Amazon testing Farmers Market Direct programme in California
Amazon has begun rolling out its new Farmers Market Direct programme in Southern California, in partnership with Fresh Nation. According to a report published in the Los Angeles Times yesterday (1 September), Fresh Nation has begun delivering farmers market produce through Amazon in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. The newspaper article said that Amazon is looking to trial the service in New York City later this month, before deciding whether to proceed further.
Fresh Nation, which started up in Stamford, Connecticut two years ago, uses its team of “personal shoppers” to buy produce from farmers’ markets and then deliver to local customers.
According to the company’s own website: “Our shoppers deliver the orders they have selected at the market direct to customers’ homes or offices, ensuring that the food goes straight from the farmers market to our customers.
“Fresh Nation does not maintain any warehouses to store its food, preferring instead to act as an intermediary to get the food direct from the farmer in the market to our customer without any stopover in a warehouse.”
For the Amazon programme, however, the arrangements seem to be a little bit more “big business”.
According to the LA Times article, “Fresh Nation places orders with farmers based on orders received and an estimate of demand for individual items”.
Amazon will then arrange for trucks to take the produce from the market to its distribution centre in San Bernardino where it will be stored (at least for a short time) before it is trucked to the waiting customers’ premises.
This is perhaps not quite as folksy a picture as that which Fresh Nation paints on the website for its standalone operation. Nevertheless, it does seem to have retained the key points of a farmers’ market: the Amazon programme will be delivering produce from local farmers, and the food will arrive at customers’ doorsteps within 36 hours of harvest.
To take advantage of the Farmers Market Direct programme, customers will have to be Amazon Prime Fresh members.
