Miami's Favorite Small Businesses are Going Virtual, Thanks to Laurie Landgrebe

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MT: Hey everyone, welcome to seasonal podcast season one, Episode Three super excited. I hope everyone is hanging in there and keeping their heads up and staying sane during this insane time. I'm definitely trying to. I know a lot of us have been taking up some new indoor hobbies and some of you guys know I have started basically turning my apartment into a fermentation lab. So I have sourdough starters on my counter. A bunch of them are in my fridge. I have kombucha brewing in my bedroom right now. I have kombucha SCOBYs hanging out in a jar on my counter, which looks super scary. But anyway, this week marks my sixth week of making sourdough bread loaves every weekend. And you would think by now I would have improved slightly. But no, I haven't at all. I feel like I haven't made any progress. For some reason I can't get the lobes to be any taller than three and a half inches give or take. And I don't know, I don't know how tall they're supposed to be exactly, but I feel like they're probably supposed to be around like five or six inches, maybe six is a little too much, probably around five inches maybe. So I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I think it's either that I'm over proofing them or that I'm not creating enough surface tension. But I feel like I've been doing a pretty good job with creating enough surface tension. So I feel like it's probably because I'm in Miami and using a recipe from a man that bakes bread in Oregon. And so the climate is very different, but I'm following the recipe to a tee. So yeah, I think I'm over approving them and they're just coming out flat. So anyone that's more experienced than me has any tips. I would take them with open arms, so please share, and in the meantime, my kombucha is just extremely well behaved. It's perfect. I love making them and flavoring them and they taste amazing. They taste just like store-bought. So anyway, On today's episode we'll be chatting with Laurie Landgrebe of Lorie's pantry and she has taken on a new venture that brings together local farmers and vendors and local artisans into one platform to provide products for pretty much all of South Florida. So I'm super excited to have her on and just pick her brain about the beauties of our area’s local food culture. Also I just want to mention to everybody to please please show your support for the podcast by heading to anchor.fm searching seasonal and clicking support so I can keep This podcast alive and going and I will also have a link up in the show notes so you can access it there too. So let's get into chatting with Laurie.

Laurie is the founder of Laurie's pantry which produces gourmet granolas and mueslis, if any of my listeners have been to a farmer's market anywhere in South Florida, you've probably seen her table set up. It's the one with the beautiful jars of granola with the colorful labels and they have all those insane flavors like hot chocolate, blueberry crumb cake, and tropical sunrise, and they also are selling raw honey, so that's very exciting. Thank you so much for joining us today, Laurie. So although Laurie runs her company Laurie's pantry, what I really wanted us to talk about today is her most recent venture where she makes it super easy for us South Florida residents to buy local products and support our local small business owners. So before we get into that, I first want to start off by asking you to share a bit of the history behind Laurie's pantry and where you all were selling prior to the COVID crisis.

LL: Sure, we started Laurie's pantry. I actually work with my boyfriend, Victor Pagano and we have been doing Laurie's pantry now since 2012. We started at the Coconut Grove farmers market, the Glacier Farmers Market, when we sold our first jar, and have expanded through farmer's markets in South Florida, including Pinecrest, all the way up through Palm Beach. And now we are selling at markets throughout Florida. And you can now also find us in gourmet shops and online as well as the market, so we have been growing every year and getting more creative with our flavors. Yeah. loving every minute of it.

MT: Yeah, I mean, it seems super fun. Just out of curiosity, what's your most popular flavor?

LL:You know, it's a funny question, everybody asked that. It really depends on who you ask because they think that their flavor is the most popular flavor, but if we talk sales, our signature is the basic breakfast filled wonderful well balanced flavor and that kind of started the whole line and people have a nice relationship with that flavor. We have a flavor called Health Nut which is definitely a best seller which includes a lot of healthy superfoods, like hemp seeds and nuts and seeds and goji berries, but everyone has a favorite, blueberry crumb cake is always a top seller, Nuts for Nuts. Keep It Moving because of the fiber aspect, we have a toilet seat on the label and people really like that one. And my personal favorite is Tropical Surprise with a lot of coconut and macadamia nuts and tropical fruit.

MT: I love that you have one called Keep It Moving. I'm a Dietitian. So that one really speaks to me.
Wonderful, and we have psyllium husk and wheat bran in there as well, with figs, prunes, apricots so,  my clients swear by it.
So now I kind of want to switch gears and have you tell us about Farmers Markets To Go. So please tell us what it is, tell us when you decided to take matters into your own hands and develop it, because I think it's just such an amazing platform. And it's beautiful. And it's something that you should be super proud of.

