Community Spotlight: Bailey’s Local Foods

In the first installment of our user profile series, we catch up with Maryrose Ivanco, co-owner of Bailey’s Local Foods (website). Bailey’s is an on-line farmers’ market serving the Waterloo region, and are a big part of the OFN-CAN community:

OFN-CAN: Tell us a little about Bailey’s Local Foods

Maryrose: We are a year-round, on-line farmers’ market. We work with local farmers and producers that produce mostly certified organic or follow natural farming practices. 

We currently have 95 vendors, approximately 200 weekly buyers,  4200 line items,  Most products are grown or produced locally (60% organic) with a selection of imported Organic produce in the off season from all categories.   We post availability weekly.  Customers pre-order.  Our Market Assistants aggregate orders for pick-up in a local church.

We started as a small buying club in the Bailey family carport. The pickups grew quickly and due to zoning restrictions, we moved to First United Church.

We have evolved into an Online Farmers Market in 2010. We are not a co-op, CSA, discount buying club or box program. Instead, our farmers and producers inform us of their offerings which we list online for customers to order. Being able to place online orders efficiently is what gives our members easy access to so much choice!

Our suppliers set their prices and we add a small sustainable markup. We have a group of Market Assistants who work together to help us bring amazing food from our suppliers to you on our Market Day.

OFN-CAN: How did you get involved with Bailey’s?

Maryrose: Bailey’s Local Foods was founded by Nina Bailey-Dick and her father Wendell Bailey in 2008 – with Nina as the organizer, and Wendell as her right-hand man. Nina sold her share in November 2010, and Wendell stayed involved in regular Bailey’s operations until his passing in 2012.

Rachael Ward became Nina’s partner in 2009. We had both started out as Bailey’s members who believed strongly in supporting local suppliers, high-quality food and community, and our involvement grew from there.

OFN-CAN: How did you get involved with Bailey’s?

Maryrose:  Bailey’s Local Foods was founded by Nina Bailey-Dick and her father Wendell Bailey in 2008 – with Nina as the organizer, and Wendell as her right-hand man. Nina sold her share in November 2010, and Wendell stayed involved in regular Bailey’s operations until his passing in 2012. 

Rachael Ward became Nina’s partner in 2009. We had both started out as Bailey’s members who believed strongly in supporting local suppliers, high-quality food and community, and our involvement grew from there.

OFN-CAN: How does Bailey’s contribute to the local food movement?

Maryrose: Bailey’s are a part of a growing movement empowering food systems. Being a local food Hub and working with Region of Waterloo Public Health, we have been able to ensure that all of our suppliers meet the proper food standards. 

Our market model also ensures waste reduction and provides customers with opportunities to reuse and recycle product packaging such as jars and baskets. 

As strong believers in sustainable farming, we encourage all our suppliers to maintain sustainable means of production.

OFN-CAN: How does your OFN online market work?

Maryrose: In 2008 Nina started out coordinating orders with spreadsheets.  None of the current e-commerce platform providers existed then.  Rachael’s partner, Andrew Ward, kindly developed a basic platform that met our needs. 

Yet we had known for some time that new digital tools like real time inventory management, multiple payment gateways, back-end order handling, product aggregation, multiple distribution points etc., would help us.  

OFN has been a life saver for us.  It is capable of handling our scale – and most of the volunteers there are producers or run food hubs themselves, So they totally understand.  They have been generous with their time and support.  They helped us through onboarding all of our producers and products, and now are there to help us grow.

In terms of the physical packing process, we started out with ‘just in time’ inventory (fresh products), our suppliers are now more diversified to include shelf stable and frozen items.  

We have built a great list of suppliers (and more approach us regularly).  We know our social media strategy is working at attracting customers.  We have amazing community support. We need to make the on-line middle work more smoothly,  and we need to distribute our pick-up/delivery system differently. 

OFN-CAN: How has COVID-19 affected your business?

Maryrose: The situation with COVID has made it clear we need to change and expand. We have experienced unprecedented growth.  During the first 3 months we had to shut down our order cycle as the volume was more than the physical building could handle

This growth has led to me working extremely long hours to pivot the business.

We have changed so much since March 2nd (our Last Normal Market). We evolve and tighten up our new procedures every market and we will continue to do so

The church that currently hosts us has been fantastic, but they do not have the storage space to accommodate the inventory we need to store.  We would love to rent a small warehouse space to help facilitate more product options.

We have been extremely lucky to see some amazing growth recently in a very different world and are grateful for all of our wonderful long-standing members making their way through this with us.