The Farmer's Market That Delivers to Your Door

Co-op and condo boards are constantly looking to add amenities to their buildings. Here’s a new one: Bring the farmer’s market into your building. It’s free, and it can even be profitable.

The Brooklyn-based company Farmigo delivers fresh, mostly locally produced food to buildings – and the buildings keep 10 percent of the profit.

The Kips Bay Tower Condominium just started the Farmigo service. “Management is always looking for creative ways to offer added services that will help improve the quality of life for our residents,” says assistant property manager Janelle Hing of FirstService Residential. “It has the added benefit of providing supplemental income to our building.”

Farmigo is a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. It differs from other CSA programs because customers order exactly what they want from Farmigo’s website, without a commitment to reorder. Orders are processed once a week. The farmers then harvest only the items that have been requested; the next day, the order is delivered to Farmigo; the following day, it's sent to a designated delivery room in the co-op or condo, where customers pick it up. Within two days, produce has gone from farm to table. Every item on the site is traceable to the producer. Nothing goes to waste.

“Farmigo is an excellent way for small, local farms to get their responsibly grown and raised products directly to consumers,” says Darcey Gerstein, treasurer on the board of a Lower East Side co-op. “Our participating cooperators benefit from the convenience of ordering from an expansive selection online and picking up their environmentally friendly packaged goodies right in our package room.”

The Farmigo service requires an organizer – usually a volunteer from the community or an employee of the management company. Not all organizers donate their profit to their community. Some do it to make some extra money for themselves or to get a discount on their own groceries.

Monica Warren, the Farmigo organizer in Castle Village, a co-op in Hudson Heights, uses the discount to help defray her grocery bill. Warren thinks the community still profits. “The food is delivered to the foyer in my apartment,” she says. “Every Monday my neighbors have a two-hour window to pick up their orders. This has created a great sense of community. Neighbors know each other’s name before I know it, we know their kids, the names of their dogs, who’s pregnant – and of course we tell each other which items are especially good. We all feel we got a new amenity added.”

Farmigo CEO and founder Benzi Ronen is a man on a mission. “We really mean it when we say we’re trying to change the food system,” Ronen says. “We envision a world where the perils of industrial farming are no longer affecting our country’s health and well-being, and where being a small and sustainable food producer can be an honorable way to earn a living.”

Farmigo supports local farmers as well as small producers of bread, jam, honey, cheese, meat, and seafood. These producers get an average of 60 cents for every dollar spent, which is about three times what they get from the traditional grocery system.

Fresh, high-quality food does carry a hefty price tag. Yes, Farmigo’s strawberries are to-die-for, but while supermarket strawberries start at about $4 a pound, Farmigo strawberries range from about $5.25 to $9.99 a pound.

For co-ops and condos that pocket 10 percent of the sales, Farmigo’s higher prices might actually be an added incentive to join the program.