Montreal startup shortens the food supply chain

Friday, December 5, 2014

As food journeys from farm to consumer, it's often the middleman that takes the biggest bite. The Farmer's Share research project, undertaken by Prairie farm groups in 2011, found an average 61 per cent markup on vegetables, grains, dairy products and meat sold at three Winnipeg supermarkets.

Provender, a web-based marketplace, aims to cut out the middleman by providing what CEO Caithrin Rintoul calls "an online sales management tool and marketplace" where farmers can sell directly to restaurants and other distributors. Rintoul says previous attempts to bring the sales and distribution of food online have failed because food has been treated as a commodity, and "fresh food is never going to be commoditized."

Provender, Rintoul says, has been built from a farmer's perspective. Transactions between farmers and buyers who were already doing business are free, and there is a variable fee of zero to 18 per cent on sales made between new connections.

"We're always hearing that farmers don't want to embrace technology, and that it is somehow their fault," Rintoul said via email. "The opposite is true – it is up to us, the builders of software, to make systems that are simple, delightful and useful. Only then will agriculture move online and embrace the efficiency, traceability and promise the Internet holds for farms."  

At press time, Provender had 750 users signed up. In July, one year after its Montreal launch, it expanded into Ontario, where it currently has 300 users. It is also active in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont. BF