Runner-Bean.com links local farms to your neighborhood

Runner-Bean.com was an  online farmers' market  created to make access to local food easy.  The  market listed small farms and food entrepreneurs within a 100 mile radius of downtown Roanoke who produce  food and natural products: meats, poultry, cheeses, vegetables, breads and pastries, coffee and teas, fruits, baked goods, and natural products for you and your family. The idea was to connect you with their products via the web.  Right now, Runner-Bean.com is talking a moment to pause.  The model didn't really work for Roanoke, and we are trying to re-group.  Meanwhile, here are some of the ideas we were trying to incorporate into our model....

Was Runner-Bean.com for you?

The answer should have been a yes!! if

• you are a locavore or
• you weren't able to make your Farmer's Market this week or
• you hesitate to buy into a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program because you'd like to be able to tailor your selection each week or
• you want to avoid  factory processed food or
• you want your produce to be really fresh.
  

How did Runner-Bean.com  work? 

• A  6 month subscription price was $60. 
• Each week,  customers placed their orders between Friday 6 PM through Sunday until 9 PM.
• When a customer placed an order he/she  also indicated a convenient drop off point, whose location and hours were listed.  All orders were paid for using either a Visa or Master Card credit card.   
• Orders were  delivered to the designated drop off point on Tuesdays.
• The system cycled each week.

Experiments in local food infrastructure

Mission:   As a former market gardener, I personally know how much time it takes to market the food one grows,  time that could have been better spent simply paying attention to the farm. By taking some of the marketing burden off the farmer, I hoped to

• increase local food capacity,
• help keep farmers in business, and
• supply the Roanoke area with some really good food. 

Staying Small and Special: On a broader scale,  Runner-Bean.com was also an experiment to see if some loose cooperation among small farmers can  provide an economically viable way to get their products to you, the local customer.  Big companies are really good at making the farming industry one huge giant at both the farmer and distributor sides of the cycle.  Runner-Bean.com  is an effort to fight that.  I'd like to see if the business credo of getting big for the sake of economies of scale is inviolate.  Maybe we can harness the web to help sustain our regional identity.  Staying small and funky and special seems like a good goal.  I think you'll agree once you taste the food. 

Staying Small and Flexible: Well, we did stay small!  Too small!  Hopefully there are other ways of getting fresh food to you that catches on. 

Kathy O'Hara

Membership fees:   The six month fee was $60, to cover transportation costs.

Shopping Hours: These were posted.

Pick Up Locations:  As were these.

SAD NEWS.

Runner-Bean will close to its retail customers after this weekend, August 28.

Dear Customers, 

I'm sorry to say that this will be the last weekend Runner-Bean will open its online doors to you.  It just stayed too small for me to make this side of the business work.  I'll still be supplying restaurants and caterers and small grocery stores, but the scarcity of customers and their far flung drop off points forced me to make hard economic choices.  I'm sorry about that.  It's been wonderful getting to know you all, and finding out what you liked and didn't about the service and food.  I really appreciated that. 

Hopefully, in the near future, we'll figure out a better way to serve you and the Roanoke community. 

Yours, Kathy

Is farming in your future?  Here is an article about some beginning farmers in Oregon.

Mark Bitman's recipe for a wonderful chicken dinner.

How to Butcher a Chicken...

 Want to see a video about how to butcher a chicken?  Look here.

Here's a wonderful link to a video about the organic egg industry in the US. 

It was sent to me by Karen Wrigley.  It really gets at the essence of what small family farms are all about.  Please take a few moments....

The website is open for shopping from Friday 6PM to Sunday at 9PM.  Welcome to Runner-Bean.com!

Have you seen the NYT article  on beekeeping in cities?  

Did you see the article about Runner-Bean.com in the Roanoke Times?  Click here to view.

I was on Channel 13 News on Nov. 1.  You can find me picking lettuce here.