A strategy for selling local
Catskill Harvest Market betting on the lure of food grown close to home
LIBERTY, NY — The shelves are lined with locally produced food: produce from Gorzyinsky’s farm in Cochecton; chicken from Snowdance Farm in Livingston Manor, and beef from Shea Farm in Long Eddy. There’s locally produced cheese, honey, plants, flowers and other products from more than 16 producers in Sullivan County and the greater region, including Ulster County and Wayne County in Pennsylvania.
Will Foster, one of the founders of the enterprise called Catskill Harvest Market, who also owns a landscaping business, said this is how it started. Last summer, he opened a small retail operation selling perennial plants in White Sulphur Springs. He said, “July rolled around and I’m paying someone to sit there selling perennials-and no sales. So I thought, gee, if we had corn and tomatoes, we could at least be selling those.”
From there Foster teamed up with business partner Dan Duttinger and some investors, and started planning. The county kicked in a $75,000 low-interest loan from the Sullivan County Agriculture Revolving Loan Fund because of the benefit the operation provides to local farmers. The store, which is located on Route 52 just across from the town barn in Liberty, opened on Labor Day weekend.
Not everything in the store is local, because as is pointed out on the store’s website, www.catskillharvestmarket.com, “No one, as of yet, has figured out how to grow a good olive in the Catskills.” The store also features a line of gourmet items. Moreover, it will be open seven days a week all year long, so in the winter, produce will be imported from outside the area. But the main focus is local products.
Foster said he and his partners are working with farmers to try to come up with ways to keep the products affordable. One development that would be welcomed by everyone connected to the endeavor is the proposed agricultural park in the Village of Liberty, which has been in the planning stages for several years. Foster said that as the situation stands now, a farmer has to make a three- or four-hour-round-trip drive to have an animal processed. Considering the cost of the farmer’s time and the cost of fuel, the trip adds a substantial increase to the cost of locally grown meat.
The owners of Catskill Harvest Market are not counting on grocery products as their only source of revenue. They’re offering breakfasts and lunches as well, with dishes made from the local produce sold in the store. There is also a garden center outside the store, and Foster maintains his landscaping services business, which currently sells some 15,000 perennial plants per year, and where Foster has employed four full-time workers for the past four years.
The landscaping employees did much of the construction work on the new store, helping to keep costs lower than would have been the case with an outside contractor. Still, the project represents a substantial investment and risk in an area that is sometimes challenging to new businesses.
Foster said he is pleased, so far, with the traffic in the store but he recognizes the risk involved in the venture. As with many area businesses, winter will likely present the biggest challenge. He said he’s hoping to build a “decent breakfast and lunch business to help us get to April." LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE | 
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