The Source
Beautiful writing about delicious British food. Articles, comments and musings from our contributors.
The story behind Love British Food’s partner, The Produce Market.
In 2019 farmers in the U.K. received on average only 8% of the final value of their products, with the majority of the profit being absorbed by the middle of the supply chain.
My wife and I have launched The Produce Market as a community orientated project, creating both a local and national food marketplace for farmers and other food and drinks producers to sell directly through, removing the middle men.
The Produce Market is a place for farmers or fishermen to sell direct to the public or local chefs, a place for someone producing honey, eggs, jams, cakes, fruit etc to sell from either locally or nationally, or simply a place for small food businesses of any sort to show off their products and reach more retail or wholesale customers in a simple and cost effective manner. Plus we take no commission so sellers keep everything they make ensuring all money spent goes back into our local communities. We don’t want to be taking 10,20,30% of every sale and this way we can help our small producers build a sustainable future.
At the moment if you want to sell fresh fruit or vegetables, eggs, homemade food, handmade cheese from your farm, there is no ‘go to’ place online to sell food from like there is if you make crafts to sell on Etsy or if you have something to sell on EBay. Our vision is to create the biggest online platform for buying and selling food and drinks and use it to drive a sustainable future for British food producers. Anyone can sign up and start selling for free in just a few minutes.
The ability to sell direct is going to be essential to create a sustainable future for our farmers, fishermen and other small businesses, and ultimately for our local communities and the environment we live in. Intensive farming, factory production and selling these products via multinationals doesn’t do this.
We are also developing a wholesale marketplace based on the same commission free principle - it will look the same as the retail site but chefs and other trade buyers such as independent shops or cafes can register and log in to view trade prices and source local or unique products. The idea is that if you are a farmer or home baker for example you can sell your produce to a local chef or cafe and it gives these chefs and cafes somewhere to find you as well. Similarly for a farm shop to find new local producers or a bar in London to find a tiny micro distillery somewhere in Scotland for example so they can stock something a bit different. A farmer can even use it to sell grain direct to a brewery or independent mill, all without any middle men. We are looking to launch this later in the year sometime.
We are looking to collaborate with as many producers, associations, publications, chefs or anyone else supporting British producers as possible to help promote British produce and share what we are doing. We will soon have a community area in the website too to publish articles and share events and stories - please get in touch if you are interested in working together so we can do everything we can to build a sustainable future for our producers and communities.
Come and see for yourselves! Visit www.theproducemarket.co.uk
Proud to be Love British Food's online retail partner!
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