SLO company run by Cal Poly students connects farmers to customers. ‘We’re all about local.’
At the start of the coronavirus lockdown, Walter Lafky drove his jeep down an empty highway with a trunk full of produce.
The Cal Poly agribusiness junior had just launched Harvestly, a San Luis Obispo-based company that helps local farmers and food producers sell their goods directly to customers online. Lafky’s company then delivers those products to the buyers’ doorsteps.
In March 2020, Harvestly had a handful of customers and just two vendors — Pepper Creek Family Farms in Arroyo Grande and Gracious Greens Farms in Grover Beach.
According to its founder, Harvestly’s customer base quickly grew as coronavirus concerns drove shoppers away from supermarkets and toward delivery service. COVID-19 also meddled with the U.S. agricultural supply chain, Lafsky said.
“You couldn’t get food from the middle of the country to here. It just didn’t work,” Lafky said. “So there was food on Harvestly you couldn’t get anywhere else just because the grocery stores were out of it.”
About a year and a half after launching, Harvestly now sells produce, meat, baked goods, honey, homemade candles and more from about 150 local vendors.
Popular offerings include muffins, marinara sauce, tamales and fresh fruits and veggies such as strawberries, broccolini and microgreens.
The company delivers products every Tuesday and Wednesday.
All of Harvestly’s vendors are within 40 miles of downtown San Luis Obispo, whereas grocery stores source much of their food from other parts of the world, Lafky said.
“We’re all about local,” he said. “We think that it’s a lot more beneficial culturally and then also economically to have these local producers supporting your system.”
In addition to providing a local marketplace, Harvestly is also a technology company. The business collects data on what people are purchasing, then tells vendors what they should produce to meet that demand.
“There’s always this discrepancy within economies,” Lafky said. “The producers don’t know how much the consumers are going to consume, and the consumers don’t know how much the producers are going to produce.”
Harvestly bridges that gap with its data.
“Every week, (vendors) know they’re going to get 10 breakfast burritos ordered,” Lafky said. “Over time those orders grow, but it’s a pretty steady increase where they can actually prepare for it and be able to scale.”
Atascadero ranch: Harvestly shares passion for products
The owners of Irish Oaks Ranch in Atascadero said they’ve enjoyed working with Harvestly.
“They shared their passion of getting ag products, handcrafted products to the consumer, and that helped motivate us to work harder at getting new products,” said Matthew Garrett, who runs Irish Oaks Ranch with his wife, Melissa Garrett, and their children.
On Harvestly, the ranch sells pasture-raised pork, beef, chicken and lamb. The Garretts also sell goat’s milk candles handcrafted by two of their children — 13-year-old Emma and 16-year-old Aidan.
The business partnered with Harvestly about five months ago, and their local sales have increased tremendously, Garrett said.
“Our biggest hiccup has been getting our products out to consumers, getting our advertising out there. Everything else we did a really great job at — making things and producing top quality meats,” Garrett said. “Harvestly stepped right in, found out what we were doing and helped us market that.”
Before working with Harvestly, Irish Oaks Ranch received orders from all over the country.
“It was nearly impossible to fulfill those orders because we weren’t a large enough company to ship throughout the United States,” Garrett said. “Where Harvestly, basically you can take — whether it’s our meat or soaps, fresh produce — and within 24 hours have that on your customer’s doorstep and then get instant feedback.”
Garrett said he shares Harvestly’s passion for buying and selling local products.
“If somebody has a question about our meat, they’re essentially our neighbors, so that holds us accountable because they can come in and ask,” he said. “We love that part of it, because we get to educate our neighbors and their children.”
“People can shop at Whole Foods all day long, but at the end of the day, you’re not going to be able to meet your farmer,” Garrett said.
SLO company aims to support the local economy
Harvestly gives vendors 75% of the purchase price of their items. In comparison, when Lafky sold home-grown tomatoes as a teenager in Oregon, he made 50% of the purchase price.
Since March 2020, Harvestly has paid its vendors a total of more than $200,000, Lafky said.
“Our goal is to return dollars back to our local economy and our local producers,” he said. “If we invest in them, they’ll invest in us and we’ll all grow together.”
Lafky said the global food system has favored large, corporate farms over smaller, local farms for decades.
Instead, Harvestly wants to connect consumers with local producers because it’s good for San Luis Obispo County’s economy and the food tastes better, he said.
“I don’t think people really realize it,” Lafky said. “It’s been a slow adoption over the last century to more commercialized, efficient farming, and so it’s been a slow change from really good food to this lettuce, this tomato that doesn’t taste like anything.”
Buying local is also more sustainable than buying from other parts of the country, he said.
“This is an actionable way where you can cut the travel time and the distance from where your food is produced to where it’s consumed,” Lafky said.
What’s next for business?
On Aug. 27, Harvestly opened an online marketplace for Santa Barbara. From now on, the company plans to open a market in a new area every three months.
Lafky and his team spent the past year perfecting Harvestly’s business model, he said.
Harvestly has about 15 employees, most of them current Cal Poly students or recent alumni.
“We’re going to copy and paste that model across California to start, and then across the rest of the U.S.” Lafky said. “My ultimate vision is someday, wherever you are, you know that you can support local by going to (Harvestly’s website).”
Find out more about Harvestly, go to Harvestly.co.
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 10:00 AM.
