By offering a range of services for farmers, including aggregation, distribution, sales, marketing, and access to large consistent buyers, Local Food Hub aims to make life a little easier for the folks who grow our food. Participation with the Local Food Hub is free. To find out more about becoming a partnering farm, please contact Adrianna: adrianna@localfoodhub.org
Services we provide include:
Aggregation and Distribution:
By bringing together produce from more than 70 area farms at our 3,800 square foot warehouse in Ivy, Local Food Hub is able to meet the community demand for local food, while also saving farmers time and money. We can purchase large quantities of locally grown food from farmers, providing them with a consistent revenue stream and a dependable market, while relieving them of multiple deliveries and sales calls. We sell and deliver this high-quality, fresh produce to customers throughout the Charlottesville region.
Access to Institutional Customers:
Many large buyers, including hospitals, senior centers, and public schools require high volume, easy ordering, refrigerated delivery, and liability insurance. Local Food Hub provides all of these things, plus fantastic customer service, enabling our partnering farms to easily sell to our community’s institutional customers.
Marketing Support:
While we do aggregate food from many different farms to fill large orders, our food is always clearly labeled with the farm of origin, so our partner producers’ name, brand, and image remains strong and focused. In addition, we provide a variety of marketing and sales services, including web profiles and photographs, point of sale materials, and media exposure for our farmers. Each farm recieves a personalized farm visit, write up, and photo session.
Pre-Season Planning:
At the beginning of each growing season, representatives from the Local Food Hub schedule meetings with both buyers and growers. From these meetings, the Local Food Hub develops a record of buyer demand, which then informs grower planting and pricing requirements. This guidance enables small farmers to develop a working business model.
Interested in being a partner producer? Please contact Adrianna Vargo: adrianna@localfoodhub.org