Farmers have a new way to reach their customers thanks to software designed in Ontario. Commerce platform Local Line was developed by CEO Cole Jones while he was attending Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. Eventually, the company opened an office through Communitech, an innovation hub in Kitchener, Ont. “We provide software tools for farmers, producers, anyone with any food to sell online, to be able to reach their customers,” Nina Galle, head of marketing at Local Line said. Galle said ‘customers’ includes everyday households, but it also encompasses restaurants, retailers and grocers. The company recently won a Canadian Food Innovation Network Foodtech Frontier award. “In the last two years, Local Line customers have actually eliminated 940 million food miles, just by shortening supply chains,” Galle said. “That means selling direct to customers, whether that’s Chipotle, a grocery retail [store], or household which really shows the impact that we’re making.” Meanwhile farmers told CTV News the software is helping them grow their businesses while reducing the amount of time and effort they spend on marketing initiatives. Milky Way Farm in Woodstock, Ont. grows a mixture of heirloom and hybrid produce and used to sell its products directly from the farm’s property and at markets in Kitchener and Waterloo. But that meant the owners were in the field throughout the week, harvesting on Friday and then driving to the markets on Saturday. “We used to go to the Farmers’ Market – that day would start at 4 a.m. and be completely exhausting,” Meghan Brandenburg, owner of Milky Way Farm, said. “Fridays is our harvest day and that’s our longest, most tiring day. Then you’d follow that with Saturday at the market. That would be longer and even more tiring. Then I’d just be exhausted for Sunday,” Jesse Way, owner of Milky Way Farm, said. But now that they’re using Local Line, the duo said they no longer face long days at the market. Instead, they use the software to receive online orders and then deliver the food to drop off locations. “We now sell exclusively online,” Brandenburg said. “Every order that comes in goes through our Local Line platform. It’s all organized in one place. We can have access to all of the sales that are happening throughout the week. We can see how we’re doing and what this next harvest day might look like.” “Local Line enables us to sell through our farm share program and we have a retail store,” Way said. “On Saturday I go to the city still, but it’s a three-hour pickup window. People have preordered everything and they come through the pickup window.” Knowing what has already been ordered means Way and Brandenburg aren’t caught hauling leftover produce home from the market. It also offers insight about what foods are selling well. With two young children at home, it also lets Brandenburg and Way prioritize family time. “We can find a better weekend balance that way,” Brandenburg said. “We much prefer and enjoy the growing part of farming. The sales part is not our forte,” Way explained. “it’s definitely easier when we can track everything through the store and not have that extra exhausting day of the week.”
