OUR PRODUCE Background
Imagine those days when you used to be able to place your orders in the village shops and all your meat, seasonal fruit and vegetables, bread, cakes and other groceries would be made ready for you to collect. Delicious, locally produced food from the local farmer, market garden and bakery. How wonderful!
In reality, if we are lucky, those of us living in rural communities may have a nearby farm shop or reasonably local farmer’s market once a month. For all too many of us the village shop is a thing of the past and even the few surviving post offices are under threat.
Our Produce is a new community-shopping network that is set to deliver these ideals from the past whilst meeting the needs of the modern-day customer.
OUR PRODUCE Aims
- To get fresh, seasonal, affordable, locally produced food to local people……easily
- To support local businesses
- To make it possible for people to make better choices about where their food comes from
- To make this food available to everyone in the local community
OUR PRODUCE location
In the first instance, Our Produce will operate in rural locations in the heart of Staffordshire. The actual villages to be covered are in the Hanbury, Newborough, Abbots Bromley, Tutbury area. As demand grows additional villages will be covered within a set radius of the hub (in this case, Hanbury). It is envisaged that additional hubs will be added in other territories via franchising of the Our Produce name and model.
OUR PRODUCE How it will work
Customers will place their choice from a weekly shopping list. This will consist of various product types, all of which are sourced locally, and will include amongst others:
- Seasonal fruit and vegetables
- Meat
- Bakery
- Preserves
- Home-made pies and other meals
- Eggs
Orders must be placed by Monday 12:00 midnight and may be done on the website (when it’s built) or manually and will be ready for collection on Thursday or Friday. Payment will be by card for orders on the website or by cheque on collection. Customers choose a collection point convenient to them, which will be operated by an Our Produce agent. This will usually be an existing business within the village for example the local pub or Post Office but may also be operated by a club such the Women’s Institute. It is anticipated that these businesses/organisations will benefit from the additional complementary opportunities that customers bring plus they will earn a commission on sales.
Being a community network, the idea is that people will collect on behalf of other people if the collection times are inconvenient or if friends/neighbours/relatives are infirm or do not have transport. Where a person does not have Internet access, the agent or another customer would place the order on that person’s behalf. Orders are packed in numbered crates with all chilled foods in insulated bags with ice-packs. All packaging is returnable.There are no delivery or packaging charges.
Customers will subscribe to the Our Produce network and receive this new service for an annual fee of just £10. A permanent introductory offer will allow the return of the fee within one month if the customer does not wish to continue their subscription, subject to return of all the packaging materials.
