Ann Arbor’s Locavorious spreads local produce

Many locavores want to raise all of their own food, with a few dedicated diehards coming pretty close to accomplishing that. An Ann Arbor start-up is putting that goal within reach for more and more people.Locavorious partners with local farms to freeze fresh produce and keep it in a community freezer. The 3-year-old start-up then sells that produce on a subscription basis. The idea is to capture produce at its peak freshness and then save it for locavores who would rather eat Michigan-grown vegetables than those trucked up from the other side of North America or beyond. “I just wanted to be part of a solution,” says Rena Basch, owner of Locavorious. “It just seemed like the right thing at the right time.”The company employs five people on a part-time basis. It started with 100 subscribers and now has 200 on its list. It hopes to hit 300 within the next year. All of this growth comes from viral marketing and word-of-mouth campaigning at local farmers markets.Basch got started on promoting local food when she left the auto industry in 2006. The Ann Arbor Township Clerk became involved in government efforts to preserve local agriculture. One of the ways was to find more customers for area farms, so Basch began experimenting with pickling to maximize the shelf life of produce. The CFL went off over her head when a friend and serial entrepreneur suggested freezing the food.”My experience with the township got me interested in preserving local agriculture,” Basch says. “I wanted to be in sustainable agriculture but my husband didn’t want me to plow up the front yard.”Source: Rena Basch, owner of LocavoriousWriter: Jon Zemke