Markets at your Doorstep
Although Grazing Fields doesn’t deliver to homes, today’s metro Detroit shopper has a selection of food services that do.
Michigan Farm to Family
“Driven by a desire to know where our food comes from, how it was raised and how it was processed,” Michigan Farm to Family started offering delivery of farm products in 2016 and added food artisans a year later.
Their contributing farms use healthy, sustainable and humane agricultural practices and their food artisans use non-GMO ingredients and produce in their products. Their focus? Sustainability—of the land, small farms, the local economy and our own health, they say—and to keep handcrafted, small-batch natural practices alive and thriving.
Last year was one of change for Michigan Farm to Family. Business more than doubled with the pandemic, but also, in November, Simply Fresh Market in Brighton acquired the Ann Arbor—based business and moved operations to its brick-and-mortar store, where customers can also pick up orders or shop conventionally. Otherwise, they’ll deliver “as far north as Bay City, as far south as Toledo and as far west as Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. We cover a large portion of the palm of the lower peninsula,” says Tim Schroeder, branch manager.
With 45 active vendors right now, plans in the pipeline include adding grassfed lamb and goat and a wine club, as well as launching Mitten-Made Meals, a recipe-sharing blog on their site to recall a time when recipes were passed around on index cards, says Schroeder.
Visit michiganfarmtofamily.com.
Michigan Fields
“Our goal is to get food from farm or producer to doorstep as quickly and efficiently as possible,” says Drew Patrick, owner of Michigan Fields. “It just makes total sense with connecting our community through local food.”
Patrick started Michigan Fields, a 100% Michigan-grown online grocer, a year ago at rocket-like speed, in response to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders.
“We had a plan to launch a business similar to this, but didn’t have any intention of launching it in 2020. It was likely going to be 2021 and 2022,” says Patrick, president of Skidmore Studio and an Eastern Market Partnership board member and treasurer. He decided it was a go on March 21, 2020. They launched their website two weeks later, on April 5, and delivered the first orders—to doorsteps within a 35-mile radius of their Eastern Market warehouse—April 9.
What began as a “pretty limited offering,” according to Patrick, now has more than 70 purveyors, from Bay Port Fish Family to Grazing Fields to Zingerman’s Bakehouse. Options include pre-selected gift bundles of ingredients to make specific meals or even a smoothie.
“Part of our mission is really trying to build community around local food,” says Patrick, adding that other parts of Michigan Fields’ mission includes helping to reduce environmental impacts and increasing health benefits.
Keep your eye out for the Michigan Fields Yummi Club, their new membership program with unlimited free delivery and other benefits through monthly or annual subscriptions.
Visit michiganfields.com.
Order Up Organics
The new kids on the block, so to speak, are East River Organics farmer Les Roggenbuck, a familiar face at several Oakland County farmers’ markets, and his son-in-law Noel Cryderman. The pair revamped CSA Farmers Market to launch Order Up Organics in February.
Like Grazing Fields’ Jane Bush, Roggenbuck saw an opportunity to help other farmers who might not have the resources or the interest to leave their farms to work markets. It was also a chance to ensure his own customers get what they’re looking for if he happens to run out of something another farm might still have available.
“It’s kind of twofold: It expands our operation and takes advantage of the driving that’s already going on,” says Roggenbuck. “We can only do so much at the farm with the resources we have and we already make trips to get our products processed—to get chickens butchered, for instance—so while we’re spending the money to drive somewhere or pick something up, we can also be grabbing other farmers’ product.”
Order Up continues to add vendors and products, which now counts around a half dozen (including East River) farms that operate using humane and organic practices. They also carry products from Neu Kombucha and Simply Salads, among others, and plan to soon offer baked goods from Avalon International Breads in Detroit.
So far, Order Up delivers to meeting points in Clarkston, Rochester, Royal Oak, Lake Orion, Grand Blanc, Lapeer and Oxford, or customers can pick up directly from East River Organics in Oxford, by appointment.
Like the others, Order Up is all online ordering, but first you have to set up an account. Go to orderuporganic.com or send your name, city, zip code and phone number to orderuporganic@gmail.com and they’ll get your account started for you.
Market Wagon
Market Wagon is a little different from the others listed here, as its Southeast Michigan “market” is one of more than a dozen hubs across the Midwest.
Entrepreneurs Nick Carter and Dan Brunner founded Market Wagon in Indianapolis in 2016 with the aim of implementing technology and “proprietary fulfillment processes” to deliver products from farms, artisans and other vendors. They launched their consumer-friendly online shopping and delivery services here last November and today count 41 local vendors offering more than 380 products, including several gift-ready pre-filled bundles dubbed the “market sampler” or “easy local meals,” among others.
Visit marketwagon.com.
