The last thing anyone wants to come home to after a long day at work is an empty pantry. Scratch that. The last thing anyone wants to come home to is a pantry littered with random pastas, a can of green beans, and a bag of marshmallows. Dinner won’t make itself, and you certainly won’t either with ingredients like that, but the grocery store is full of unhappy people doing the same exact thing you are.

Thanks to a new business run by three Cal Poly grads, your health and time do not need to be compromised by a busy schedule or a poor variety of grocery store purchases you bought when you were hungry.

Farmgram is a new online health food forum for people of SLO County, making buying local, farm-fresh groceries easy. And they deliver.

“We all kind of had a shared interest in food,” Farmgram co-owner Tyler Thomas said. Thomas, along with co-owners Adrian Godby and Tessa Salzman, started Farmgram as a result of a Cal Poly senior project promoting living a healthy, local lifestyle. After graduating in 2013, the three decided to see where it could take them.

“It ended up being more of a realistic business venture for all of us,” Thomas said.

The website has everything organized by category including vegetables, fruits, and dairy. Shoppers have a week to build a customizable shopping cart filled with the fresh, handpicked produce and local treats from places like Branch Mill Organic Farm in Arroyo Grande and Bliss Café in downtown SLO. Orders made by 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning are filled Friday between 3 and 6 p.m. right to your front door.

Farmgram was created with the intention of bringing people from the community together and not only to provide knowledge of what they are eating and where it’s coming from, but also who it’s coming from.

“People are very used to going to the grocery store, or going wherever is cheapest,” Thomas said. “But if you take the time to think about what we have available, there’s such an abundance, and a lot of times this food tastes better because it is local and grown by people you can actually meet.”

As the owners and sole operators of Farmgram, Godby, Salzman, and Thomas want to provide a service that brings a seasonal and unique selection to shoppers that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

“We work with these people who have specialty goods that you can’t normally find at farmers markets,” Salzman said.

Farmgram, only up and operating since January, has roughly 30 orders a week and counting. As the business grows, the online service hopes to add to their selection of meal kits, which provide customers with full recipes and ingredients. Farmgram also provides a Harvest Box for $25.

The delivery fee for the online service is $5 or you can pick up your order at one of their pickup locations in SLO, Los Osos, or Morro Bay for free. A minimum order of $25 is required and must be in by Wednesday at 10 a.m. to get your order that week. Visit farmgram.me to get started.

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