New Seasons Market is making FoodHub membership an easy catch for Northwest fishers angling for more wholesale and restaurant buyers. Starting today, the Portland-area grocery store will underwrite 50 percent off the $100 annual fee for food producers in Foodhub, the new online marketplace and directory that helps regional food buyers and sellers find each other, connect and do business.

New Seasons is also the first retail grocer to offer underwriting support and the first organization to include fishers, ranchers, and dairies in its outreach efforts on behalf of FoodHub. Current and past FoodHub membership discounts have been designed primarily to encourage enrollment of produce growers and buyers. New Seasons Market joins a long list of businesses that are encouraging the regional agriculture community to use FoodHub to expand their network and increase food trade in the Pacific Northwest.

“New Seasons Market has always worked to find and source food from local farmers, fishers and ranchers who are good stewards of the land and oceans,” said Lisa Sedlar, president of New Seasons Market. “We see FoodHub as a smart app that can help us further deliver on that commitment and streamline the process. For example, having treasures like wild caught Bristol Bay salmon available to our buyers with a few clicks on FoodHub ensures that we do our part to support the preservation of this natural salmon habitat and a livelihood for Alaskan fishers. We’re looking forward to helping all sorts of regional food producers register in FoodHub.”

FoodHub, a social venture initiative of the nonprofit Ecotrust, is the only network of its kind that accommodates food producers and food buyers of every scale and production type across such a significant geographic range.

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About Ecotrust’s Food & Farms Program
FoodHub is an Ecotrust project made possible by the generous support and contributions of many. Ecotrust’s mission is to inspire fresh thinking that creates social equity, economic opportunity, and environmental well being. With regard to our Food & Farms program, we improve public understanding of agriculture and the challenges it faces and increase the market share of regionally grown, processed, and manufactured foods. Whether by introducing a farmer to a chef or a food processor to an institutional buyer, Ecotrust is a trusted “benevolent broker” that has been making connections between food buyers and sellers in the Pacific Northwest for a decade. Learn more at ecotrust.org.