LL:Thank you so much. We've been thinking about something like this some time because the local artisan community really can use some more exposure and various distribution opportunities outside of the farmer's markets, which are wonderful. And this is not to replace the farmer's market, which is, you know, our home. But we really did this definitely when COVID cancelled the farmer's markets and our concern with the local artists and community being able to survive this episode. And we would hate to have a situation where we are going back to our new normal at farmer's markets and our artisan and community is no longer around. So that was really a big motivation to start the site and being vendors ourselves being an artistan product. You know, we know some of the nuances between what works and what doesn't, you know, a lot of organizations or cities that are running farmers markets without having a real true understanding of what the vendor needs to be successful in a space like that. So we really put this together with the vendor being first and foremost in the orchestration of how we do this. And it's one of the reasons why we've cast a wider net geographically than most of the other online opportunities, because we really want to be able to appeal to a broad population, you know, vendors really need to sell in scale, you know, selling a couple of jars of jam is wonderful, but that's not going to keep these people in business. We really wanted to appeal to the Tri County area and we really also feel that there's a lot of areas in Tri County that are not being served by farmers markets and their access to these types of products. So we saw a need to do this Tri County. We are curating the vendors. There's a fairly stringent sign on that we you know are really taking the true artists and to have the community and putting them on the site and really trying to grow the site with a wonderful mix of products. So the farmers on the site are all farmers and they, you know, Jodie from Swank Farms, and I'm on my way up there right now. And you know, Harpke and Got Sprouts. I mean, these people grow their own products, and they're on the site, as well as the makers. So it's really to help the vendors but at the same time, my customers are going crazy trying to get these products, some of the products are in some shops, you know, some of them do have some wholesale distribution, but even with that, they probably don't have wholesale distribution and all the areas that they have been in markets like so you know, we have a jam company from Miami, who goes to the West Palm market, and right now anybody in West Palm would either have to order you know, directly from them or would have to get it on Farmers Markets To Go. It's really a way for the customers to access these wonderful products in one spot. For the most part, you can go to LauriesPantry.com And you can go to their site and order it one by one, but then you'd have to pay the delivery and the shipping of each individual product and have it all fragmented. This just puts it all under one roof.

MT: Right, and I think the way you structured it on this site is just beautiful, and it's super easy to navigate. The way Laurie did it is that she categorized the vendors by the farmer's markets that they typically attend. So if you're used to getting a particular product from a certain vendor at a certain farmer's market, you don't even need to know really the name of the vendor, you could just go on the site and search the farmer's market that you typically attend. And then all the vendors are listed right there. So it makes it super easy for the customers to identify what they need and they could find it really easily.

LL: Ya know we did that so the customer can find the products that they're looking for. So if they're a customer of a Pinecrest, and they're looking for specific products that can go to the Pinecrest market and look at the list of vendors to see which of the Pinecrest vendors we have on the site, but they also can see there's a wide variety of vendors that are not on the Pinecrest market.

MT: Yeah, so it increases the exposure of the vendors because I personally attend Pinecrest every week and so I'm only familiar with those vendors but then all these people all the way up Palm Beach or Del Rey can see those local businesses that are operating out of South Miami and I think that's like a huge benefit for these businesses.

LL: Exactly and we also are you know, we have started implementing a sampling program in the boxes. So if you order from Farmers Markets To Go not only are you getting the products that you have ordered, but you're also getting a box of samples from various vendors each week.

MT: That's amazing. That's such a good idea. Yeah because part of the joy of going into a physical farmer's market is sampling, and talking to the artisans and you can't really sample these days anymore so you don't really always know what you're getting so that's an amazing feature that you guys added. Also, I'm so happy to see my favorite chocolate, Eddie's Dark Chocolate is on here and I love him.

LL: Yeah Eddie just came on, yep he's on there.

MT: Yeah I stocked up for a while.

LL: We're adding quite a few new vendors in the vegan space. They're gonna be coming online. I mean, we have them, you know, obviously with the vegetables and sprouts and things like that, but we actually are getting some vegan prepared foods. They're gonna be coming on in the next couple of weeks.

MT: So I wanted you to kind of highlight some of the farms that you're sourcing a lot of your products from.

