2000 Annual Report for FNC00-326
GROWN Locally Grower's Cooperative Website
Summary
GROWN Locally is a cooperative out of Postville, IA that consists of eleven vegetable producers. The main objective of this cooperative is to provide fresh, healthy nutritious goods directly from the local farms to local establishments. The producers of this organization are responsible for the day to day operations of the cooperative, which ranges from organizational meetings to marketing and delivering the products themselves. This allows the farmers to have a direct connection with the organizations that purchase their products.
The purpose of this SARE grant was to help GROWN Locally create a website that would provide an easier method of placing orders for their customers. The website would be updated weekly to show product availability and pricing as well as providing recipes and pictures of their produce. “Our goal is to be able to communicate more effectively with our customers, streamline the ordering process, and continually keep our faces and farms in from of our customers,” expressed Michael Nash.
The results of this project have been very successful, as they achieved their goal of creating a website that provided an ordering system that local food service buyers were familiar with and created easier access to their products. The website also allowed them to post information about the cooperative and the importance of local trade. This new method created an easy and accurate way of record keeping, as the inventory and purchases are recorded directly on the server database.
GROWN Locally is projecting an increase in total sales in the coming years based on the buyers’ response from the website. They have found that they are spending much less time organizing the orders and now have their products available two times a week rather than just once. They have reached out to the community by providing workshops and consulting sessions that helped individuals become more familiar with the new system and GROWN Locally.
GROWN Locally
776 Old Stage Road
Postville, Iowa 52162
sunspot@netins.net
www.grownlocally.com