Profile: Chatham Marketplace co-op grocery store in Pittsboro, NC.
Local Organic Y’All sat down with Dellea Dellea, General Manager of Chatham Marketplace, to talk about selling local produce. Chatham Marketplace, a 3,000 SF food co-op in the sustainable farming mecca of Pittsboro, has consistently outdone all other Triangle retailers in the quality and variety of local produce items for sale. The store in Pittsboro is selling close to forty different local items, even more variety than has been for sale at some of the prominent local farmers markets. I wanted to know how they did it.
Local Organic Y’All: How have efforts to do local sourcing progressed over the years?
Dellea: It was part of the intent of Chatham Marketplace when it opened to support “local” as much as possible. So, for me, that goes back at least ten years. Local was the focus and not so much certified organic -- growing practices were left open to interpretation which meant either organic or low/no-spray. “Local” has been a mission of mine since I moved to North Carolina in 1991 to work for Wellspring Market in Durham. They cared about “local” back then, but the supply was so limited. Starting back then, I built up a word-of-mouth network of local growers. Eastern Carolina Organic deserves a lot of credit for making more product available. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to get half of what I am getting. They are reaching out across the state and into neighboring states. And around here, we owe a lot to the sustainable farming classes at Central Carolina Community College. Students from each graduating class have gone out, bought land and started farming.
LOY: What is your definition of “local” or “regional”?
Dellea: We are actually in the process of reworking our definition of “local,” and while this is not yet official policy, it appears that we are in agreement on a 250 mile radius as “local.” This encompasses almost all of North Carolina, and some of South Carolina and Virginia. For “regional,” we fall back on the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA), which has the country broken up into several regions.
LOY: Our view of local is that it allows transparency, in that someone can get in their car and easily go check out what is happening at a given farm. And a personal relationship between the buyer and the grower is possible. The average person will not fly to Salinas to see the Cal Organic fields where their lettuce is grown.
Dellea: For us, it is about supporting the local agriculture. Ten years ago, anyone buying broccoli anywhere, whether organic or not, was getting it from California. It’s great that they have such a robust agricultural state, but why wasn’t anyone growing it here, when it grows great here? It’s not year round, but there could still be a lot of local broccoli. Of course, we need constant education on the farmer side, to encourage more small farmers to grow non-commodity crops. Farmers need to move away from the mentality that they can only grow tobacco or sweet potatoes or soy. Especially with a farm that is smaller than twenty-five acres, they could grow ten to fifteen different produce items and really find a wholesale or restaurant market.
LOY: What if you have a contract for year-round broccoli supply from a California grower? Is it a problem to fit local seasonal product in with the imported year-round product?
Dellea: Chatham Marketplace does not have any contracts with suppliers, except a few through NCGA. If we start buying carrots from Grimmway Farms, we don’t have to sign a contract to only source from them. Not at our volume. It wouldn’t be in our interest to do that. It might be in the best interest of the grower, but most retailers aren’t going to want to do that. A month down the road someone else might show up with a great deal and you would be locked in. Now, if I was larger with twenty-five stores, I would look to get exclusive contracts from farms so they couldn’t sell to anyone else but me.
LOY: How do you handle the issue of twenty farmers wanting to make small deliveries to your back door?
Dellea: In my experience working in retail, that has been one of the major headaches. Farmers are not organized for wholesale; they often don’t have what you want or as much as you need. They may say they are going to have something and then they don’t. For us, with the small volumes that we handle, we can adjust to those things. But it is frustrating if you advertise that you are going to have a local item for specified length of time and then Mother Nature prevents that from happening. Or the farmer suddenly gets an offer for twice the price and we end up with half a load.
