The Los Angeles Times reports that the e-commerce giant is testing what it calls Farmers Market Direct in certain areas of Southern California.
The program – which is a partnership with Fresh Nation, a company that connects farmers and vendors with consumers – is advertised as delivering baskets of fresh produce to consumers just hours after its been harvested.
Customers can choose either small or large deliveries of fresh vegetables, fruits, or a combination through the Farmers Market Direct page.
However, there isn’t someone with Amazon simply walking the fields of local farms to complete deliveries. Instead, the produce is chosen by “providers who attend local farmers markets in neighborhoods each day of the week to source the freshest, tastiest, most nutritional seasonal produce.”
Delivery of the produce isn’t instantaneous, either. The Amazon Farmers Market Direct order page says that a provider will contact the customer within one business day to confirm the purchase. The company then sends an email the day before drop-off, providing a three-hour delivery window.
Tony Lee, the founder of Fresh Nation, came up with the idea to deliver fresh produce after managing a farmers market in Connecticut.
“Because farmers markets are only open for a few hours a week, there wasn’t enough time for people who want fresh local food to get it,” he says. “Making fresh local food more available to more people on the one hand and on the other bringing more business to these small farmers and food producers — that’s our mission.”
Lee created a database of farmers markets from across the country, organized a supply chain and ran small tests of deliveries before approaching Amazon about a partnership.
“The idea is that we’re benefiting the vendors, never cannibalizing their sales,” Lee tells the L.A. Times. “We never want to take sales away from them that they would have gotten through farmers markets. When they sell to us, it’s extra sales.”
For now deliveries are being made on a trial basis, but the L.A. Times reports the model could rollout nationwide in the near future.
Amazon is testing farmers market produce delivery [The Los Angeles Times]
by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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