If I may speak candidly, we as a Farmers To You community have accomplished so much recently. In the past year and a half we launched our new website, moved to a new and larger hub, fed our families without missing a single delivery, supported our farmers when their previous markets simply closed down, and invested in our community by almost doubling our staffing. Phew! As if that was not enough, we were also able to keep our staff safe by reworking all our procedures for packing, delivery and pick up sites. We also increased wages by nearly 14% and added full benefits for our full time employees and excellent benefits for our part time staff, all while keeping prices steady.
Thank you to everyone in this partnership for making this all possible.
Due to the broad reaching effects of supply chain issues, increased vendor costs and improved company benefits, I have determined a need to adjust our prices and home delivery fee so that we can continue to deliver the best food we can to you, while supporting our farmers.
Typically when we increase the price of any item, we remove that item from your weekly order and put an announcement informing you of the increase in our Fresh This Week email. With these price changes, we are leaving all available items in your weekly order and modestly adjusting the price. These changes will be in effect starting today for all orders shipped next week.
We have deliberately not raised prices during the pandemic because we did not feel it was right to do so, but we have no choice now. In some instances, we have avoided passing on price increases from our suppliers. To put this in context, according to the USDA supermarkets have raised prices by nearly 7% in the past 18 months and home delivery services are raising their fees also. Most home delivery services pay their drivers very poorly and expect them to make their money on tips alone. Our drivers are all employees of Farmers To You. They are well paid and have access to benefits.
We will be raising our prices on average less than the supermarkets have because our direct farm-to-you system has not, overall, experienced the same issues and costs that supermarkets have seen.
We will be raising our home delivery fee for the first time in 6 years from $12 to $15. Thank you for your understanding.
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Last year, the number of families who wanted to join our partnership was overwhelming. (We had over 4000 families on our waiting list!) So, we got to work expanding our capacity to serve these new families while making sure we continued to serve our long-term and current families in the impeccable way you’ve all come to expect.
But, as this fall unfolded we realized that many of the families who joined us during the pandemic have not stayed with our community and have “gone back to normal” food purchasing. Of course this always saddens me to see. This slowdown, combined with our higher costs, has led me to the decision to finally raise our pricing on our farmers' food, as well as increasing our home delivery fee.
Thank you to those families who continue to support your farmers and our community. We have really made a difference! Together we have built something resilient and beautiful, and it is an honor to be in partnership with you, our families, and our famers in this endeavor.
Together, we are so close to building a viable and generative regional food system that encourages healing and health for our farms, families and planet. “Back to normal” was never healthy and good for our children and our future. Building for the future means thinking about the day after tomorrow—not just the convenience of today.
When Farmers To You just started we asked every new family to agree to our Partnership Agreement. Please listen again—and spread the word!
I am deeply grateful for the journey, and for your partnership on this journey. I cannot think of any other way I would have rather spent these past 11 years. I still have passion and hope that we can significantly change our relationship to our food, our farmers and this lovely mother Earth we are all 100% dependent on for health and life.
With Love and Appreciation,
Greg and the Team at Farmers To You
