CHOPLOCAL
Jared Achen and Katie Olthoff
ChopLocal is an online marketplace where farmers, butcher shops, lockers and small meat brands can list and sell their products in their own micro stores. Products, which range from beef to cheese and bison to seafood, can be purchased for pickup or delivery. ChopLocal was founded in 2020 by Iowa farmers Jared Achen and Katie Olthoff. Since then, ChopLocal has worked with many more Iowa producers.
ChopLocal’s Choose Iowa grant project will increase producer and consumer access to the online meat marketplace. This will be achieved through information gathering, software development and implementation of technology. ChopLocal will conduct a vendor needs assessment to determine which software will be most beneficial to expand its customers, sales and markets. Additionally, a point-of-sale integration project will allow ChopLocal vendors to easily enter the marketplace, sync their inventory among their multiple sales channels and increase repeat sales through customer management.
Achen and Olthoff expect the project will increase the producers and vendors it serves, total sales completed through the ChopLocal platform, and the average sales per month for each individual vendor. This project will support ChopLocal’s mission to help farmers and small businesses sell more meat and increase their margins.