Good food should stay close to home.
BuyFoodTogether started with a simple frustration: communities full of great local food, and a system that makes it harder and harder for the people who grow, bake, and sell it to get by.
Groceries cost more, and the money flows the wrong way.
Across Canada, grocery bills keep climbing while paycheques don’t. A handful of big grocery chains capture most of the profit — while the farmers and producers who actually grow the food see precious little of it.
Small shops and producers are being pushed out.
Independent grocers, bakeries, and farms are up against a scale they can’t match. Margins thin, shelves get harder to stock, and another local business closes its doors — taking a piece of the community with it.
Neighbours were already helping neighbours.
We watched a boutique shop bring in loaves from a bakery down the street — gathering orders first, buying at a wholesale price, adding a fair markup, and stocking the shelf knowing every loaf was already sold. Local businesses lifting each other up. That was the whole idea.
The hard part was trust.
A handful of ‘I’m in!’ comments isn’t the same as people who’ll actually show up and pay — and on the buyer’s side, why hand money to a stranger’s post and just hope it turns up? Buying together only works if both sides can count on each other. The difference is commitment you can see: orders are placed and paid up front, the platform holds the funds, and on goal-based buys you’re only charged if enough people commit — no guesswork, no chasing, no cash in a DM.
So we built a way to buy together.
BuyFoodTogether lets anyone — a shop, a producer, or a group of neighbours — pool demand and buy local food directly. More of every dollar stays with the people who made it, and buyers get fair prices on food from their own community.