By Anneli Fogt
The online marketplace for local food will allow shoppers to select products from more than 25 local farms and food makers anytime.
A few of the participating vendors are Northborne Farm, Sun Island Farm, GreenMan Farm, The Mighty Truffle, Vashon Island Baking Company and Vashon Coffee Company.
After shoppers place their orders, personalized shopping bags will be assembled with the shoppers’ choices and made available for pick up Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Village Green. Customers can also choose to have orders delivered right to their door for an additional $10 fee.
“VashonFresh aims to do for fresh local food and local farmers what giant retailers like Amazon are doing: offering multiple, convenient ways to buy, pick-up or deliver,” Dan Carlson, one of the project’s innovators and a local farmer, said. “As more and more shoppers use the online environment, VashonFresh enables islanders to order exactly what they want from the producers they prefer.”
There are no minimum orders and no membership fees. But there is a “personal shopper fee” — an additional 10 percent of the total order amount — that goes toward covering the costs of assembling the shopping bags. That fee will be waived during the month of June.
VashonFresh is a pilot program of the Vashon Island Growers Association (VIGA). It will run through September 2017 and is funded by a King Conservation District Regional Food Systems grant with support from UW’s Transportation and Logistics Center and King County’s Local Food Initiative.
After the three-month pilot, an evaluator, a professor from Portland State University, will provide feedback on whether it can be a sustainable program.