Someone may cold call and say that they have a half acre of produce growing in their backyard and can I buy it. If I don’t know them, know the farm and the produce, they are going to have to come in, meet me, and talk specifics about how they are growing it. I want to see a sample of the product. We have a local affidavit which puts the responsibility on the farm. It says that they are growing it and these are the growing practices that they use. It has to be notarized and we keep those on file. This policy dates back to the beginning of Chatham Marketplace. Initially, we had roughly ten of those, but today have 150 on file. That includes local eggs, and meat and other dairy products. The majority of them are produce growers. We updated the form with legal help a few years ago and are happy with it. It is very concise and gets the information that we need. It puts the farmers in the position where they are accountable for what they are saying.
LOY: What is the policy on GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices)?
Dellea: To be frank, it doesn’t mean much to me. Most of the folks that sell to us are so small that they can’t afford GAPs; they can’t even afford organic certification. It is a big time and money commitment. If you are a farmer and just starting out or less than five years into it, unless you started with a bunch of capital, you are not going to be in a position to do that. ECO may have a program, but none of that information is passed on to me as a buyer. It is not something that they are touting. On their order sheet, it says either “organic” or “non-certified and meeting certain strict requirements.” There are plenty of farms that are selling non-certified clean product that never have the intention of getting certified. If they are selling at the farmers market, the fact that it says organic is not what is selling it. It’s the presentation, the price, the fact that they are at the market, the quality. They have an easier time selling their produce there without specific certifications.
LOY: If you are not focused on GAPs, do you worry a lot about food safety?
Dellea: I don’t. With most of what we are carrying, there is very little chance of something happening. With the packaged produce, there is not a lot of processing; an item is cut once after it’s washed and then bagged up. Now I know several farms that were fighting against the whole GAPs thing. They wanted to sell to Food Lion. The supermarket said, “No, we’re not even going to talk with you unless you have GAPs certification.” And that is them protecting themselves to a certain degree. What we had in place here a while ago was the Board members agreed to do local inspections of farms; there were ten things that they would look for at each farm. It was a cool concept, but in the end it didn’t mean that much. Today, for most of the farms that I buy from, I have been to the farm, maybe not initially, but definitely if the farm became a regular supplier.
LOY: Can you talk about pricing? How do you price differently for Grimmway in California versus the farm down the road?
Dellea: That is a touchy subject; it is different for every situation. I might sometimes say: “Here is the going rate for this commodity. There is a market glut and I can’t pay double for your local product.” But ideally I work with the local farmer to negotiate a fair price. With farms that sell at farmers markets, most will tell me what they are retailing for at the markets. If a farmer knows what he or she is doing, then they know what it has cost them to get the product to harvest. They know what they need to ask me for it. There has been times when there hasn’t been the possibility to come to an agreement and they have to sell it elsewhere or till it under. That is when I push them to a restaurant. A restaurant will pay a lot more. Farmers who are successful selling wholesale to us have figured that they only have a few hours to sell at a farmers market and want the additional outlet. They realize that market sales vary; it can rain or be beastly hot on market day, but the store is always here and comfortable.
Regarding price, if something is selling for three bucks a pound at the farmers market, a common price, I will pay no more than two dollars a pound wholesale for that same item, which means we are going to make a little less on it here. That is a problem with “local” in retail stores. It makes it easy for big stores to say, “We can’t do much local because we are not making enough on it.” At Chatham Marketplace, we’re selling items like non-local bananas, watermelon and apples year round, and can make up some margins on those. That helps us to afford the local stuff.
There is plenty of local stuff to buy. For instance, I have been selling local organic carrots every year for the last five years. I temporarily cut out one type of California or Colorado carrots and replace them with local. They are generally double the price and I sell just as many. Why? Because they are so tasty and so fresh, and they have a label that says “local and organic.” People don’t mind paying $4.99 a pound for those as opposed to $2.99 or $2.00. Ideally, we don’t want to be selling items for more than they are selling at market. That puts a bad light on me. “You’re making more than the farmers making!” You do have to educate farmers that some of these products are just commodities. A regular cucumber is not that special. There’s ten other growers in the neighborhood using the same seed! I can’t pay $6 a pound for it.
LOY: Do farmers come to you and ask how much to plant?
