The Farmers Finds: Bringing Local Homegrown Products to Your Door

We’ve all been there. You’re visiting somewhere new and you decide to hit the local farmer’s market for a taste and touch of local flair and fare. You stumble upon something great only to find you’ll have to visit that location again to buy that thing again. But what if you could have those local farmer’s market finds delivered to your doorstep?

Welcome to The Farmers Finds, a subscription-based service that curates the best of the best from local farmer’s markets across the country and delivers them straight to you in a neat little box each month. It’s a win-win for customers and small businesses–you get to discover something new from local makers, and the merchants are reaching customers far beyond the depth of a small stand at the local market.

It’s no surprise The Farmer’s Finds is the brainchild of advertising and public relations expert Loretta Markevics. A staunch supporter of small businesses, all of her profits go directly back into promoting the small-batch brands and local makers in each and every subscription box. This customer just found her new favorite, cinnamon-flavored peanut butter, so I had to dig in and learn more from Loretta about her burgeoning venture.

I love this concept and love the idea of supporting small businesses. Can you tell us where and how the idea came about?

It was somewhat accidental. My husband and I were both entrepreneurs running marketing agencies at the same time. Being entrepreneurs allowed us the flexibility to travel and work from anywhere, so from 2020-2021 we decided to work remotely and go on a road trip across the U.S. In every city we visited, we strolled through the farmer’s market because we love fresh and local foods and discovering new products. My marketing agency supports startups, so I was asking the farmer’s market vendors about their businesses and came to find out that there was not a national platform for farmer’s market products to be sold. So I created one. The real mission of The Farmers Finds is to offer farmer’s market-born brands support and exposure beyond their local market footprint. They make the products, and I do what I do best–curate and market them.

It’s one thing to have a concept. It’s another to turn it into a business. What did that process look like? 

It is not for the faint of heart! I know how to run an agency but had to learn all new skills to start an e-commerce business from scratch. I get excited about a lot of concepts I have. I came up in advertising and have had many product ideas over the years but never executed them. I truly wanted to make this one happen. I was dead set on helping these makers get a leg-up. So, I worked with a member of our digital team to meet with me each week to move something forward. It didn’t matter what it was, but we had to do something each week. That accountability really helped. Before you know it, in three months we named the company, designed the brand, and had the website and socials going.

Good so far. What were your main challenges?

Many! The biggest was the discipline to get it off the ground. Once it was up and running, the challenges then came from the brand being out in the wild. Things come up you don’t expect when you are dealing with customers and their individual expectations. Also, functionally we had to learn how to handle fulfillment and ordering and timing of everything. Timing is tricky because these are small batch makers, so they would literally run out of product and many times we need to supplement with other makers. In the beginning it was quite complex. Now we have more than enough product and we changed our model a bit to help the business run smoother.

How do you discover brands, and how can brands reach out to you?

We discover brands by going to farmer’s markets everywhere, from brands reaching out to us and from recommendations from customers and friends of the brand.  We are always looking for new brands to feature, so brands are encouraged to reach out to us at service@thefarmersfinds.com or to DM us on Instagram.

One of my favorite things about finding new brands or products is learning the story behind them. Is there one that sticks out the most?

I met a woman in Las Vegas, Tammy Johnson, who makes amazing soaps. Her company is SHMILY Soap Co. She is a military vet and she started her company to process her grief after the loss of a family member and in the process, honor the person she lost. I thought it was so beautiful that the start of her company helped her heal and commemorated the life of a family member. She is such a lovely human being and so incredibly talented.

Let’s say you find something and feature it in a subscription box. What’s next? Will you feature it again, or is it just once?

Once a brand is featured in the box, if the maker is open to it, we feature them in our marketplace permanently. If the product gets incredible, unsolicited feedback, we may feature a different flavor of the same product or another one of their products again. But if we do that it won’t be for more than a year after it was originally featured.

What’s the most rewarding part of running The Farmers Finds?

Helping these makers. They work so hard. Making products by hand is not easy. I once volunteered to help one of our makers make his toffee and spent eight hours in the kitchen. Imagine doing that each week for days. Not only do they make these creative, quality products, they hustle unlike anything I’ve seen. Every week they stand out in rain, sun, and cold to sell their goods. Their passion is unrelenting. I’m proud that our platform gives them the opportunity for additional exposure and sales, which is particularly important for those who sell at markets that close for the winter, which means lost revenue for months.

Do you have a favorite Farmers Market to visit yourself? I am from NYC but lived in San Diego when I started The Farmers Finds. San Diego has incredible farmers markets, so I would say Little Italy farmers market in San Diego. It is in the city center and has a view of the ocean from the right spots.

What were you doing before starting The Farmers Finds?

I spent over 20 years in the advertising and PR industry. In 2020, I left my role as Chief Strategy and Creative Officer to start my marketing agency Sēd, where I am currently the CEO. I also am the CEO of The Farmers Finds with a killer team that is as passionate about supporting small businesses as I am.