now is how fast we sell out of everything. It’s a stampede. This last ordering period opened at noon. Within 45 minutes we had about 400 orders. It just goes that fast. And our customer base has expanded to people that have never ordered from a farm before – they’re asking for oranges and bananas! All the new customers are very cool, they’re fans.

LFM: What has it been like for your producers?

Andre: The producers are still adapting, still figuring out where to put their product. Like wholesale or retail, etc. And, in this part of the country, May is the worst time for fresh veg. We’re transitioning out of greenhouses, then some of the more intensive crops are being move into greenhouses so there’s a little bit of a gap with greens.

On the wholesale side, we have a ton of protein producers who were just getting by pre-COVID. Their sales definitely weren’t leading the company. But now, it’s totally inverted. The protein people lead the pack. People want meat, they want cheese…they buy eggs like you would not believe. And tofu! Our tofu guy is producing at his max. He can’t believe it.

LFM: That’s awesome.

Andre: It is awesome, but it comes with a whole new set of questions. For example, how do we give this legs and make it last? After all this fast growth we’re moving into a stability phase. That would normally take years, but we’re six weeks in thinking “Ok, how do we stabilize and make sure that we hold on to this market share? Where do we want to expand? What new producers or new products do we wanna bring on? And…how do we make these decisions?” This process has really taken us to a new philosophical place of like, what is local, what is sustainable, what are your core beliefs. So, we’re really now looking at what’s next, and how do we do it.

The post A Deep Dive into LFM with Andre Cantelmo from Three River Farmers Alliance first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

The lovely and hardworking folks at WFM2GO

WFM2Go is an extension of the beloved Wolfville Farmers’ Market in Nova Scotia. A couple years ago, Wolfville Farmers’ Market decided they wanted an online ordering presence, so they formed WFM2Go and launched using Local Food Marketplace’s software. What follows has been a real success story, and Wolfville Farmers’ Market found themselves in a great position to take on the new challenges presented by the onset of COVID-19. We got to speak with Lindsay, the manager at WFM2Go, to learn more.

LFM: Hi Lindsay! So for those of us that are unfamiliar with WFM2Go, could you give me a little background?

Lindsay: WFM2Go is our online store, but it’s part of our farmers’ market which started in 1992 in a parking lot with three vendors and has grown into a 2-day-a-week market, plus two online deliveries a week.

LFM: What was the thought process behind creating the online market, and why did you choose the LFM software?

Lindsay: Well, six to seven years ago, the board and our vendors started to notice that sales were plateauing – I mean, you can only fit so many people in the market, you can only sell so much in that amount of time. We were trying to figure out how to increase the sales, but in a way that the vendors could grow together. There’s not a lot of middle ground – there’s farmers markets, roadside stands, and whatnot…and then there’s large scale grocery stores. There aren’t a lot of scaling options for businesses in between. A farmer can’t start at 1 and then all of a sudden be ready for a grocery store. That’s not how you grow a business. We tried an app where people could build their grocery list ahead of time, and when more growth was needed, we started doing a lot of research into many different platforms. A grid of pros and cons of each platform was developed, and we ended up choosing LFM.

We’re all about personal connection, and connecting over food. And LFM felt like one of us! LFM isn’t this huge corporation where I’m calling this 1-800 number…I just call Amy! I can just email and ask questions and …we just love working with you guys.

LFM: How has using LFM software impacted your admin process?

Lindsay: I often think about how much our workload would increase without LFM. I know some of the folks here in Nova Scotia that are using LFM and we’re all so grateful. I know some markets that are trying to sell online Google sheets or spreadsheets and I’m like…holy moly, I can’t….like, kudos to you for making that work but I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine orders coming through on an excel sheet, tallying them up, charging customers, figuring out how much they owe and making sure the vendors know what they need to bring in…it’s all too much. With LFM, all of those pieces happen automatically – I don’t even have to worry about it.

LFM: What was it like for your vendors when you made the transition?

Lindsay: Well, at first they were pretty nervous. In Nova Scotia; we’re rural, but we’re considered a good size market – and a lot of our vendors’ income is through the market. But a lot of them were eager to scale up. In the beginning, 35 vendors were participating and now we have 55. So, a bunch more have joined. We’ve found the quickest way to get vendors using the system is to hold a webinar once every two weeks where I take them through the whole process. And at this point, it feels like we’ve done a year’s worth of work in  only a few months! And now, our primary producers are doing as well or better than before this.

LFM: How about your customer base – how did they react to the new system?

Lindsay: It was slow to start, to be honest – ordering produce online can be a weird concept to some people. I describe it as…you know when people started using their credit cards online? That’s kind of the attitude towards buying your produce online. It was slower to start, but we’ve now opened our base to people who used to go to the market but couldn’t make it anymore, or people that are older, or people that still go but wanted the mid-week top up that the online store can offer.

LFM: How has the process changed since COVID-19 closure orders?

Lindsay: I now refer to it as “three years of practice” with LFM. In the year previous to the shutdown, February 2019 to February 2020, we were averaging around 58 orders a week. Towards February of this year we were hitting more like 70 or 75 orders a week. And previously, the most we’d ever done in a day was 95. Now, this past Wednesday we did 317 orders and we’re doing it twice a week. And we pack that and deliver it all in the same day.

LFM: Are there any particular features of the LFM platform that you guys find the most useful?

Lindsay: We do CSA boxes – that’s really helpful. We have a farmer that does a CSA on their own, but they couldn’t continue it through the winter. So, we took on delivery of their CSA during the summer, and to keep those CSA customers during the winter we do a winter CSA where we just build the box ourselves. Then, in July, that farmers’ original CSA will start back up again.

Honestly, there’s so many features that we use, but there’s always so many things that I didn’t even realize it could do… like I’ll email support and say “Hey, I have this huge problem” and Nick will be say “Oh, just do this!” and it’s solved! It’s a huge part of why we love working with you guys.

The post Early Adopters: an Interview with WFM2GO first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.

The retail landscape has changed drastically in the last month – and while there are a lot of platforms out there, LFM still stands above the rest. Let us tell you why.

The post Why LFM? A Snapshot of what makes LFM the Right Choice first appeared on Local Food Marketplace.