Sometimes it’s fun to spend your Saturday cruising country roads visiting roadside farm stands, picking up things like farm fresh eggs, grass-fed local beef, a jar of your favourite honey and a bag of Fraser Valley frozen blueberries.
But sometimes you just want to restock the kitchen without criss-crossing the Lower Mainland, so you can spend your Saturday doing something else.
Enter DirectFood.store, a online grocery platform that connects farmers and consumers for same-day deliveries of all your favourite local products.
“We make inventory, ordering, payment and delivery simple, and bring together all your favourite products in one marketplace,” says Raymond Szabada, CEO of i-Open Technologies, the Abbotsford-based parent company of the DirectFood.store.
How DirectFood.store works
- Browse online: Shop by category or scroll through the Farm Directory to find your favourite vendor. DirectFood.store has beverages, condiments, dairy and eggs, fruit and veggies, grains, grocery, liquor, meat and seafood, pantry items, pet food and ready to eat items. Order from as many different vendors as you wish at the same time!
- Pay online: Online payment is simple, and you can expect to find the great competitive prices you’d find at the farm stand.
- Choose a delivery date: DirectFood.store is now delivering in the Lower Mainland, from Chilliwack to Vancouver, three days a week — Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Choose the day that works for you. They will email you with a delivery time window the day before, and you can leave a cooler on your porch for contactless delivery.
- Bon appetit! Delivery is always free! For the month of March there’s no minimum purchase required so it’s easy to try it out, and the minimum going forward is only $45.
“We don’t have warehouses, or pre-boxed meals. All of our orders are picked up from vendors in the morning and delivered to customers on the same day. That helps vendors too, and helps eliminate food waste — farmers know exactly how much they need to pick on any given day,” Szabada says.
There’s still room for new local and certified organic vendors in the DirectFood.store. You supply the food, DFS provides a lively marketplace, easy online ordering and effortless delivery.
“There are so many unique products on the marketplace like fresh bannock, nutritious raw dog food, traditionally smoked salmon and others,” says Colin Schmidt, Sr. VP of product management, leading the charge on the development and design of DirectFood.store. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for smaller producers to access a broader market, and makes it much easier for consumers to get those hard-to-find items.
Start shopping online at https://directfood.store and bring the farm directly to your kitchen table today!