Dellea: All the time. It’s the worst question. Well, no, actually the worst question is, “what do you want me to plant for you guys next year?” I don’t have the sophisticated resources to know that. There are only a handful of people who have grown the same things for us for five years. For example, every year Alex Hitt would sell me lettuce for a month and a half and I could definitely say that I didn’t need more lettuce. If I do tell farmers what to grow and they have a huge bumper crop, then they expect me to buy everything. So without promising anything, I just tell people that I have certain items coming in and anything else that you want to throw into that mix might be something I could buy. I can say that during zucchini and cucumber season, everybody grows these and if it is a good year, everybody has so much that no one knows what to do with it. I get random calls all day long. “I’ve got fifty pounds of squash. Do you want any?” “No.” Those days are over.
LOY: What are you doing with technology for tracking product?
Dellea: Chatham Marketplace is not cutting edge on technology. Our growers are not using UPC bar codes except sometimes with prepacked stuff. I would love it if Piedmont Biofarm put a UPC on their lettuce packages. What we have to do is put a PLU (price look-up) code on it, which takes labor. While it would be more convenient. I’m not paying someone to package the product up. That said, we are getting into some tech, for sure, especially with value-added produce items. They have QR codes on them so you can go to their website and read about the farm. That is much more common in the grocery world since it is so much easier to put that kind of labeling on packaged goods than a loose head of lettuce.
Some of the farms are making progress on the tech front and I think that relates to the younger crowd of farmers. An example is the Biofarm (Red Hawk Farm) which came up with a labeling system so that they can add a logo, product name and weight. The farmer asked me how he could be in the store year round and I said to look at his California competitor. They have good labeling on their packages. Not everyone knows the difference between spinach and arugula by looking at it. So, that was a step that they made and now they are everywhere. It helped them and it made my life easier. Now getting the UPC is another whole step and costs a bunch of money. It would probably bring a bunch of inspectors down and more cost.
LOY: So step one is better labeling and step two might be a UPC?
Dellea: Yes. And we have a labeling machine that we can use. I have asked some farmers to put their product in a bag and we would put a store-made label on it that said “local organic spinach” or whatever. I’m amazed, but I still see every day where a shopper comes in and they don’t know what produce looks like without a label. And, along those lines, I get excited when I see a product that is really new or exotic. I want that. We can put up a big sign or better yet the farmer can make a sign and explain what it is and why they are growing it. That builds excitement.
LOY: What advice would you give to a buyer from a large chain like Food Lion? How can they source more local and have tighter labeling and messaging?
Dellea: It is so hard on that level because most of those stores do not have much location authority. The buyer is buying from the Food Lion warehouse. The chain is doing advertising across all of their stores, using the same flier. It makes it very difficult, especially with produce. What those buyers are looking for is the hundred acre farm that is not trying to sell to me. The farm grows three things, and Food Lion says, sign here on the dotted line, and we will buy everything you’ve got.
LOY: Like Cottle Farms? His muscadines are on sale at multiple grocery chains.
Dellea: Yes, and that is probably more that Cottle is reaching out to them. Some buyers want to buy from a farm like Cottle, but they are not sure how to go about it. The buyers run into so many restrictions. When I worked for Earth Fare, I was the produce buyer and had the authority to buy, but it was not necessarily encouraged. I would have to make my own signage in-house. It was something that was not part of the norm. If a customer went to my store and saw the local product and loved it, then they might go to another Earth Fare and ask, why don’t you have that here. That caused hassles and made it easier for them to just push it aside.
Now as far as Cottle selling to chains, it is probably just a few Walmart stores where he is selling muscadines, based on the volume that he would need. Cottle is huge. He has to be to handle the sales. And I should say that I think that is fantastic. The product is high quality, and it’s local and organic.
The big guys are starting to realize that the co-ops have been doing something right for ten years and they haven’t been able to figure it out. With local foods, we have been stealing small percentages of the industry. But that is no longer the case. I even hear Lowes Foods talking about local on the radio.
