A popular place to get locally grown food has just expanded with a new wholesale program.

Since its creation in 2020, the Whidbey Island Grown Cooperative Food Hub has connected retail customers with farmers and producers through an online marketplace. Every Friday, customers can pick up their orders at the Oak Harbor Main Street Association, Scenic Isle Farm, Greenbank Farm, Mutiny Bay Blues or the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds. A delivery option is available for households located in the Freeland, Langley and Clinton zip codes.

But now, Whidbey restaurants, grocers, schools, markets and food service kitchens can take advantage of a newly revised program for wholesale customers.

“The idea is to let our producers focus on growing and making food, while we handle the logistics of getting it into kitchens across the island,” Executive Director Shannon Bly said in a press release. “Our improved program was informed directly by the producers and buyers who are using it.”

The new program is funded by a USDA Local Food Promotion Program grant.

For farmers like John Burks who work alone, it’s a big help.

“I don’t have to do deliveries,” he said. “That would take a chunk of a day, or a couple of days.”

Burks is one of the founding board members for Whidbey Island Grown and vice president of the organization’s board. He is also the owner of his one-man business, Kettle’s Edge Farm in Coupeville, which he started after attending South Whidbey’s Organic Farm School in 2009.

He grows onions, shallots, carrots, potatoes, summer squash, leeks, beans and peas on his 15-acre farm, just to name a few things. His business is named after the geologic features that can be found around Central Whidbey, hollows left in the earth from Whidbey’s glacial period. He also grows flowers, which his wife enjoys arranging into bouquets.

Burks said Whidbey Island Grown is excited about getting the wholesale side of the operation up and running.

“We want to help promote our local farmers and help them survive here through a tough economy,” he said.

The Greenbank Pantry is one of his wholesale customers. Emily Terao, who owns the restaurant with her husband, said they have been finding their flow with the program, which provides deliveries on Wednesdays.

“When they started up the wholesale program, it was really helpful because there were more options to get like a case of 12 heads of lettuce at a time or ordering by the pound rather than by the bunch,” Terao said.

The Food Hub makes it easy to order ingredients for the shop’s sandwiches and salads. This includes carrots, beets, tomatoes, lettuce and a variety of other greens.

Besides Kettle’s Edge Farm, she also buys produce from Foggy Hill Farm and Sea Fern Farm, both in the Freeland area, and Slow and Steady Farm, which has a farm stand located down the road from the Greenbank Pantry.

Terao hopes to get rid of the stigma associated with purchasing locally grown food.

“A lot of people tend to think that buying local produce means that you’re going to be spending more money on it, and that’s not necessarily the case,” she said. “I think as a business, whether we buy from one of the big producers like Charlie’s Produce or we buy locally, it’s not that big of a price difference.”

Other current wholesale customers of the Food Hub’s new program include the Goose Grocer, Langley Kitchen, the Star Store, Useless Bay Golf & Country Club, Whidbey Provisions, Oystercatcher, Osprey Fish Co., Goldie’s Pizza, Captain Whidbey, the Coupeville School District and 3 Sisters Market.

Interested wholesale buyers can reach out to the Food Hub at saleswigrown@gmail.com to get started.

For more information about the Food Hub, visit whidbeyislandgrown.com/food-hub.

(Photo by David Welton). Emily Terao, owner of Greenbank Pantry, holds up a plethora of salads sold in her shop that are made using produce grown on Whidbey farms.