Maine Tasting Center, located on Route 1 in Wiscasset, is excited to announce a new partnership with FarmDrop.us that will serve the community with an online farmers market platform for weekly, year-round grocery shopping. FarmDrop works with farms, businesses, and nonprofits across Maine to establish market hubs and build networks of regional producers; currently, FarmDrop operates 10 market hubs with 23 pickup locations throughout Maine and WNY. Its online marketplace offers fresh local and Maine-made products, which vary from week to week.
FarmDrop has been operating in parts of Maine for over ten years, but its presence in the Midcoast region was established about a year ago, in early 2022. Today, the new Midcoast market hub offers four different pickup locations (in Northport, Rockport, Waldoboro, and Wiscasset), with the hope that more will be added soon. Customers shopping the online Midcoast market have access to products from producers including Dog Patch Farm, Springdale Farm and Creamery, Maine Grains, Brodis Blueberries and many more. Over the coming months, the Midcoast market hub’s managers hope to onboard additional vendors, particularly ones that are based in the Midcoast region.
“We’ve been FarmDrop customers for a while now and can’t wait to take our involvement to the next level by becoming a pickup location,” says Maine Tasting Center General Manager Sara Gross. “Connecting Maine producers to the public is at the very core of our mission, so working with FarmDrop to strengthen these producer-consumer relationships in the Midcoast area feels like a perfect fit for us and an extremely worthwhile use of our time and resources.” The benefits of this new partnership are many. Through FarmDrop, locally-grown and locally-made products are made easily available across community food systems. And, by shopping the FarmDrop online market, consumers ensure that their dollars stay within the community and region. Plus, a portion of the proceeds from their order are dedicated to supporting important food programs and food systems projects.
FarmDrop CEO Hannah Semler says, “While serving Midcoast farmers and customers, we are also excited to be providing you with Maine-made food that you can’t find locally otherwise, and have put together a unique diversity of products that can be easily accessed through our simple online farmers market. We’re hoping for increased engagement from some of the trusted local Midcoast producers over time and are always looking for ways to increase access to Maine foods in our communities, for all.”
Ready to get started? The open order window on FarmDrop gives customers the flexibility to order every week, plan for a special occasion or just shop every now and then, all while choosing exactly what goes into each shop. To create your account, register and choose Midcoast FarmDrop market hub. Your market opens at 9 am on Saturday and closes for ordering 11:59 pm on Wednesday. You can freely browse incredible local products and then place your order, and choose what location you want to pickup at, in this case Maine Tasting Center. A pickup fee gets applied to every order to support the market hub managers, mainly farmers and nonprofits, that pack and transports the orders around Midcoast to the various pickup locations. Then, pick up your order on Friday at Maine Tasting Center (506 Old Bath Rd, Wiscasset, ME 04578) from 3-6 pm.
“During the summer months, keep an eye out for additional programming at our site that will correspond with Friday pickups,” explains Sara Gross. “We will be hosting workshops and tastings throughout the season to highlight some of our Midcoast FarmDrop vendors and teach you how to preserve or make the most of the items you purchased during that week’s shop.”
Learn more, sign up, and browse available products from incredible local vendors at farmdop.us/market/midcoast-farmdrop/. Pick-up in Wiscasset is available as of the Feb. 25, 2023 ordering cycle, and every Friday after that. View Maine Tasting Center’s online calendar at mainetastingcenter.com for information about the food preservation workshops and tastings that will be available on pick-up days throughout the summer season.
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About FarmDrop: Together with our customers and food producers, FarmDrop is creating resilient, regenerative food networks. We are dedicated to preserving the knowledge and sustainable stewardship of our rural landscapes by making it more convenient to choose the extraordinary food being produced in our own foodsheds. We make it possible for communities to buy, sell, and trade year-round, sharing the most nutritious, safe, and delicious foods available, which in turn protect our planet, restore our place-based culture, and build food sovereignty. Our direct-to-consumer marketplaces are designed to better serve small-scale food artisans, increase community food access and customer connectivity, while sustaining local jobs and businesses. We have created a flexible e-commerce solution for rural communities left out of the online grocery shopping trend. The harvest-to-order model, collaborative marketing, and shared distribution systems reduce waste by ensuring customers get the freshest of what their neighbors make, while farmers and food artisans make the most efficient use of their labor, knowledge, products, and time. We are also working on Wholesale and EBT options to reach more community members, and provide our producers with a greater market opportunity.
About Maine Tasting Center: Maine Tasting Center (MTC) is an educational campus in Wiscasset, ME where members of the public can attend classes and special events, taste food and drink from Maine producers, and explore exhibits about Maine food industries. The MTC campus is home to the nonprofit organization Maine Food and Beverage Education Center (MFBEC), which works to build bridges between Maine’s food and beverage producers and the public. MTC and MFBEC work together to drive economic benefit to Maine food and drink producers through public education and tourism. Learn more at mainetastingcenter.com