There’s nothing like a visit to the local farmers market, especially during the months of August and September when seasonal produce is available in spades. 

But sometimes it’s not practical to make it to your local market. What then? Thanks to an increased focus on supporting local farms, you can purchase at least a percentage of locally-grown produce at your local supermarket.

For over a decade, Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market stores have worked to bring more local produce into their 105 stores across Wisconsin, as well as the warehouse that supplies their Kroger Delivery service (in the cute little blue refrigerated trucks).

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Thanks to distribution through the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative and partnerships with farms like Borzynski Farms, the local produce available (some year round) includes a wide swath of vegetables including green beans, broccoli crowns, cabbage (green, red and savoy), eggplant, greens (beet, cilantro, collards, curly mustard, dill, kale, kohlrabi, mixed and turnip tops), peppers (bell, jalapeno, poblano), potatoes, pumpkins (carving, pie and white), rhubarb, squash (acorn, butternut, yellow, spaghetti and zucchini), sweet corn and heirloom tomatoes.

“We know our shoppers have a desire to support local – what we can provide is a means to do so by stocking our produce department with fresh fruits and vegetables from across the state,” said Scott Hopkins, Produce Field Merchandiser for Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market. “My team is working with those farmers and purveyors to support them when their crops are ready and on the days in-between. This is truly a partnership of teams.”

In his role, Hopkins oversees the company’s buyers, ensuring that stores are stocked with the right products in the right quantities. But he also works with the field team in the warehouse and provides training to store teams, teaching them best practices to keep produce fresh and looking good on the shelves. 

Additional team members who work with local produce include Produce Category Manager Waleed Nabeel, who is the primary contact for farms and the Wisconsin Food Hub; and Vice President of Fresh Merchandising Brian LeStarge who spends a good deal of his time paying attention to the stores and how well they serve shoppers. 

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The Wisconsin Food Hub

The Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative, which operates out of Waupaca, Wisconsin is a farmer-led coop that provides infrastructure to connect retailers to various growers around the state. Tara Roberts-Turner, General Manager of the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative, says the food hub operates with a highly unusual model. 

“Very few food hubs around the country operate like we do,” she says. “Most are very small. They aggregate produce and deliver to restaurants or small grocery stores. But we started out delivering to large multi-unit grocery stores and Sysco.”

In fact, Roberts-Turner says that when the food hub was established 12 years ago, Roundy’s Supermarkets (which owns and operates Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market stores) was their first customer. 

“The Roundy’s partnership was so important because it allowed us to develop the model for working with large wholesale clients,” she says. “Folks like George Hurst, who has since passed, and Doreen Melenchuk helped us understand the processes involved and worked with us through our growing pains.”

The food hub is also unique in that it doesn’t store fresh produce at the warehouse, at least not for long. Everything is picked to order, brought to the warehouse, inspected, aggregated and delivered.

“One thing that we have really struggled with is the expectation that local produce can be sold at a rock bottom price,” she says. “Closer doesn’t necessarily mean cheaper. These farms are smaller. Labor is expensive. But it’s always been expected that local produce can meet the pricing of commodity products from California, Mexico and Canada.” 

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To mitigate these issues, they’ve worked to implement programs that assist them in increasing efficiencies and keeping costs down.

Their 365 Program has allowed them to operate year-round thanks to work with smaller growers, including city-based indoor operations like Hundred Acre in Milwaukee and Future Farm Grown in Baldwin. 

Partnerships have also been key. The hub works with Indigenous groups, Feeding America, the USDA and DATCP. Through the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) the food hub has been able to use its logistics services to deliver food from BIPOC and historically underserved farms to food pantries and schools in every county in the state. In doing so, they’ve expanded from six delivery routes to over 20.

“That has also allowed us to bring more farm produce into Pick n Save at lower prices,” she says, noting that the key to running a successful food hub is ensuring they can fill their delivery trucks. “Transportation is expensive, so this only works if we can fill up our trucks and deliver to all of these places.” 

Waleed Nabeel, Produce Category Manager for Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market, is the main contact for the food hub, which makes deliveries to stores three times a week.  

“I talk to Tara on a regular basis,” says Nabeel. “We touch base with daily and weekly projections. But I also keep in touch with farms. They will keep me apprised on what’s fresh and we can discuss pricing on specific items.”

Once a purchasing decision has been made, the farmer harvests the crop, which is transported to the food hub warehouse, inspected, aggregated and delivered to stores within 24 hours. 

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Today, the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative works with over 200 farms annually, growing and selling over $3 million worth of food. About 30% of that is shipped to Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market stores (that amounts to over one million cases of produce over the past decade).

Farm partners

In addition to the food hub, Nabeel also works directly with larger farms that have capacity to supply directly. One, Borzynski Farms, is a large operation that operates family-owned farms in Wisconsin, Georgia and Texas, allowing them to supply produce year round.

Interestingly, as I was interviewing Nabel, he received a text from the Borzynskis letting him know that they'd harvested their first green beans of the season.

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Since their partnership began, Borzynski Farms has sold over 32,000 units (divided between cartons, eaches and bushels) of produce directly to Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market.

Some partnerships are new. Other local farms have been with the grocer for years. Hopkins says that Bill Ingersoll of Ingersoll Farms in Sullivan is among the latter camp and he continues to supply corn to Lake Country Pick ‘n Save and Metro Market stores even as he contemplates retirement. There’s a “Grown Locally” sign (pictured above) that features Ingersoll eating corn hanging in the produce department at the Brookfield Metro Market at 127th and Capitol Drive. 

“Every year we discuss how to have fresher produce and limit the transportation time that it takes to bring it to our stores,” says Nabeel. “As a result, our partnerships continue to grow. For instance, broccoli crowns, which are typically a California product, are now being sourced locally from DeGroot Farms in Illinois.” 

Nabeel has also worked to get local producers licensed by Kroger, Roundy’s parent company, as part of the Simple Truth product line. Examples include the russet, red and gold potatoes that are sourced from Wisconsin and sold under the Simple Truth label.

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Of course, shoppers wouldn’t know that unless someone told them. 

Brian LeStarge, Vice President of Fresh Merchandising says that – especially when it comes to local produce – they are working on ways to make it easier to identify for shoppers. That includes adding labels to more locally sourced products and more local signage in the stores.

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Why buy local?

There are so many reasons to consider purchasing local produce, whether it be at your local farmers market, through a CSA or at the grocery store.

This year, the biggest reason might be providing support to local farmers who have experienced one of the worst growing seasons in at least six or seven years. Roberts-Turner says crops have suffered immensely due to excessive rain, humid conditions and the prevalence of diseases that comes with a wet, swampy season. 

“Be nice to your growers because it’s been very tough,” she says.

But, even during a good growing season, the benefits of supporting local growers are many. These are some of the most compelling.

• Health impact: Local food is fresher and tastes better.  Thanks to less time in transit, the food also loses fewer nutrients and incurs less spoilage, which means you consume more valuable minerals and nutrients. 
• Economic impact: Choosing local means supporting local farms, ensuring income for farm families and creating jobs for workers in agriculture, food processing and distribution. It also provides a boost to the local economy. On average, for every dollar spent at a locally owned business (including farms), about 70 cents stays local. That’s in stark contrast to the 40 cents that remains in the local economy when a shopper supports a national business.
• Environmental impact: the less distance food has to travel, the less fuel is used and the less greenhouse gases are produced. In addition, due to the shorter distribution chain, less food is wasted during the process of warehousing, transporting and merchandising.