LOY: Lowes Foods has been pushing it hard.
Dellea: You go in and there are two products that are local, and one is local corn on the cob. And it is right there at the front door, so that the store is saying, “look, we’ve got local.” And then you go through the store and that is the only thing that is local that day.
LOY: Lowes stores have more locally-labeled items than your store. They have figured out that Mount Olive pickles are local and are labeling them.
Dellea: There are a lot of specialty foods made here. Some of these products are everywhere, in every grocery store -- like some of the sauces. We had to pull some of these from the shelves because we couldn’t compete on price; we replaced them with more gourmet versions also made in North Carolina.
Recently we had a meeting of our management team and talked about our focus on local products. We want to tout that more, because we can back it up. Twenty-five percent of our purchases are to local companies. That’s fantastic. That’s something we can claim and have factual evidence.
LOY: One week when I visited Chatham Marketplace you had more varieties of local produce than the Durham Farmers Market. The market had 28 and you had 35.
Dellea: That’s because it’s available. And season extension has really taken off in the last two years and more produce is available in the colder months. In the summer you see a large variety of the same few crops. It is so hot here in the summer. I do love the peppers and we may have as many as twelve varieties in the store here at one time. The Biofarm wants to do salad mix year round now.
LOY: That should give Earthbound Farm some pause.
Dellea: I remember in the early Nineties when the battle was over organic. Today Cal-Organic is a corporation and can sell to Walmart at huge volumes. We are forced to try to grow our customer base by selling organic to middle America shoppers, focusing on the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables. Can we convince average shoppers to buy organic with these products? We generally carry 5% or less of conventional products. What we can do is make the change that we can make, support local, and educate the people and give them an alternative.
I grew up farming in upstate New York. My Dad told me one year that one section of the garden would be mine and I could do what I wanted. I opened a vegetable stand and sold vegetables to rich New Yorkers as they drove up Route 22. Moved to North Carolina and got a job at Wellspring and got right back into selling produce. For me it is more a passion than a business.
Local Organic Y’All sat down with Dellea Dellea, General Manager of Chatham Marketplace, to talk about selling local produce. Chatham Marketplace, a 3,000 SF food co-op in the sustainable farming mecca of Pittsboro, has consistently outdone all other Triangle retailers in the quality and variety of local produce items for sale. The store in Pittsboro is selling close to forty different local items, even more variety than has been for sale at some of the prominent local farmers markets. I wanted to know how they did it.
Local Organic Y’All: How have efforts to do local sourcing progressed over the years?
Dellea: It was part of the intent of Chatham Marketplace when it opened to support “local” as much as possible. So, for me, that goes back at least ten years. Local was the focus and not so much certified organic -- growing practices were left open to interpretation which meant either organic or low/no-spray. “Local” has been a mission of mine since I moved to North Carolina in 1991 to work for Wellspring Market in Durham. They cared about “local” back then, but the supply was so limited. Starting back then, I built up a word-of-mouth network of local growers. Eastern Carolina Organic deserves a lot of credit for making more product available. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to get half of what I am getting. They are reaching out across the state and into neighboring states. And around here, we owe a lot to the sustainable farming classes at Central Carolina Community College. Students from each graduating class have gone out, bought land and started farming.
LOY: What is your definition of “local” or “regional”?
Dellea: We are actually in the process of reworking our definition of “local,” and while this is not yet official policy, it appears that we are in agreement on a 250 mile radius as “local.” This encompasses almost all of North Carolina, and some of South Carolina and Virginia. For “regional,” we fall back on the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA), which has the country broken up into several regions.
LOY: Our view of local is that it allows transparency, in that someone can get in their car and easily go check out what is happening at a given farm. And a personal relationship between the buyer and the grower is possible. The average person will not fly to Salinas to see the Cal Organic fields where their lettuce is grown.
