Our Thoughts About Some Recent News

Dear CultivatR community,

I hope everyone has had a great summer. As we head into fall, I realized I haven’t written anything in a while about the CultivatR Journey. We are starting to catch up to the demand and have added 3 new team members. We are also working hard on making our platform more user friendly.  

As you know, CultivatR is trying to build a better food system, one that allows local farmers, ranchers and food artisans to make a living while providing consumers with fair prices. 

Recently there has been some talk in the news about our current food system. Farmers and food producers are asking the government to step in to Build a Code of Conduct between them and the grocery store chains. This stems from the grocery stores asking for larger chargeback from vendors for processing, shelf placements, and etc. In response, the grocery chains have been threatening that food costs would rise without these “fees”. I am not privy to the information on either side to say who is right and wrong. Still, I think it is very sad when suppliers need the government to regulate their dealings with retailers.  

I want to take this opportunity to tell you how we deal with our vendors:

1. Does it taste good? We only work with vendors who’s product passes a tasting panel. It is not about just filling a shelf.

2. We let our vendors set their own prices. Rather than dictating a price, we work with the price they need to be paid. Because we carry minimum inventory, this allows us to share the risk equally with our producers.  

3. We don’t have any chargebacks or hidden fees. The vendor delivers the product, and we pay them. It is that simple. 

4. We are accessible.  We are always looking for new vendors, and we make it simple to deal with us. We don’t have one-sided contracts or expect unreasonable deliveries. 

Most people don’t know this but, we named our company CultivatR because we wanted to create a way to “cultivate” a relationship between the farm and the consumer. The only way to do this is to work equally and fairly with our producers and our consumers.

In closing, I recommend each and every one of you to do some of your own research into our food system and make decisions based on what you discover.

We are so grateful to you for your continued support and for referring us to your friends and relatives.

 
Thank you for Supporting Alberta Farmers, Ranchers, and Food Artisans,

Dan and the CultivatR Team