LL: Sure. we intend to enlist more farms. You know, we launched this site, really what theoretically is kind of the tail end of the Florida growing season. So you know as we get into next season we will be getting you know, more farms on board. We have some wonderful farms Swank specialty produce, and Jodie is going to be growing into July. They actually have been doing some new techniques that they are going to be able to have product into July this year, so we'll be carrying on and they are offering a small CSA box on this, and we're actually meeting this afternoon, she's going to be broadening some of her selections but again, we are starting to get to the end of the season. We have Gratitude Gardens that goes all summer with mushrooms, unbelievably beautiful mushrooms variety, Lion's Mane mushrooms, he has to make immunity shots, things like that. Babe Farms are open Loxahatchee we have Harpky Farm which is in Davie and they are microgreens all various microgreens. We're signing on to new farms in the beginning of June for local fruit, lychees, mangoes, and a lot of the beautiful fruits that come into season now, and then then when we get into next season, obviously, we'll be looking to add more local farmers, particularly adding more in the Redland and Homestead areas.

MT: Yeah and I think it's important that people know that fruit season is coming up and all these beautiful tropical fruits are finally coming into season because our growing season in Miami is coming to an end. So I want people to be aware of this and that we can still support our farmers by, you know, getting all these delicious fruits that are so flavorful and so many people that live in Miami have never tried these fruits before. So I just want to make sure our farmers can be supported all year round.

LL: Definitely, and we'll also spring  back to life when local growing season is back at the end of the year.

MT: Yeah, so I know the importance of eating locally sourced products just from a nutritional standpoint. But I kind of wanted you to share with us from a local business owners standpoint, why it's so important for our environment and our local economy and everything else to support local businesses and to eat and shop local?

LL: Well sure, I mean there's many different reasons, just to highlight a few, particularly as it lends to the economic vibrancy of the community.  Local businesses really make a  community stick together and these local products and the people that make these products are some of the most amazing hardworking people that we can have in our society. So supporting them and supporting that product. But you know, the products themselves are being made with so much love and so much care that the quality that goes into these products are just heads and shoulders above what you're going to find in a commercial environment because just from the financial equation, once a business becomes a certain size, it's really run on a profit model, which makes a lot of these products impossible to make under that scenario. I mean, the quality definitely suffers once The Animal takes over. So to shops shop products that are made by hand with love is just adds the value. And then of course, these people are not putting ingredients that you can't even spell in their product. The honey in my granola is raw local honey that come from the beekeepers down in the Keys, then every ingredient is hand picked and hand mixed that and really is similar in all these products. And so it's very important to, you know, to understand the difference because these products are not cheaper. People are like, "Oh, you know, I'm thinking I'm going to buy local and I'm going to get cheap" and that's not really what's going on here. But you are getting the quality that you cannot find in a regular supermarket.

MT: Right, and I think it's so important too, especially if you're someone that has just moved to a new city, because the farmer's markets just kind of showcase the personality and the culture of that city because not only are you meeting some amazing and passionate people, but you're also getting to experience the flavors of your city. And like from what you said, you use locally sourced ingredients in your products. And I know the local kombucha brewers also use local produce in their products as well. All of these vendors do, and so it just kind of connects you more to your city like yeah, I'm not from Miami. I moved here a few years ago, but once I started attending the farmer's markets, I've felt more connected to this city than ever. And so I just think that it's important, especially if you're new to a city to check them out and meet people. Everyone's always super nice and willing to talk about their products. So yeah, I think that's really important.

LL: Absolutely, you know, there's a diversity in product as well, you know, I mean, I've been seeing just a lot of the same on the shelves. Because it's safe for for these stores you know they say oh well this thing sells well so we're going to buy 12 more whether it be vinegar or you know balsamic, like obviously, once balsamic caught on, there's 20 different times about Sonic but there's many different varieties of product, that the stores are too shy and too afraid to purchase, where, on the local level, this is where you get some really interesting and unique selections and variety.

MT: Right, and that point is true across so many different areas because supermarkets are only going to sell what the people are familiar with, like they can't so mamey sapote or nispero or certain fruits like that because people aren't gonna buy them. But at the farmers market, you can access all these rare fruits that you can't get anywhere else.

LL: Ya know I mean I got one of Jodie's bags last week and she had black radishes. I've never even seen black radishes. And so I used them in a variety of different things. And then I'm like, What am I gonna do with the rest? Ok you know what? I'm gonna pickle them, so foods that I never even had an experience trying.

