ASHLAND, OR — It’s no secret that local farms and restaurants have struggled to stay in business.
For about a year, ‘Global Grange Incorporated’ has existed as an online wholesale distribution system.
The company is still in development, but the goal is to connect local farms to local restaurants.
“Big companies that move the produce across the state and back are charging a lot,” said CEO John Andresen. “We’re removing that and making a simple way of connecting point A to point C without it being a lot of money to point B.”
Andresen said both producers and small restaurants have been struggling for decades, and the pandemic only made matters worse.
“During lockdown, I didn’t have anything to do. All the restaurants were closed down,” said COO Drew Gibbs. “And I was frantically thinking when we’re able to reopen ‘what could we do differently to make that difference here?'”
By creating a middleman, Gibbs said Global Grange keeps the goods and dollars right here in the Rogue Valley.
“If you think about community, the food we produce here, we eat here, it should stay here,” Gibbs said. “So as all the money that goes through the restaurants in the farms, all that should be invested back into the community.”
Ranchers can go to livestockofamerica.com where they can check out what’s available.
Andresen said the goal is to expand across the U.S., but the Winchester Inn is just one example of how rich the Rogue Valley is with both local farms and restaurants.
“I think that’s kind of the thing, that’s what Southern Oregon always is, it’s got this incredible potential, but not always the realization,” Andresen said. “That’s what we want to help change.”
If you’d like to know more, you can go to globalgrange.world.
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