You might call in locavore for the carnivore – AgLocal works to link locally raised meat with restaurants and grocery stores.
Power To The Meat Lover: AgLocal Connects Local Animal Farms With Restaurants, Grocery Stores
By Ariel Schwartz
Co.Exist
There are a lot of food-obsessed people in America’s cities willing to pay a premium for locally raised meat from nearby small farms. That might be news to the farmers, though. A new startup hopes to save farms by connecting them to high-paying customers they need.
You can’t walk a block in some urban neighborhoods these days without bumping into a market or restaurant hawking locally sourced food. The “locavore” trend is only set to grow this year, but up until now, meat has largely been left out of the equation (with some exceptions). That’s about to change with the launch of AgLocal, a platform that connects local meat-providing farms with grocery stores and restaurants that are willing to pay a little extra for the hometown credentials. The startup’s tagline? “Power to the meat lover.”
AgLocal is the brainchild of Naithan Jones, the former director of the Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac program. His family provided the inspiration for the project. “My brother is a chef. I’d watch him spend twice as much for local because he knows he has a relationship with the farmer, and he knows how the animal is raised, so he knows how it tastes,” he explains. “And my wife’s family is about to lose their farm in Kansas. I asked what it would have taken to keep their farm. [They said] the urban buyers didn’t have a connection to rural areas.”
Read the complete article at more from fastcoexist.com – HERE
