A couple years ago, Ana Jakimovska, who co-owns and runs a café in Tribeca, grew frustrated by the limited reach of farmers markets. Like many parents, she valued fresh locally sourced meats, produce, and dairy products and wanted to feed more to her children, but had limited time to crisscross the city and search through stalls.
At the same time, she realized that the farmers running those stalls probably faced their own set of challenges beyond attracting customers–things like transportation and set up costs, plus losses from what might go unsold. Then one day while she was shipping a package via UPS a strange sort of inspiration struck.
Why not use the service itself to solve both sets of problems? “Maybe we can use UPS to ship from each farm to residents around that farm,” she says she thought at the time.
In early September, Jakimovska officially launched WildKale, to make the simple idea actually workable. It’s an online farmers market: Farmers display their wares and what quantities are available online, and customers can search by zip code to find ones within the right range to ensure overnight delivery to their home.
“It’s a direct connection to each farmer with no middle man,” she says. “That means the food is going to be better, it’s going to be fresher, and we wanted to give that opportunity to everyone–all the families who want to eat better and farmers to increase their business.”
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