NEW YORK and PORTLAND, Maine — As part of its commitment to providing its customers with the highest quality local food and great customer service, Fairway Market, which operates 15 stores in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut tri-state area, has begun using the Forager digital procurement system to source local food, ensuring Fairway’s access to up-to-the-minute farm inventory with more choices and varieties.
“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, Vice President – Private Brand and Local Programs, 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.”
Headquartered in New York City and serving the Tri-State area, Fairway Market launched with the Forager platform in response to rising 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% of consumers usually place local food on their shopping list, 93% of consumers would buy more local food if it was available at their primary grocery store and 84% would make an extra 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, non-perishable groceries, and wellness. We are also considering enabling our stores to use Forager to manage orders to local suppliers that deliver directly to our stores,” noted Jason Bidart. “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. 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,” noted David Stone, founder of Forager. “And further, grocers using Forager have seen double digit increases in local food sales.”
For more information about the Forager digital procurement platform and how to help grow the local food economy, please visit goforager.com. Forager’s national local food survey is available on request.
About Fairway Market
Fairway Market is a New York City based grocer that was established in 1933 and operates 15 stores in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, as well as an ecommerce platform at shop.fairwaymarket.com. Famous for its high-quality produce and meats, massive assortment of foods from around the world, and authentic hand-crafted specialties, Fairway Market has a loyal following created by their shopping experience that is Like No Other Market®.
About Forager™ (Forager1, LLC)
The mission of Forager is to accelerate the growth of the local food economy and make locally sourced food more widely available to all. The company’s online and mobile platform digitizes and streamlines the procurement-to-payment process, saving time and costs for grocers, co-ops, farmers, producers, and other buyers and sellers of local food. For more information about Forager, please see goforager.com.