MT: Right and from a nutrition perspective to all of these fruits and vegetables that have different colors, or all these different pigments offer different antioxidants, which provide different health benefits. So, for example, most people would characterize carrots as being orange, and then they see me posting all these pictures of purple and yellow and white carrots and they're like, what are you eating? Like all these carrots offer different health benefits because of the pigments. The pigments are antioxidants. So just to my listeners, please just try different varieties of the fruits and vegetables that you're already eating just for that reason alone. And they also have slight variations in flavor too, which is really exciting. So yeah, for sure people are just really scared to taste things.

LL: I also have to add that even vegetables that you think you're buying the same, like I just had a zucchini that I got from Jodie. And my Italian boyfriend has been complaining for years and years and years that the vegetables don't taste like anything here. And sure enough, I had this zucchini and I think it's the first time I can say I've actually tasted a zucchini. It was completely full of flavor. Totally different.

MT: Yeah, I love zucchini. I've been buying them. Yeah, there's just so many things you could do with them. I'm, I'm Greek, so we use zucchini a lot in our cuisine.

LL: And eggplants too.

MT: Yeah and eggplants. Okay, so I kind of just wanted you to share some of the feedback you've been receiving since launching this platform like has it been embraced well in the community, what have people been saying about it and how have people been receiving it?

LL: It's been received overwhelming really well and we have a huge customer retention. We're getting customers that are ordering week to week to week to week, over half of our customers now are ordering every week. And I even just got a call from a customer who missed the Thursday midnight deadline and just called me today saying that she, you know, she's still slip in for tomorrow, so people are really loving it. And you know, we really just need to get the word out more that this is an opportunity. And I think particularly the customers of the markets will embrace this because they're able to find the products that they know and experience the ones that they don't, and it's really a unique way to have an extension of the market. Now, a couple of interesting things too is right now we're primarily delivery we do have one pickup location in Hallandale and that's just because that's where our warehouses but we are adding a pickup location in downtown Miami in a couple of weeks. We have a location and that's going to be great, particularly for the Brickell area it's going to be right on Coral Way there and we are close to finalizing a pickup location in West Palm.

MT: Wow, that's really going to be helpful for people. I know you've already mentioned that you've been thinking about creating a model like this for a while. But is this something that you predict will carry on post COVID era?

LL: Oh, absolutely. Again, kind of the catalyst for launching it during COVID was there primarily because when the markets canceled, I even had the time to do it. But the need for it extends way beyond COVID because like I said, you know, much of South Florida is really just not have any exposure or much exposure to some of these markets. And even if they do, they might not have exposure to a lot of these vendors that we have on the site from all over South Florida.

MT: Yeah. And I know some people just can't get to the farmer's market, you know, especially on the weekends. So I think this platform is really important because everyone's schedules are crazy and some people just can't get out of the house.

LL: And weather, you know, we have a weather state here. So for a variety of reasons people can either have to miss the market or the vendor misses the market. So this definitely, again, is not intended to replace the market because of the community and everything that we get out of a farmer's market over and above what we're offering here, but then also provides convenience. It provides the option for pickup and delivery and a very broad selection of vendors and for us, yeah, we are definitely going to be growing and continuing.

MT: I love that. Okay, and how and when can people order? Tell us how that whole process works.

LL: Sure, the website is functional 24/7, so people can go on Thursday at midnight in order to get the pickup or deliveries on that following Saturday. No once midnight Thursday passes, the orders go in for the following week. And that's because, again, these are these are not products that are on a shelf and fulfilled, these are all handmade you know the vendors need that day and we also have to get all the products together and fulfilled, so we need Friday to do that.

MT: How can people get those announcements? Just by checking your website? How will we find out about those?

LL: We will definitely have it on the website. We have a Facebook Farmer's Markets To Go Facebook page we also are on Instagram, Farmer's Markets To Go and try to you know do more really just getting word out. When we make the announcement, we will send out a press release. But hopefully if people can check back with the website and get on social media, you'll hear about it right away.

MT: Okay, good. And I'll share it on my social media for my followers as well.

LL: Thank you so much.

MT: No problem. Okay, Laurie. Well, thank you so, so much for time. I can't wait to get this out there spread the word about this platform that just to make everyone's life a little easier and a little safer and a little healthier. So I thank you for that.

LL: That's right.

MT: Okay, well, thank you so much, and I'll talk to you soon.

LL: Thank you. Bye now.