Are you a food producer
in North TX?
Let’s connect!
We are always open to new vendor applications and can’t wait to learn more about you and your operation
Why work together?
Joining our food hub is an amazing way to expand or streamline your business.
As the 2020 pandemic showed us, it is essential for every community to cultivate a strong local food system. One key component of building and sustaining a local food system is to make the customer experience as simple and hassle-free as possible. A food hub does just that!
Why us though, in particular? Because we actually get it. We are farmers too. We aren’t a delivery company, investor, tech bro, or other talking head trying to tell you which direction is north. We understand it all - the ebbs and flows of food production, the uncertainty, and financial challenges, the overarching passion that being a farmer or small business owner requires.
Interested?
Fill out our vendor application!
Have some questions?
Read below for more details
Particular concerns?
Email us! info@profoundfoods.com
EFFICIENCY
Don’t you want to do more of the things you love and less of the things you don’t? We’ve been there - Direct to consumer deliveries, hustling between restaurants with chefs who stress you out, managing the farmers market stall.
It adds up.
We take some of that pressure away by aggregating and distributing for you to our amazing customer base. We are your biggest supporter and will do everything in our power to keep your business thriving.
We save you time! You can choose how to spend the time you gain from making drops at our hub in Fairview. In the language of supply chain economics, larger deliveries to fewer destinations are less expensive and more efficient for the producer. We take on the burden of distribution so that you can grow our community’s food. You are tapping into a well-established network so that you can focus on doing what you do best – growing, harvesting, creating.
We can’t talk about efficiency without touching on payment. One of our greatest benefits is easy invoicing. Instead of selling to hundreds of customers directly, delivering to them, handling invoices, and chasing down payments from all these buyers, you deliver your products to one location – our farm – and you invoice us. We offer very favorable Net 15 payment terms to our vendors via direct deposit.
SUSTAINABILITY
Once you join the food hub, we set up your account to access our software (hosted by Local Food Marketplace). Each vendor has their own account where they can add, edit, and remove products for sale, as well as analyze numerous reports to strategize accordingly.
Each week, on LFM, you list what products you have available. You can update your availability of each product weekly, or you can set this to update automatically. We are structured this way to limit waste and maximize your time.
An example: if you know your production capacity is a maximum of 10 apples per week, you only list 10 apples as available. However, if you wake up one morning and find a deer got to your trees, you adjust your availability immediately to reflect your actual harvest or production capacity. With our system, we prevent food waste and stress. You only need to harvest or produce the number of products that were ordered. You do not have to harvest all 10 apples if customers only ordered 3 in total.
Retail and wholesale customers shop from Friday to Wednesday. Once the ordering period closes for the week, you receive a “pick-list” of everything that was ordered. The following day you deliver your picklist to us. You do not separate by customer, location, or anything. You simply bring the total amount of each product ordered.
CONNECTION
Tap into our expansive network of chefs, restauranteurs, farmers, and neighbors. Our platform makes it easier for everyone to participate in the local food system. Our simplified, convenient customer experience helps you grow your customer base to new parts of the metroplex and expand your networking opportunities. Furthermore, you are walking into an incredibly curious and friendly community, you might end up meeting your next business partner or collaborator for a new product.
What do we look for?
We are committed to working with farmers and producers who demonstrate that they use fair and equitable practices on their farms. Our friends raising pigs at Chubby Dog Farm, says “happy meat tastes better”, and we believe them! We know and love the look and taste of an egg from a chicken who is free to roam and actually be a chicken.
We support local agriculture. The more miles, the bigger the impact on the planet. Consuming and producing food locally is essential to building sustainable food systems. We focus on food producers who operate within 200 miles of us in Collin County TX.
We have built our reputation on quality and consistency. Our customers understand that many products are seasonal; however, it is important that you deliver consistently great product whenever these items are available.
We are collaborators, not competitors. Everybody eats. And if it’s good, everybody eats a lot. There are plenty of people and places to sell food. We work together to raise each other up. We can all come together to educate our neighbors on the importance and value of eating locally grown and raised products.
VENDOR FAQs
How do I start?
Fill out the vendor application! Or if you want to connect with one of us before you complete the app, please email us at info@profoundfoods.com
If things seem to be a good match, we will connect with you and set up a time for you to drop off samples of your products.
What’s the weekly rundown?