Dellea: For us, it is about supporting the local agriculture. Ten years ago, anyone buying broccoli anywhere, whether organic or not, was getting it from California. It’s great that they have such a robust agricultural state, but why wasn’t anyone growing it here, when it grows great here? It’s not year round, but there could still be a lot of local broccoli. Of course, we need constant education on the farmer side, to encourage more small farmers to grow non-commodity crops. Farmers need to move away from the mentality that they can only grow tobacco or sweet potatoes or soy. Especially with a farm that is smaller than twenty-five acres, they could grow ten to fifteen different produce items and really find a wholesale or restaurant market.
LOY: What if you have a contract for year-round broccoli supply from a California grower? Is it a problem to fit local seasonal product in with the imported year-round product?
Dellea: Chatham Marketplace does not have any contracts with suppliers, except a few through NCGA. If we start buying carrots from Grimmway Farms, we don’t have to sign a contract to only source from them. Not at our volume. It wouldn’t be in our interest to do that. It might be in the best interest of the grower, but most retailers aren’t going to want to do that. A month down the road someone else might show up with a great deal and you would be locked in. Now, if I was larger with twenty-five stores, I would look to get exclusive contracts from farms so they couldn’t sell to anyone else but me.
LOY: How do you handle the issue of twenty farmers wanting to make small deliveries to your back door?
Dellea: In my experience working in retail, that has been one of the major headaches. Farmers are not organized for wholesale; they often don’t have what you want or as much as you need. They may say they are going to have something and then they don’t. For us, with the small volumes that we handle, we can adjust to those things. But it is frustrating if you advertise that you are going to have a local item for specified length of time and then Mother Nature prevents that from happening. Or the farmer suddenly gets an offer for twice the price and we end up with half a load.
Someone may cold call and say that they have a half acre of produce growing in their backyard and can I buy it. If I don’t know them, know the farm and the produce, they are going to have to come in, meet me, and talk specifics about how they are growing it. I want to see a sample of the product. We have a local affidavit which puts the responsibility on the farm. It says that they are growing it and these are the growing practices that they use. It has to be notarized and we keep those on file. This policy dates back to the beginning of Chatham Marketplace. Initially, we had roughly ten of those, but today have 150 on file. That includes local eggs, and meat and other dairy products. The majority of them are produce growers. We updated the form with legal help a few years ago and are happy with it. It is very concise and gets the information that we need. It puts the farmers in the position where they are accountable for what they are saying.
LOY: What is the policy on GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices)?
Dellea: To be frank, it doesn’t mean much to me. Most of the folks that sell to us are so small that they can’t afford GAPs; they can’t even afford organic certification. It is a big time and money commitment. If you are a farmer and just starting out or less than five years into it, unless you started with a bunch of capital, you are not going to be in a position to do that. ECO may have a program, but none of that information is passed on to me as a buyer. It is not something that they are touting. On their order sheet, it says either “organic” or “non-certified and meeting certain strict requirements.” There are plenty of farms that are selling non-certified clean product that never have the intention of getting certified. If they are selling at the farmers market, the fact that it says organic is not what is selling it. It’s the presentation, the price, the fact that they are at the market, the quality. They have an easier time selling their produce there without specific certifications.
LOY: If you are not focused on GAPs, do you worry a lot about food safety?
Dellea: I don’t. With most of what we are carrying, there is very little chance of something happening. With the packaged produce, there is not a lot of processing; an item is cut once after it’s washed and then bagged up. Now I know several farms that were fighting against the whole GAPs thing. They wanted to sell to Food Lion. The supermarket said, “No, we’re not even going to talk with you unless you have GAPs certification.” And that is them protecting themselves to a certain degree. What we had in place here a while ago was the Board members agreed to do local inspections of farms; there were ten things that they would look for at each farm. It was a cool concept, but in the end it didn’t mean that much. Today, for most of the farms that I buy from, I have been to the farm, maybe not initially, but definitely if the farm became a regular supplier.
LOY: Can you talk about pricing? How do you price differently for Grimmway in California versus the farm down the road?
