FarmersMarket.Store addresses last-mile delivery and puts more cash in vendors’ pockets

Tim Harty, The Business Times

A married couple in Fruita has made it their mission – and their livelihood, they hope – to make it easier for people who grow crops, raise livestock or make food and other products to sell those products and get them delivered.

That led Courtney and Jamie Wood a few months ago to start FarmersMarket.Store, which is also their website’s URL.

Courtney described FarmersMarket.Store as a “Grand Junction-based business working to solve one of the most persistent challenges in the Grand Valley: connecting local farmers, ranchers and makers directly with consumers in a simple, modern and efficient way.”

He provided greater detail in an email, writing FarmersMarket.Store is a marketplace that enables:

• “Retail sales for local farmers, ranchers, bakers and artisanal makers.
• “Easy year-round access to healthy, farm-fresh food for consumers.
• “Affordable home delivery throughout the valley, including produce, meats, baked goods, coffee, pantry items, and more.
• “A centralized system that supports the local economy by keeping dollars with local producers.”

It has taken time to get FarmersMarket.Store established. The Woods needed to spread the word about what they’re doing among the kinds of people who often sell their items in the Grand Valley’s physical farmers markets during the warm-weather and in-season months.

The Woods are asking them to now try selling on their online farmers market, one where customers can order items from a variety of vendors, then get it delivered.

That delivery is a major sticking point for many vendors who find it time-consuming and expensive, therefore counterproductive.

That’s what Jamie said she was hearing from people after she started volunteering for Western Colorado Alliance for Community Action, a nonprofit that says it “brings people together to build grassroots power through community organizing and leadership development.” That includes local foods and agriculture, which was of particular interest to Jamie, who grew up on a farm in Utah.

“I’ve been sitting in meetings with them every month and listening to farmers, listening to chefs, listening to all these different people,” she said. “The main problem that always came to the table is that last-mile delivery to get the food to the consumer. Or to get retail pricing on the food that we grow.”

She added, “The amount of money that farmers make off of the produce that they grow is so small, because we’re in competition with Walmart prices. We have to keep our prices low, so therefore we can’t afford to pay extra labor to get it packaged and delivered. That’s always been the big problem with small farms and ranches is that paid labor to deliver it to customers.”

Along with that, Courtney said, “If you don’t have a retail presence, other than, like, at the local farmer’s market, nobody really knows how they could get your products in the first place.”

Courtney said FarmersMarket.Store “sort of organically derived from those conversations,” identifying problems and spurring the Woods to seek solutions.

Courtney said Jamie pitched the idea of: “If only there was a local community website that had all the products of everybody listed available, you could buy from that website. And then that website somehow delivered to the customer. It’s no different than Instacart for local farms.”

And the Woods decided to try to make it happen.

They needed to accumulate producers and makers to commit to FarmersMarket.Store, making the website more attractive for online consumers before they launched it. It took until mid to late November to reach the level of participation they deemed necessary to make their business viable and marketable.

“We wanted 20 to 25 vendors before we launched it to the public, which is where we’re at right now,” Courtney said during a Dec. 2 interview. “We just barely started to put the word out. Other than social media, last weekend was our very first festival that we started to really promote purchasing products on the website.”

The Woods are starting to see the fruits of their labors. Incremental as those results may be, they said each sale seems to draw positive feedback and potentially spurs another sale.

“We’ve just barely started,” Courtney said. “But we’ve seen traction, we’ve seen the growth. Just last week, we had three orders come in for our chicken guys, so it’s slow, but steady. I think it really was important for us to get a good variety of products on there before we could expect sales to come.”

Jamie added, “Our chicken farmers, they’re out by Delta, so they were selling mostly at farmers market in Palisade on Sundays, and they switched that to going to Tractor Supply every Sunday. They’ve been happy to have some extra orders, new people seeing them, coming and getting their chicken and eggs, so they’ve been really grateful for the extra business.”

Where FarmersMarket.Store makes its money is a percentage it draws per sale, “a 10 percent platform fee, and that’s all,” Courtney said. And then the vendor has to pay for the delivery, which usually is UberEats if the delivery is within a 10-mile radius. Otherwise, the Woods or one of their sons do the delivery.

To put the 10 percent platform fee in perspective, Jamie pointed out a farmer who makes a sale on FarmersMarket.Store, keeps 90 percent of the retail price. If they sell their produce to a large grocery store, they get back only half of the retail price.

“It’s way below industry standard,” Courtney said of FarmersMarket.Store’s take. “We think we can build a business around that. We still believe we can. It just takes a lot of volume, a lot of community change of how they think about the shopping.”

Courtney reiterated FarmersMarket.store is just getting started, but he is happy to see there has been excitement about sales.

“We’re just seeing those initial sales pop off,” he said. “But the excitement, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a business where when we tell a potential customer about it, they’re so excited to use it.

“Mary’s Mountain Cookies (in Fruita), we left them a flyer and they called us a few days later. Same thing with several of our vendors. It’s just been like, ‘This is what we need.’ So, they’re telling us they want it. They’re telling us they love it. That keeps us motivated to keep doing it, because it’s going to take time. We have to be patient with this type of business and just build it slowly.”

For more information about FarmersMarket.store:

• Go online to farmersmarket.store.
• E-mail co-owner Courtney Wood at cwood@farmersmarket.store.
• Call 707-264-9424.

FarmersMarket.Store does not have a brick-and-mortar location, but it plans to get one as the business grows.

Who’s available in the store?

FarmersMarket.Store currently has 24 businesses selling items on its website. They are:

• Abbey’s Eden
• Boekel Farms
• Colorado Gold
• Colorado Legacy Coffee Roasters
• Cross Rafter C Ranch
• Decadence Gourmet
• Dough Pros
• Early Morning Orchard
• Elemental Wellness Shop
• Grand Valley Micro Farms
• Happy Hive Farmstead
• Harding Homegrown
• The High Lonesome Ranch
• J & D Heirloom Seeds
• Mary’s Mountain Cookies
• New Way Refillery
• Palisade Kombucha
• Pinon Kitchen Co.
• Skip’s Farm to Market
• The Stone Fruit Company
• Trail Cookie
• WannaBee Farm Honey
• Weekly Harvest Box
• Wild Child