Local food hub brings small-batch products to New Seasons Market

Part of New Seasons Market’s mission is to stock small-batch, locally made foods. The problem? Lots of small vendors don’t have the capacity to service a large retailer like New Seasons, which has 21 stores across Oregon, Washington and Northern California. Enter The Redd.

The Redd is a two-building campus in Portland, Oregon, that houses a system of services–from production, assembly and packaging spaces to warehousing and delivery–designed to help small food businesses thrive. For New Seasons Market, partnering with The Redd has helped expand the store’s access to local and small batch vendors.

While some brands complete all steps of product creation on site, The Redd’s delivery service called GreenWheels has been essential in bringing small creators to New Seasons. Essentially, this allows brands to drop their store orders at the warehouse for consolidation and delivery, and then the lot of them are delivered to their destinations. “This shared final-mile delivery service offers a cost-efficient way for vendors to spend less time self-delivering product, and more time on revenue generating aspects of their business,” explains Chris Tjersland, director of brand development at New Seasons Market. This not only saves time and money, but also cuts carbon emissions: in the three years since GreenWheels started, it has saved more than 90 vendors over 12,000 individual delivery trips to New Seasons Market locations, saving more than 320,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

But New Seasons Market and its shoppers aren't coming away from this partnership empty-handed. “Our customers have access to even more unique, locally made, small-batch products because of The Redd,” says Tjersland. “This partnership allows us to do what we do best: locating and merchandising the highest quality products from makers in our community.”

This piece originally appeared on New Hope Network, a Supermarket News sister website.