Dellea: That is a touchy subject; it is different for every situation. I might sometimes say: “Here is the going rate for this commodity. There is a market glut and I can’t pay double for your local product.” But ideally I work with the local farmer to negotiate a fair price. With farms that sell at farmers markets, most will tell me what they are retailing for at the markets. If a farmer knows what he or she is doing, then they know what it has cost them to get the product to harvest. They know what they need to ask me for it. There has been times when there hasn’t been the possibility to come to an agreement and they have to sell it elsewhere or till it under. That is when I push them to a restaurant. A restaurant will pay a lot more. Farmers who are successful selling wholesale to us have figured that they only have a few hours to sell at a farmers market and want the additional outlet. They realize that market sales vary; it can rain or be beastly hot on market day, but the store is always here and comfortable.
Regarding price, if something is selling for three bucks a pound at the farmers market, a common price, I will pay no more than two dollars a pound wholesale for that same item, which means we are going to make a little less on it here. That is a problem with “local” in retail stores. It makes it easy for big stores to say, “We can’t do much local because we are not making enough on it.” At Chatham Marketplace, we’re selling items like non-local bananas, watermelon and apples year round, and can make up some margins on those. That helps us to afford the local stuff.
There is plenty of local stuff to buy. For instance, I have been selling local organic carrots every year for the last five years. I temporarily cut out one type of California or Colorado carrots and replace them with local. They are generally double the price and I sell just as many. Why? Because they are so tasty and so fresh, and they have a label that says “local and organic.” People don’t mind paying $4.99 a pound for those as opposed to $2.99 or $2.00. Ideally, we don’t want to be selling items for more than they are selling at market. That puts a bad light on me. “You’re making more than the farmers making!” You do have to educate farmers that some of these products are just commodities. A regular cucumber is not that special. There’s ten other growers in the neighborhood using the same seed! I can’t pay $6 a pound for it.
LOY: Do farmers come to you and ask how much to plant?
Dellea: All the time. It’s the worst question. Well, no, actually the worst question is, “what do you want me to plant for you guys next year?” I don’t have the sophisticated resources to know that. There are only a handful of people who have grown the same things for us for five years. For example, every year Alex Hitt would sell me lettuce for a month and a half and I could definitely say that I didn’t need more lettuce. If I do tell farmers what to grow and they have a huge bumper crop, then they expect me to buy everything. So without promising anything, I just tell people that I have certain items coming in and anything else that you want to throw into that mix might be something I could buy. I can say that during zucchini and cucumber season, everybody grows these and if it is a good year, everybody has so much that no one knows what to do with it. I get random calls all day long. “I’ve got fifty pounds of squash. Do you want any?” “No.” Those days are over.
LOY: What are you doing with technology for tracking product?
Dellea: Chatham Marketplace is not cutting edge on technology. Our growers are not using UPC bar codes except sometimes with prepacked stuff. I would love it if Piedmont Biofarm put a UPC on their lettuce packages. What we have to do is put a PLU (price look-up) code on it, which takes labor. While it would be more convenient. I’m not paying someone to package the product up. That said, we are getting into some tech, for sure, especially with value-added produce items. They have QR codes on them so you can go to their website and read about the farm. That is much more common in the grocery world since it is so much easier to put that kind of labeling on packaged goods than a loose head of lettuce.
Some of the farms are making progress on the tech front and I think that relates to the younger crowd of farmers. An example is the Biofarm (Red Hawk Farm) which came up with a labeling system so that they can add a logo, product name and weight. The farmer asked me how he could be in the store year round and I said to look at his California competitor. They have good labeling on their packages. Not everyone knows the difference between spinach and arugula by looking at it. So, that was a step that they made and now they are everywhere. It helped them and it made my life easier. Now getting the UPC is another whole step and costs a bunch of money. It would probably bring a bunch of inspectors down and more cost.
LOY: So step one is better labeling and step two might be a UPC?