Each week, on Thursday morning, you log on to your Local Food Marketplace account and list the quantity of each product that you have available.
Most customers shop from Friday - Wednesday. This ordering window enables you to reassess your product availability or production capacity week-to-week. Farming is one big curveball. Things happen. All. The. Time. If you cannot deliver 20lbs of tomatoes like you did last week, it’s all good! You simply do not list them as available this week, or you adjust the quantity that you do have available.
You manage all of this through your Local Food Marketplace (LFM) account. LFM is the software we use to operate our storefront - it is the front and back-end for all of our sales. On LFM you have a unique account to manage your profile info, product availability, add and edit products, run numerous sales reports, and more. We will set up and teach you about LFM during onboarding.You receive a picklist the night before delivery day, or two nights before delivery day for those selling only to our “retail”, or home delivery customers. A picklist is the aggregated order of all your products that customers purchased that week. We handle all of the sorting and organizing, you just bring us the correct number of each product.
On delivery day, please arrive no later than 10:00 am. We double-check your delivery with the picklist to make sure you brought the correct quantities of each product. We have the picklist on hand, so don’t worry if you do not bring it with you.
You will email us with an invoice for the products you delivered.
Reassess your availability for the next week, then it’s back to Step 1!
Do you hold inventory?
It depends. We discuss this on a case-by-case basis. We can hold inventory for many of our shelf-stable products if necessary. We will chat about your particular needs.
How often do I deliver to you?
1-3 times per week. It’s up to you. Some vendors only sell to restaurants, some only sell to our home customers, and some do both!
Why?
Because of how we schedule our deliveries to different customer types.
Here’s our weekly order fulfillment routine:
Tuesday - restaurant deliveries in the afternoon
Thursday - restaurant deliveries in the afternoon
Friday - Home Deliveries and Pickup
Saturday - Home Deliveries and Pickup
If you are a baker, this turnaround time may be too tight. No worries. We can only make your products available to Friday and Saturday customers, so you can deliver your picklist to us on Friday morning, after receiving the week’s orders on Wednesday at midnight.
When do I get paid?
We offer Net 15 payment terms. With easy direct deposit, you will no longer be hunting down chefs for checks!
Do you package my items?
No. You must package and label your products appropriately. If your packaging is inadequate for our standards (ie. it does not hold up in transit, or easily breaks, or does not protect your products sufficiently) we will request you find another solution. We are happy to help brainstorm packaging options with you.
Do you market for us? Build websites or maintain social media?
We can assist with brainstorming or making connections for your marketing, but cannot build your brand’s online presence for free. If this is something you are looking to invest in, we are happy to connect you with people who can help, but again, this type of work is not free.
We do promote our producers organically. We feature products and producers each week via social media and email marketing, so you will get some free advertising.
What should I do to sell more of my products?
We encourage you to make use of all the social and technological tools at your disposal. Don’t be nervous about posting on Instagram - we certainly don’t take ourselves too seriously on these platforms and you don’t have to either. We can help strategize with you to boost sales.
If you are in a sales slump, we will try to feature your business on our social media pages and in an email campaign. We cannot do this every time you ask, as we work with many farmers and build in space for everyone to have a promotional week.
I have to leave town! What should I do about orders during this time frame?
Don’t stress! We simply de-list your products until you return. It is super simple and we teach you how to do this on LFM once you onboard.
A customer complained about the products they bought. Does Profound handle this or do we?
We handle this communication with customers. However, we will not shy away from saying that our farmer delivered faulty or near expiring product. Each case may have a different person at fault. If there was damage during delivery because we packed orders improperly, that’s on us. If you brought us cheese that expires tomorrow, that is on you.
Consistency and quality are the utmost priorities at Profound Foods. It is essential that you take pride in what you put into the world, even if it is something as small as a bar of soap! We need you to be committed to delivering the very best, freshest, quality products week after week. One customer’s bad experience can lead to the loss of dozens of other customers! Reviews and word of mouth are very powerful for a small local business like ours. We have worked hard to build a solid reputation. Maintaining this is in the best interest of ALL of our farmers. We all play a major role in this aspect of the business and will not shy away from communicating customer complaints with you. If it is an ongoing problem with your product quality, then we may not be the right fit for you.
Are we a good fit?
Do you have quality, local products to sell? Do you love growing and making, but hate logistics and sales? Do your values align with ours?
Fill out this form and we will be in touch.