hello everyone, i had been waiting to let people know, but you guys are my first official announcement that my family and i are beginning a new home delivery service in ithaca in february. garden gate will be delivering local foods "milk man" style, but more like a farmers' market on wheels. in most cases we are getting our food directly from farms and processors within 100 miles of ithaca. in the rest of the cases we are getting foods through a distributor, but ALL products will be from within 100 miles of ithaca. we will begin delivering in the city of ithaca and expand into tompkins county once we get our systems perfected. we're running the business out of our downtown ithaca home.
the green part of our business includes retrofitting our vehicle for veggie oil. when we're big enough i'd like to get an electric vehicle and am even considering a delivery bike, but doubt i can manage that. (it's still a wonderful dream, though.) we will be using only reusable bags for delivery and will work with suppliers to minimize waste from packaging. the benefits are far greater than the green tools we'll be using, though. if we can prevent vehicles from being out on the road for mid-week trips to the grocery store, we can reduce ithaca's contribution to carbon emissions right away. keeping the food supply local is very appealing to me, and we'll be doing tons of product education and marketing on behalf of our suppliers. so far, we have about 25 local farms and producers and easily over 100 products, probably on the way to 200 at this point. we'll deliver meat, dairy products, eggs, sauces and chutneys, breads and pastries, prepared foods, tofu and seitan, coffee and tea, maple syrup and honey, chips, nut butters, cleaners and tons more. i am particularly interested in working with new farms and processors, so if you know of anyone getting started who'd like to sell a few more units of product, please let me know! in addition to announcing garden gate delivery to you all, i am looking for feedback from people about what kinds of things you anticipate i should be thinking about. i am beginning to make purchases for the business and though i have spent dozens of hours on research, any snippets of advice or insight will be very helpful. our website is: gardengatedelivery.com and will be ready for viewing in just over a month from now. if people have questions or ideas and would like to contact me directly, please call me at 607 342 6228. i am really looking forward to working with some of you in various ways as garden gate begins delivery in february. many thanks, marlo capoccia _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
