Katie Herring is sales and marketing manager for Cultivate

AT Cultivate we are constantly working towards our goal of increasing the amount of locally-grown food consumed in Oxford.

This is through helping new growers find a route to market, supplying local restaurants with locally-grown food or selling as much local produce as we can.

This week marks another important step which will help us get closer to achieving our goal because we have now launched a new Click and Collect and Delivery service.

The new service has been made possible by the Open Food Network (OFN), an open source platform started in Australia.

Its main aim is to develop applications and platforms for fair and sustainable food systems and offers producers and food hubs like Cultivate an easy and free way to create an online service and get more local produce to more local people.

Cultivate is one of the first food hubs to use OFN in Oxfordshire and we’re hoping we’ll be able to lead the way for others to follow in our footsteps.

We can now offer lovers of local, ethical and delicious food the ability to order produce online for collection at any of Cultivate’s existing weekly stops, meaning they will gain first access to new weekly stock and will be able to jump the queues at our stops and simply pick up their bag of produce on their selected day.

We are also offering a small delivery service to some of the villages surrounding Oxford through a partnership with the S. Gill Deliveries and the L.O.V.E project.

If the new system takes off we’re hoping to offer more collection and delivery points around the county to increase access to all the fantastic produce we have growing in Oxfordshire.

If you’re interested in finding out more our team is taking our trusty VegVan to the Oxford’s Big Green day out this Saturday on Broad street and will be happy to tell you more. Alternatively our shop is open for orders Monday-Wednesday for collections Thursday-Friday so you can simply log on to bit.ly/CultivateClickCollect and try it for yourself.