Dellea: Yes. And we have a labeling machine that we can use. I have asked some farmers to put their product in a bag and we would put a store-made label on it that said “local organic spinach” or whatever. I’m amazed, but I still see every day where a shopper comes in and they don’t know what produce looks like without a label. And, along those lines, I get excited when I see a product that is really new or exotic. I want that. We can put up a big sign or better yet the farmer can make a sign and explain what it is and why they are growing it. That builds excitement.
LOY: What advice would you give to a buyer from a large chain like Food Lion? How can they source more local and have tighter labeling and messaging?
Dellea: It is so hard on that level because most of those stores do not have much location authority. The buyer is buying from the Food Lion warehouse. The chain is doing advertising across all of their stores, using the same flier. It makes it very difficult, especially with produce. What those buyers are looking for is the hundred acre farm that is not trying to sell to me. The farm grows three things, and Food Lion says, sign here on the dotted line, and we will buy everything you’ve got.
LOY: Like Cottle Farms? His muscadines are on sale at multiple grocery chains.
Dellea: Yes, and that is probably more that Cottle is reaching out to them. Some buyers want to buy from a farm like Cottle, but they are not sure how to go about it. The buyers run into so many restrictions. When I worked for Earth Fare, I was the produce buyer and had the authority to buy, but it was not necessarily encouraged. I would have to make my own signage in-house. It was something that was not part of the norm. If a customer went to my store and saw the local product and loved it, then they might go to another Earth Fare and ask, why don’t you have that here. That caused hassles and made it easier for them to just push it aside.
Now as far as Cottle selling to chains, it is probably just a few Walmart stores where he is selling muscadines, based on the volume that he would need. Cottle is huge. He has to be to handle the sales. And I should say that I think that is fantastic. The product is high quality, and it’s local and organic.
The big guys are starting to realize that the co-ops have been doing something right for ten years and they haven’t been able to figure it out. With local foods, we have been stealing small percentages of the industry. But that is no longer the case. I even hear Lowes Foods talking about local on the radio.
LOY: Lowes Foods has been pushing it hard.
Dellea: You go in and there are two products that are local, and one is local corn on the cob. And it is right there at the front door, so that the store is saying, “look, we’ve got local.” And then you go through the store and that is the only thing that is local that day.
LOY: Lowes stores have more locally-labeled items than your store. They have figured out that Mount Olive pickles are local and are labeling them.
Dellea: There are a lot of specialty foods made here. Some of these products are everywhere, in every grocery store -- like some of the sauces. We had to pull some of these from the shelves because we couldn’t compete on price; we replaced them with more gourmet versions also made in North Carolina.
Recently we had a meeting of our management team and talked about our focus on local products. We want to tout that more, because we can back it up. Twenty-five percent of our purchases are to local companies. That’s fantastic. That’s something we can claim and have factual evidence.
LOY: One week when I visited Chatham Marketplace you had more varieties of local produce than the Durham Farmers Market. The market had 28 and you had 35.
Dellea: That’s because it’s available. And season extension has really taken off in the last two years and more produce is available in the colder months. In the summer you see a large variety of the same few crops. It is so hot here in the summer. I do love the peppers and we may have as many as twelve varieties in the store here at one time. The Biofarm wants to do salad mix year round now.
LOY: That should give Earthbound Farm some pause.
Dellea: I remember in the early Nineties when the battle was over organic. Today Cal-Organic is a corporation and can sell to Walmart at huge volumes. We are forced to try to grow our customer base by selling organic to middle America shoppers, focusing on the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables. Can we convince average shoppers to buy organic with these products? We generally carry 5% or less of conventional products. What we can do is make the change that we can make, support local, and educate the people and give them an alternative.
I grew up farming in upstate New York. My Dad told me one year that one section of the garden would be mine and I could do what I wanted. I opened a vegetable stand and sold vegetables to rich New Yorkers as they drove up Route 22. Moved to North Carolina and got a job at Wellspring and got right back into selling produce. For me it is more a passion than a business.