Fairway Market Taps Forager to Source Local Food

Fairway Market, which has 15 stores in the New York metro area, has begun using the Forager digital procurement system to source local food.

“The Fairway Market team is excited about Forager’s potential to help us expand the variety of local food we offer to our millions of customers in the most efficient way possible,” said Jason Bidart, VP – private brand and local programs at New York-based Fairway Group Holdings Corp. “Many of our smaller suppliers – independent farms, for example – have traditionally used phone calls, fax or text messages for the ordering process. The Forager platform is far more efficient yet user-friendly, giving farmers the tools to provide Fairway with seamless ordering of their up-to-date products.”

Fairway teamed with Portland, Maine-based Forager in response to increasing customer demand for locally sourced food. Forager’s online and mobile platform digitizes and streamlines the procurement-to-payment process, saving time and costs for grocers.

According to a new national consumer survey conducted by Forager, 78 percent of consumers normally add local food to their shopping lists, 93 percent would purchase more local food if it were available at their main grocery store and 84 percent would make an additional shopping trip for local, seasonal food.

“Right now, we are using the Forager platform in our produce warehouse; based on how well the trial performs, we will look at expanding Fairway’s use of the platform into other areas like cheese, nonperishable groceries and wellness,” noted Bidart. “We are also considering enabling our stores to use Forager to manage orders to local suppliers that deliver directly to our stores. We’ve found that the Forager platform provides efficiencies that allow us to better market, price and promote our local food selection, allowing us to pass along its benefits to our customers.”

“We are thrilled that Fairway Market is up and running with Forager and is leveraging our technology to extend their leadership in local food,” said Forager founder David Stone. “Forager is transforming the local food supply chain, making a highly complex and manual process much more efficient, so that grocers can source more locally and give consumers what they want most – fresh, local food. Our platform removes significant challenges for grocers to scale and sustain a robust and profitable local food selection. And further, grocers using Forager have seen double-digit increases in local food sales.”