How It All Works

The Food Hub works like an online farmers market, opening and closing at a fixed time each week. Producers upload their produce for sale, and consumers can buy from the list of produce available. Producers get a weekly email and can bake or harvest to order, meaning there is no food wastage.

Consumers fill the shopping basket at their leisure throughout the week, and can submit the order and make payment at any point up until midnight on Tuesday. This is a sharp cutoff after which we can’t accept any alterations for that week, and is the only reason why the food hub can work. On Wednesday we process the baskets and order everyone’s goods to make sure that it will all be ready for Friday morning when a team of volunteers pack everything into the right boxes and distribute them to our network of pick up points.

For most local producers the Food Hub takes just a 10% cut of the sale price. On non-local produce we take a higher cut of the sale price, between 28% and 40% depending on how much work it takes us to get it to you. This higher margin subsidises the local produce. This subsidy is a mechanism to encourage local production over non-local production. As so much non-local food is heavily subsidised in many ways, from trade agreements to lower wages, we aim to reverse the injustice. Supporting local food and local farmers means bringing food back home.

To find out more about why we believe in local food check out our page on Food Sovereignty.

We also work creatively to keep our overheads low. We aim to run as a community project, in which our members and producers all participate to make affordable local food possible. Find out more about how you can help make this happen here.

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