Home Grown Food Basket expands locally, out of province

Kelsey Bent

In four short years, Home Grown Food Basket has expanded from a home-based business to a storefront in Wingham, and now to a secondary headquarters located in the former Fordwich United Church. But that’s not all of it for this company. Owners David Sherpenzeel and Jef MacPherson have recently purchased a plot of land in Nova Scotia with plans of expanding their business out of province in the future.

Home Grown Food Basket is a local food store in Wingham, featuring locally grown and sourced products including fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses, baked goods, and preserves to name a few.

The company works with local vendors to provide a full grocery store experience, both in-store and online, with all the products sourced from southwestern Ontario.

Home Grown Food Basket is moving the production and distribution side of their business into the former Fordwich United Church. The church, built in 1902, was a place where the community gathered for close to 96 years.

For Sherpenzeel the building has a special sentimental value. Although he did not regularly attend church at the former United Church, he has many fond memories of strawberry dinners, community programs, and attending family weddings.

“The day my dad proposed to my mom was Valentine’s Day and he brought her here to the Valentine’s Day church dinner,” he said. “Although he didn’t end up proposing here. They went back to the farm, got changed into their barn clothes and Dad proposed in the kitchen on their way out to do chores.

“I grew up in Howick and I have lived in Howick most of my life, so for me to be able to bring something to the community that will have a positive impact and can preserve a building that means so much to this community is really exciting.”

MacPherson is equally excited about their new headquar- ters. “At Home Grown we do a lot of work with agriculture and just being able to stay in the rural community of Fordwich and keep the business in the rural area where it is able to support a rural community, but also be close to the roots of agriculture is really important and exciting for us,” he said. The roughly 4,000 square foot building is more than enough space for Home Grown Food Basket right now, however, the company plans to grow into the building.

Sherpenzeel and MacPherson plan on getting the kitchen and adjacent dining space cleaned up and outfitted to be used as their food production and distribution space in the next few months. This expansion will allow the company to also expand its line of soups, partially prepared produce and frozen dinners. The rest of the building, like the sanctuary and office spaces, won’t be immediately renovated. They are planning to renovate spaces as the company grows and requires additional space.

“That is what is nice about this building, we don’t have to do it all at once,” Sherpenzeel said. He added that as they move the production part of their company into the church, it will allow them to expand their store in Wingham.

“The nice thing about the Wingham store is that as we move everything here it will open up enough space in the store that we can increase our retail space by 33 per cent,” Sherpenzeel said. “The back third of the store is where we process orders and put together the baskets, but if we don’t need that space, we can use it for store space.”

At the moment, there is no plan for the Fordwich headquarters to have a traditional store, however they have plans to allow customers to place and pick up orders in Fordwich.

“Once we have this place operational, there will be online ordering available with pickup available in Fordwich,” Sherpenzeel said. “If there is someone who doesn’t want to order online there will be a re- ception space where they can wait while their order is packaged. We know we have some customers who might not be comfortable doing online ordering – they can still come here and place their order.”

Business and services

The company works with over 35 local vendors and it is estimated that Home Grown Food Basket supports between 200-300 farming families.

They have a ratio of between 60-70 per cent returning customers, and 30-40 per cent new customers every month.

“Our December sales were two or three average month’s sales, which is great because it is also giving our vendors and successful Christmas time,” Sherpenzeel said.

The benefit of selling with Home Grown as opposed to selling to a traditional grocery store is that Home Grown shares a higher margin of sales (as high as 70 per cent, depending on the product) and their vendors get to continue to be the face of their brand.

“We champion them for what they do,” MacPherson said.

“Basically, what we say to our vendors is you set your price, it is then our job to mark it up to something that is sellable and to do the marketing to make sure it moves. But they need to make enough to cover their costs and to be comfortable.”

Sherpenzeel added. “That is why we give them higher margins. It does mean we operate off of smaller margins at times, but so far we have been doing OK with that. It just involves some planning ahead.”

Home Grown Food Basket carries a variety of food items available for in-store pick-up or delivery.

“We do nationwide shipping for non-perishable and delivery of perishable items within 100 kilometres,” Sherpenzeel said.

Home Grown Food Basket services include:

- A subscription basket, where every month, week, or every other week customers receive a customized basket including produce, meat, baked goods, eggs, cheese, and preserves.

- Fundraiser baskets filled with local goods, with the of- ferings changing on a monthly basis. The fundraiser baskets are available January-November.

- Bulk ordering of local goods to provide for a caterer, restaurant, or local canning projects.

- A variety of gift baskets are available throughout the year, they also do corporate gift baskets, both change with the seasons.

- Helping Hands program allows customers to donate a basket of local goods to a family in need. By making a donation to Home Grown Food Basket a basket will be directed to a local food bank. Baskets are also available to order and deliver to a specific family in need.

- In their store, Home Grown Food Basket has many local goods for purchase including chicken, turkey, beef, eggs, produce, soups, frozen meals, and partially prepared produce.

“Everything we produce in our kitchen will be co-branded with whatever products are featured in it,” Sherpenzeel said. “You will know exactly which farms everything is coming from.” expansion out east Sherpenzeel and MacPherson have recently purchased a 86acre plot of land in Caribou River, Nova Scotia.

“It is a nice spot, it is a former farm but it hasn’t been farmed in 50 or 60 years,” MacPherson explained. “There are a couple cleared fields, pasture, and bush.”

Their plan for this expansion is to begin with a small store where they can sell locally grown produce, livestock, and cabins for an agri-tourism farm experience for travelers.

“Our dream is to have Home Grown spread across the province, country, and world maybe in different ways or aspects but always with the purpose of making an impact on agriculture wherever we go,” Sherpenzeel said.

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To order from, or become a supplier to the Home Grown Food Basket visit their website www. homegrownfoodbasket.com.

Doug Andriessen Farms switches to robotic milking

Continued from page 2 went together really quick,” he said.

The system uses transmitter tags on the cows to communicate to the milking machines. These tags send data to a computer system, which tracks the milking data of each cow in the barn. It also monitors when the cow was last milked, ensuring the cow is milked only at the appropriate times.

The system also alerts Andriessen when there may be an issue with a cow.

“It’ll send a message to my phone with the details, then one of us can come down to the barn and look after it,” he said.

This useful information, Andriessen says, helps with vet bills as issues can be caught before they become too severe.

The new system has also made things more efficient in the barn. Andriessen said milking in the parlour was about a 90-minute job, and now with the robotic milking system they can work on other chores simultaneously.

“It’s been a big change,” he said. “It took some getting used to for us and the cows, but so far everything has worked well.”

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