"Our partnership with The Common Market allows us to share the harvest on a much larger scale than our students can produce within our early learning gardens. Through Y early learning centers, The Common Market distributes fresh, organic fruits and vegetables to families within our community that might not have access to them otherwise."
"We are the only local food hubs in the country to have SQF certification,” said Lily Rolader, director of The Common Market Southeast. “The reason we explored the SQF certification is that we want to play a role in legitimizing the local food space and making our customers feel comfortable to local food is safe."
"The Common Market is a food hub founded in 2008 in Philadelphia to overcome the multiple barriers that stand between local institutions and the food grown in their region. Not only does The Common Market work with institutions to help them increase local food purchases, it also works with farmers to help them earn quality certifications and implement best practices, and to handle food distribution logistics. After great success in Philadelphia, The Common Market launched a second hub in Atlanta in 2016."
"Marcela Moreno, a research associate at the Strategic Energy Institute, signed up for the program during its first season and found that it has revolutionized how she shops...[she] noted that it’s more affordable than other produce subscriptions she has tried, and the amount is manageable. It also forces her, at times, to be more creative with her cooking and try new foods."
Rolader says The Common Market is trying to build a regional food system that develops more personal connections between producers and consumers by 'giving farmers a chance to tell their story.'
"The SQF certification includes a validation process that makes sure food safety control systems have been implemented effectively."
"Today’s consumers are expecting more from their food, and that means expecting more from the entire food chain. While the majority of food service providers in the institutional marketplace would prefer to offer their patrons fresh, local food, the issue of getting certifiably safe products from independent producers is a major hurdle. For The Common Market Georgia, that’s no longer a problem."
"Based in Atlanta, The Common Market Georgia is the only local food hub in the region to receive the Safe Quality Foods certification and is second only to its flagship The Common Market Mid-Atlantic, which became the first local food hub in the nation to receive the certification in 2016."
“Food touches every part of our lives,” says Georgia director Lily Rolader. “It’s reaching you at the hospital down the road or where you drop your kids off at school. We want to create the infrastructure to make it possible for farmers to move food and make it easy for our customers to get good food.”
"I have increased our local purchases by 20% over the course of the year, making our client very happy that we are meeting their local and sustainable benchmarks for food procurement. "
— Eric Stevenson, Executive Sous Chef, Sodexo at Lehigh University