Kari Moore - FarmShare Ohio
Nominator: Jill Ziegler, Forest City Enterprises
How has the nominee implemented sustainable business practices in his or her business or organization and what are the triple bottom line benefits (people, planet, prosperity) of the nominee's work?
Begun as a pilot program with Forest City employees in Tower City in 2008, in three short years, Kari Moore has expanded her “farm to firm” local produce delivery service to reach other Tower City tenants and downtown businesses and Independence and Cleveland Heights delivery locations. FarmShare has been the perfect merger of local food and local business sustainability. Envisioned as a subscription service that connects busy professionals with local produce delivered to their office, FarmShare has been a huge success, subscriptions sold out within a day in the pilot year and risen each subsequent year. Triple bottom line: People: Busy office workers often don’t have time to shop at farmer’s markets due to their schedules. Providing them with a convenient pick up for local, fresh, sustainable produce benefits both farmers and the employees who subscribe. Planet: By now, everyone knows that eating local has huge benefits for the environment through reduced shipping miles and associated pollution. Prosperity: Securing outlets for farmers to sell their goods keeps them in business and keeps our food dollars in northeast Ohio, rather than thousands of miles away.
How does the nominee actively participate in the sustainability community? How do they collaborate and share their knowledge with others?
Kari is very active in the sustainability community and happily and generously shares her knowledge with others. She is always chatting with her subscribers, sharing tips on produce and touting the benefits of local food. She heads up Slow Food Northern Ohio and serves on the Board of Cleveland Independents, a group of 80 locally owned and operated restaurants.
How has the nominee inspired you to implement sustainable business practices? What is your relationship with the nominee: supervisor, employee, peer, father, friend or other.
The nominee and I are business partners, that is, we use her service at our property. Kari is inspiring in her enthusiasm and passion for connecting people with local produce. She understands the environmental benefits, the local economic benefits and the gastronomic benefits! As they pick up their weekly shares, Kari always takes time to speak with FarmShare subscribers to explain the provenance of their produce and learn about recipes they are making at home. Kari has inspired countless downtown employees and many others to eat locally and think deeply about their food purchasing and cooking habits. The success of FarmShare at Forest City blazed a trail for related activities, including an onsite rooftop vegetable garden and a composting program.
How can someone else translate the success of the nominee? Is the work of the nominee an example or model that others can follow?
The huge success of FarmShare at Tower City and beyond is an excellent model. Kari started by finding a partner in a large company, Forest City, willing to be a partner in a pilot program. Through this partnership, Kari was able to leverage Forest City’s existing resources (e.g., internal marketing and communication, piloting payroll deduction) to get FarmShare off the ground. Much was learned that first year, and each year since has been more successful than the first. The pilot program inspired numerous other companies to inquire about bringing FarmShare to their businesses, and choosing Forest City as her initial partner gave Kari a built-in mechanism to reach its tenants’ 9,000 workers, that is, potential subscribers.
