Internet-based farmers market serves Champaign County customers

[/media-credit] MYER AND MARK Run­yan bag cold prod­ucts out of a cooler
for a cus­tomer dur­ing pickup
at the Cham­paign County
Vir­tual Farm­ers’ Mar­ket at the
Cham­paign Fam­ily YMCA. CITIZEN Photo/ALEX HOWELL

URBANA – Like any other con­sumer mar­ket, farm­ers’ mar­kets require some degree of guess­work. Ven­dors assess which crops and how many will sell, hop­ing to avoid car­ry­ing extras or under sup­ply­ing the market.

Cus­tomers have a sim­i­lar dilemma.

A new medium is remov­ing the guess­work for users of an Internet-based mar­ket in Cham­paign County. For any one per­son, the sell­ing or buy­ing expe­ri­ence takes five min­utes, enough time to drop off a batch of baked breads or pick up a pre-ordered sup­ply of bulk hamburger.

The prod­ucts are fresh and home­made. Most are com­pet­i­tively priced, while a few are pricier than pr

“But you can meet the man who milks the cow,” man­ager and vol­un­teer Heather Tiefen­thaler said of the pro­gram she helped launched in May 2012. “This food has a very short shelf life, only a three-day shelf life for the bread … but they’re just so good.”

Urbana’s dig­i­tal mar­ket is among hun­dreds across the coun­try resid­ing at LocallyGrown.Net, but was the first to appear in Ohio, say orga­niz­ers. The Urbana page is at champaignoh.locallygrown.net. It now boasts 216 active cus­tomers and 30 ven­dors, who in the program’s first seven months racked up a com­bined $12,400 in sales.

“Some of our ven­dors have grossed $2,000,” Tiefen­thaler said in early Jan­u­ary. “Our dairy guy receives a $100 check every week.”

Three per­cent of the total sales are paid to the cre­ator of LocallyGrown.Net, Eric Wag­oner of Georgia.

With more than 20 prod­uct cat­e­gories dis­played on an inter­ac­tive web­page, Urbana’s site allows users to buy directly from pro­duc­ers in their area.

“I think this is the future of how to reach more cus­tomers,” said Tiefen­thaler, also a mem­ber of the Com­mu­nity Improve­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (CIC) and the Cham­paign Fam­ily YMCA board. “It’s a dif­fer­ent niche. It’s not just a farmer’s market.”

Offered year-round, mar­ket goers can choose from baked goods includ­ing basil bread, angel food cake and brown­ies; spices such as Cajun sea­son­ing and pep­per pow­der; dairy prod­ucts such as Greek yogurt and whole milk; and meats served in a vari­ety of ways includ­ing beef sir­loin steak and pork patties.

The list is ongoing.

Apple but­ter, black­berry jam and candy apple jelly top the list of jams and jellies.

Gar­lic prod­ucts are a cat­e­gory unto them­selves, offer­ing gourmet gar­lic flakes and Susanville soft­neck garlic.

Look inside the “Farm Crafts” tab to find hand­made wal­lets and cell phone sleeves deliv­ered from Mechanicsburg.

There are processed foods, pre­pared foods, flower bou­quets, fruits, gourds, pies, eggs, honey, syrup, pop­corn, grains and milled prod­ucts, and the list continues.

The sum­mer months bring a vari­ety of toma­toes, pep­pers, squash, radishes, onions, black­ber­ries, rasp­ber­ries and spinach, to name a few.

“Right before Christ­mas, we were still hav­ing $700 weeks,” Tiefen­thaler said, adding local res­i­dents still are learn­ing about the year-round options. The aver­age order is about $20.

Strip away the catchy medium and the prod­ucts stand by them­selves, says Tiefen­thaler. Buy­ers can trace their pro­duce to farm­ers, bak­ers and crafts­men from Urbana, Spring­field, New Carlisle, Mechan­ics­burg, Rose­wood, Cable, Belle­fontaine, Zanes­field and other areas in the tri-county area. The food is fresh, lacks preser­v­a­tives and is inspected thor­oughly by vol­un­teers upon arrival.

