What is Relay’s mission and why is it important? Our mission is to make eating quality, healthy and sustainable food simple. This mission really cuts to the heart of key issues we face as a community and as individuals. Even though we’re all concerned by news stories about rising obesity rates, the loss of local jobs and environmental degradation, busy careers and other obligations can make it difficult to act on our concerns. At Relay, we’re trying to make it easier to shop according your conscience by making it more convenient to buy fresh, nutritious food from local, sustainable farmers than imported produce from big-box stores. What cities is Relay in and when was it started? We served our first customer in Charlottesville in 2009 and expanded our operations to Richmond in the summer of 2010. Who does it serve? Relay is for everyone with an interest in simplifying their shopping and supporting the local food system. Our customers are young professionals, busy families, retirees and even college students. Among many others, we serve local foodies, athletes, vegans, teachers, gluten-free families, local businesses, cooking professionals and new mothers. Why did you start Relay? I started Relay because I’d been to the grocery store one too many times. My family lived in Charlottesville, and I’d had exposure to the great local food culture in this part of Virginia, but wondered how to incorporate it into our lives with three children (now four!) keeping us on our toes. My background is in computer programming and engineering, so with the help of mentors at University of Virginia’s Darden Business School, I took the lessons of online grocers that failed in the early 2000s, put together an easy-to-use website and tried to make the whole world of local foods a little easier for busy families like my own. The rest is history.
What other companies in our region — the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast — have similar business models? While humility is usually my aim, I’d say that no one else in the area is doing what we’re hoping to do at Relay. That’s not to say that there isn’t amazing work going on in this area. There are CSAs with specific farms that operate on a much smaller scale, there are farm clubs and buying clubs that require an up-front buy-in and have a limited, exclusively local inventory, there are storefronts that sell great local food. The difference is that Relay has the potential to replace the need for trips to the grocery store altogether. We’re a onestop shop that drives sales to local vendors but also provides the convenience and selection of more than 35,000 items. Services in bigger cities, like New York’s FreshDirect, are based on very high population density and probably wouldn’t work as well in mid-size cities like Richmond or towns like Charlottesville. What are your plans for Relay in the near future and further down the road? Here at Relay, we dream big. In the near future, we’ll continue to get the word out about what we’re doing and support our local vendors. This spring, we’ve unrolled a few new projects that have the potential to do great things for local vendors. Our Tasting Box is helping Charlottesvillians and Richmonders get to know our local producers by providing a monthly selection of the best-of-the-best. Our Virginia’s Bounty Basket is a selection of the best, freshest local produce picked from our vendors’ fields. We’ll offer that throughout the growing season as another way for our customers to learn more about seasonal produce. We also just launched Richmond’s first local baby food maker, Cara’s Kitchen, and I’m hoping that will be a great resource for moms who shop Relay. Where are you looking to expand in our region? This one is under wraps for now, but we’ll let you know as soon as the news goes public!
2012 August BLUE RIDGE 18, 2012
Lake Junaluska, NC BREAKAWAY August 18, 2012
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The Trout, a Metric Century
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www. pacifica.edu June 2012
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