Two Iowa turkey farmers were inspired to form online marketplace ChopLocal after the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted challenges in the meat supply chain.
“ChopLocal is what we call the Etsy of meat,” Katie Olthoff, the Co-Founder and Director of Marketing and Vendor Relations for ChopLocal, explained.
“It is an online marketplace where multiple small to midsize farmers and butchers can list their products online and consumers can get the opportunity to see exactly who their purchasing meat from.”
The website, which launched in the fall of 2020, currently sells poultry, meat and seafood products from 16 Iowa-based vendors. The company hopes to showcase vendors from across the U.S. in the future.
Olthoff, alongside Jared Achen, the Founder and CEO, discussed the benefits of an online marketplace for both consumers and the meat industry at the Animal Agriculture Alliance 2021 Virtual Stakeholders Summit on May 6.
Consumers move online
Modern meat eaters are picky, valuing convenience, quality and transparency. They are used to being able to purchase anything they want online at the click of the button.
“The marketplace makes it easy for consumers to find exactly what they’re looking for,” Olthoff said, “instead of searching multiple farm websites or smaller butcher websites for the meat they want.”
The meat industry has been slow to adopt ecommerce, but consumers now expect to be able to buy their groceries online.
Challenges of ecommerce
“The realities surrounding COVID showed us that farmers couldn’t access consumers without a large corporation or middlemen in the supply chain. And if the corporations went down for whatever reason, the farmer had very few options,” Achen said.
In addition, there are many small farmers that would like to get into ecommerce and expand direct to consumer sales, but struggle with the online website creation and marketing side of the business.
The marketplace format helps farmers and processors reach a larger target audience than they would individually. It also provides support to vendors who may be unfamiliar with website design, search engine optimization and other nuances of ecommerce.
View our continuing coverage of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
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