Oregon City Farmers Market changes to a Pre-Order Drive Thru Market starting Saturday April 11th, 10am-2pm. In an effort to help ‘flatten the curve’ and to keep vendors, customers, staff, and volunteers safe, the Market is adapting and changing the model of market selling by promoting their mobile pre-order app.
The WhatsGood app can be downloaded from both the App Store and Google Play http://onelink.to/5wfazg and customers can one-stop shop, placing orders before 11pm on Thursdays for the next Saturday. More farmers, vendors and products will be listed on the app as the season progresses.
Having the app for a couple of years already has enabled the Market to get up and running quickly with the pre-order Drive-Thru which started a couple of weeks ago as an add-on to the regular market. It soon became apparent that customers (and some farmers and vendors) preferred this reduced- contact option.
Starting this Saturday the regular (walk-up) market will not open, instead customers will slowly drive down a line of vendors set up to hand off pre-orders. Customers can add on extra products too while they are at the Market, but browsing and shopping out of the vehicle will be discouraged.
Apart from the mobile app the Market has made available on their web site : orcityfarmersmarket.com a list of currently participating vendors for customers to contact directly. As the season is soon to change with the addition of more farms and vendors the list will be updated.
SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) customers can also use the mobile app, and pick up orders at the the Drive Thru at the same time accessing an extra $20 dollars worth of food using the Market’s Double Up Food Bucks SNAP Match program.
The State of Oregon has deemed farmers markets as “essential services” and the local farmers are gearing up for a busy season as they have already seen an uptick in sales. “It’s a bonus that we have been thrust into this crisis while we were operating” says market manager Jackie Hammond-Williams. “The new manager taking over in May, Jess Land, and I have had to adapt the Market to accommodate this new reality we find ourselves in. Our hard focus is to keep our farmers and vendors in business and to provide nutritious local food as safely as possible to our community.”