Vol­un­teers include Pam Bow­shier, an arti­san bread baker who sells Cos­mic Char­lie Bread, frozen pizza dough and rolls at the mar­ket. Mark Run­yan, owner of Oakview Farm Fresh Meats, south of Urbana, raises breed­ing ani­mals to sell across the coun­try and sells a vari­ety of frozen meats at the mar­ket with the help of his son, Myer.

Both Bow­sher and Run­yan, as well as vol­un­teer Char­lene Sta­ple­ton of Urbana, have helped Tiefen­thaler set up tables at the Cham­paign Fam­ily Y and han­dle the oper­a­tions. Tiefen­thaler hopes to turn over the mar­ket to them in the near future.

“Pam does a great job,” Tiefen­thaler said. “She does all the sales reports and invoice operations.”

“This is going to be some­thing that’s invalu­able,” Sta­ple­ton said of the mar­ket. “I think it’s a great asset for people.”

Site users must cre­ate a login account, but are not required to pay a reg­is­tra­tion fee. That may change, how­ever, after the program’s $20,000 grant awarded by the YMCA of the USA runs its course. Even then, said Tiefen­thaler, any fee would be min­i­mal due to the program’s low costs.

Sought com­pet­i­tively by local YMCAs nation­wide, the grant was one of 23 awarded in the United States. It is expected to last another six months before the Urbana mar­ket will need to find another rev­enue source. Tiefen­thaler is con­duct­ing a study to deter­mine the best and cheap­est way of assess­ing mem­ber­ship fees.

The goal is to build a self-sufficient mar­ket. The big attrac­tions, she said, are reduced work for ven­dors, con­ve­nience for cus­tomers and no more guess­work for either side. Ven­dors reg­u­larly update the quan­ti­ties of each item avail­able on the web­page, and buy­ers can leave requests or con­cerns in a com­ments section.

“The cus­tomers enjoy it this way and I think they would be OK with a mem­ber­ship fee,” she said.

Orga­niz­ers say the chal­lenge will be grow­ing the ven­dor and cus­tomer bases hand-in-hand. A Face­book page and weblog can be accessed on the web­site, as social media has played a key role in its publicity.

“Some­one will like us on Face­book,” said Tiefen­thaler, “and they’ll

have five friends that say, ‘Yes, I believe in buy­ing locally.’”

“We just net­work all over the place,” added Bowshier.

The idea started with Tiefen­thaler. With her press­ing the issue and elect­ing to lead the pro­gram, for­mer YMCA direc­tor Kathy Finney worked toward obtain­ing the grant. Today, Tiefen­thaler over­sees the web­page, deliv­er­ies, col­lec­tions and trans­ac­tions, but has yet to take any of the grant money directed toward work compensations.

On Thurs­days, the con­sumer pick-up point is located in the lobby of the Cham­paign Y, 191 Com­mu­nity Drive. Before arriv­ing, mem­bers can select from a drop-down menu of avail­able items on the web­site accom­pa­nied by pic­tures, prices and ven­dor information.

When an order is placed, trans­ac­tions aren’t final­ized until buy­ers col­lect their orders and make pay­ments between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. Thurs­days on site. Ven­dors are expected to drop off their items within an hour of the market’s opening.

If either a ven­dor or cus­tomer fails to appear on any given Thurs­day, deduc­tions are made from the weekly order place­ments and earnings.

Tiefen­thaler is hope­ful the future holds more prod­ucts and capa­bil­i­ties. She also hopes the vir­tual mar­ket will com­ple­ment tra­di­tional mar­kets in St. Paris, Mechan­ics­burg, North Lewis­burg and Urbana. The new pro­gram is a com­mu­nity ser­vice, not a com­peti­tor, and eas­ily can be imple­mented at any mar­ket, she said.

Craig Shirk writes for the

Urbana Daily Citizen

Posted by Rachel Lloyd on Feb 5 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.