GrowNYC is a New York City environmental nonprofit that focuses on food access. Founded in 1970, a key part of the organization’s mission is to make food from local farms available to every neighborhood in the city. It operates three primary food access programs. Greenmarkets are open-air producer-only farmers markets. Farmstands are micro farmers markets featuring a wide variety of locally-grown foods that pop up in neighborhoods. GrowNYC Wholesale is a nonprofit food distribution program that delivers to restaurants, grocery stores, food banks, and other commercial accounts (and provides the food for Farmstands).

GrowNYC’s newest venture is a 60,000-square-foot food hub — the largest in North America — that opened in June 2025. The project took eight years to complete and marks a substantial step forward in GrowNYC’s work to bring more local food to all New Yorkers.

The other game-changing move GrowNYC has made in the past year is utilizing Local Food Marketplace (LFM) as its ecommerce system. The organization tried to implement similar software twice in the past but had to rescind the projects for various reasons.

LFM, on the other hand, has been a smashing success for GrowNYC. In fact, Assistant Director of Wholesale Matthew Scalfani didn’t hesitate to say that choosing LFM’s powerful food hub software is “the best operational decision we’ve ever made.”

One reason Matthew so enthusiastically praises LFM is that it’s making GrowNYC’s operations much more efficient. He estimates the amount of time salespeople spend on administrative tasks has been cut by half. All of that time goes back into prospecting for customers, servicing accounts, and growing sales.

We used to have a full-time salesperson who manually entered orders that came in through email. That person is now able to focus fully on sales and building a new customer base.”

—Matthew Scalfani, GrowNYC 

Here are some of the many other features Matthew and the GrowNYC team appreciate about LFM.

A Professional and Transparent Storefront

Before LFM, GrowNYC’s customers had to contact a salesperson to place their order. Now, customers can shop for themselves on a professional storefront set up specifically for GrowNYC with the company’s branding. Because the storefront gets updated in real time, customers don’t have to worry about placing an order and finding out later that a product is out of stock — which was a problem when GrowNYC maintained its entire inventory on a spreadsheet.

“It’s made a huge impact on our customers to have transparency on what they’re ordering,” Matthew said. Many of them receive grants that require them to look for attributes such as Certified Organic. These attributes show up on every product card on the LFM storefront, and it’s easy to filter products by attribute — as well as product type and producer. Farmers can upload copies of their certifications directly into LFM, which makes it easy for GrowNYC to check them if needed.

Providing our customers with a way to order on their own and manage their own orders has been a monumental change for us, especially since we have such a huge variety of customers.”

—Matthew Scalfani, GrowNYC 

An Out-of-the-Box Solution

When GrowNYC started looking at ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, it found that most require extensive consulting and labor fees to build a customized system. “The main thing that led us to LFM was the fact that it’s an out-of-the-box solution,” said Matthew. LFM has been serving food hubs and farms for nearly two decades and has many of the specialized features they need to sell local food.

For example, “At the time we onboarded, we were essentially harvest-to-order,” said Matthew. “Our only inventory was inventory purchased in excess to meet farmer minimums. LFM had a harvest-to-order model, where most ERP models did not.

“No platform could check every box we need, but LFM has a team of people who were willing to listen to our needs,” Matthew continued. GrowNYC’s dedicated onboarding manager helped the team find workarounds when LFM didn’t have a specific solution they were looking for. GrowNYC’s ideas for new features were also passed along to the LFM team for consideration, with some set for implementation later this year.

LFM was the most affordable platform we explored. That really made a big difference for us. You can tell by the pricing model that this is a platform that’s made to help food hubs and producers be successful as opposed to a software that’s designed to just make a profit.”

—Matthew Scalfani, GrowNYC 

Better Options for Managing Logistics

Logistics are a major headache for anyone doing distribution in New York City. “Our biggest challenge is being able to predict what’s going to happen on any given day,” said Matthew. “Our customers needs and the number of trucks and drivers we have don’t change on a daily basis,” even if the environment around them is ever evolving.

LFM can’t prevent major events or accidents from snarling traffic, but the software is making things easier for Matthew and his team. “The distribution features in LFM connect to Cigo, our distribution partner, and that’s helped us provide more real-time information on what’s happening with our deliveries,” he said. If deliveries are running late, he can use automation commnication features in LFM to email updates to all affected customers with just a few clicks.

Pack Orders Keeps Everyone on the Same Page

“LFM’s Pack Orders page is my favorite because it’s easy for me to see which producers have what, where our food is going, and get an overview of what’s happening in the warehouse,” Matthew said. “It funnels into the workflow of the warehouse team and the routing team. For all of us to be seeing the same information is really helpful.”

The Inventory Location feature really helps guide our warehouse team. Now, they know exactly where a product is as opposed to guessing where the kale is when all the bushels look identical.”

—Matthew Scalfani, GrowNYC 

Dozens of Reports

LFM has dozens of reports that organizations can use for planning, informing decisionmaking, improving customer service, and quickly gathering information for grant reporting.

“One feature our team really uses is the Stock Status report,” Matthew said. “It allows us to see what our sales look like over the course of a week. We’ve been able to use it at times to see if we can fulfill a last-minute order and get a producer to increase their delivery to us.”

Previously, GrowNYC didn’t have a good system for tracking shrink. LFM has reports that not only monitor shrink, but allow them to record why a product was removed from inventory (spoilage, delivered to the wrong location, etc.). Matthew can pull reports on a regular basis to see the impacts of shrink.

“As a nonprofit, we get grants and have to supply a lot of data to justify what we’ve done and what we’d like to do,” he added. “The ability to generate those reports exactly when and how we need them is really important for us.”

A Few Words of Advice from GrowNYC

Matthew advises other food hubs looking for new software to give themselves twice as long as they think they’ll need for implementation.

“The biggest thing we learned in this process is know your team and how adaptable they’re going to be to change,” said Matthew. “There were challenges in the adoption rate for our team and some people not wanting to change systems. Be mindful of the amount of time you need to give your team to adapt and be prepared to spend a lot of time helping them.”

Matthew, of course, advises food hubs looking for software solutions to give LFM serious consideration. “Look for a platform and a company that’s interested in growing with you,” he said. LFM is constantly adapting and adding new features so we can improve our services for food hubs. We will be a true partner for you, just as we’re a true partner for GrowNYC.

Are you interested in learning how Local Food Marketplace can help your food hub grow and increase efficiency? Schedule a one-on-one demo with our team today!