The Middle Mile: The Financial Realities of Local Produce Distribution

Erin: 

“We are really trying heavily to focus on seasonal eating and making sure that our consumers have a list of products from local farmers that is as easy for them to use as a big broadline distributor”

Margaret:

“We know that we have a lot of folks who are living paycheck to paycheck and really struggling, and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have access to the highest quality food that's available.”

John:

“We've seen [local produce] really blossom into something that people not only recognize, but are asking for. They’re not settling for, ‘I'll just take an apple off the shelf.’ I want a specific South Carolina grown product.”

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A recap of the South Carolina Food Systems Network's Summer Member Meeting

Food prices are on everyone's mind these days — but what actually happens between the farm and your plate is a lot more complicated than most of us realize. At our summer member meeting, we brought together three experts working on exactly that "middle mile": Erin Bradley of Fresh List, Margaret Burn of the Lowcountry Food Bank, and John Ellis of Senn Brothers Produce. Together they broke down the financial realities of getting South Carolina-grown food into restaurants, grocery stores, schools, and food pantries across the state.

This meeting kicked off the second installment of our 2026 member meeting series on the local food economy. In the spring, two Orangeburg County produce farmers spoke about what it takes to grow for local markets. This summer's focus was distribution. This fall, we'll turn to the retail side of the equation.

Meet the Panelists

• Erin Bradley, Freshlist (Charlotte, NC) — a food hub distributing source-identified produce from North and South Carolina farmers, primarily to restaurants and food service customers, with a growing food-access and "food as medicine" program.

• Margaret Burn, Lowcountry Food Bank (Charleston, SC) — the Feeding America affiliate serving 10 coastal counties, whose Growing Food Locally program has intentionally sourced local produce for neighbors facing food insecurity since 2006.

• John Ellis, Senn Brothers Produce (Columbia, SC) — a produce distributor that has spent years building out a "South Carolina Grown" branding and marketing program in partnership with the SC Department of Agriculture's Certified SC initiative.

Who's Buying Local, and Why

All three panelists described real, growing demand for local product — but from very different corners of the market.

For Senn Brothers, that growth has come from retail and school accounts. John described working closely with schools to smooth out the mismatch between the academic calendar and harvest seasons, so farmers can plant with confidence that there's a buyer waiting. On the retail side, he credited clear "SC Grown" labeling — and genuine transparency about where food actually comes from — with driving real consumer demand.

Freshlist's customer base skews toward restaurants in the fast-growing Charlotte market, including some unexpected new accounts: the Carolina Panthers' dietary staff and the Charlotte Hornets. Erin noted that much of the demand comes from chefs relocating to Charlotte from other cities who are actively seeking out local sourcing options before they even open their doors. A lot of the work, she said, is ongoing education — helping customers understand what's actually in season and adjusting menus in real time as crops change week to week.

The Lowcountry Food Bank serves a wide range of neighbors, from consistent users to people leaning on food assistance occasionally to get through a tough stretch. Margaret shared a story from one of their longtime farm partners on St. Helena Island: neighbors who received his squash through a food bank distribution came back the following week to buy more of it directly from his farm stand — a small but powerful example of local food access building demand for local farms.

Does "Local" Cost More?

Not necessarily — but pricing local products is genuinely complicated, and each distributor manages it differently.

John explained that Senn Brothers' prices are driven by daily market shifts due to weather, field conditions, and supply — prices can shift dramatically within a week as a crop comes in or dries up. When local prices badly outpace cheaper imported alternatives (his example: local versus Peruvian asparagus), it becomes hard for restaurants to justify the gap. But the dynamic can also work in farmers' favor: this year, when the usual price advantage for imported asparagus flipped, Senn Brothers was able to pay local farmers the higher market rate instead of the usual discounted one.

Freshlist operates on more of a harvest-to-order model — orders go out to customers, get consolidated and sent to farmers, and only what's already sold gets picked up. That approach helps keep margins workable and cuts down on food waste. Erin noted that on a number of items — especially in summer— Fresh List's prices are now roughly on par with big broadline distributors.

At the Lowcountry Food Bank, local produce is provided to partner agencies and neighbors entirely free of markup or fees; the food bank absorbs the full cost, funded largely through fundraising. Produce made up 54% of everything the food bank distributed in May of this year.

The Role of Public Funding

This was one of the liveliest parts of the conversation. All three panelists pointed to the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program — since discontinued at the federal level — as proof that public investment can genuinely build a stronger local food economy, even as its loss disrupted momentum many communities were just starting to build.

John shared that after LFPA funding ended, South Carolina's state legislature stepped in with a million dollars to help sustain the local-food-to-schools pipeline that had been built. He argued that funding needs to flow through organizations that already have direct farmer relationships and trust — not scattered piecemeal — so farmers can plant with real confidence there's a buyer on the other end.

Erin spoke to the advocacy side, describing her own experience becoming what she called a "junior lobbyist" and encouraging others in the network to get involved. She pointed to North Carolina's success building state-level support for local food procurement as an example of what sustained, coordinated advocacy can accomplish — and noted that farm and food advocacy tends to enjoy rare bipartisan goodwill worth capitalizing on.

Margaret echoed the appeal for more members to raise their voices, noting that the case for LFPA-style state and local funding was strong enough that some communities are still trying to hold onto the momentum it built, even without renewed funding.

Audience Q&A

Attendees raised a few sharp questions in the final minutes:

Why would SC farmers need more price support? John’s take: broad price supports tend to get undercut by larger producers who can simply drop prices further. He'd rather see infrastructure that guarantees farmers a buyer for expanded acreage — through programs like farm-to-school — so they can grow with confidence instead of taking on risk. He also floated a bigger-picture goal: building South Carolina into enough of an export state that out-of-state buyers stop here instead of continuing on to Florida.

Are there local supply gaps — crops where demand outpaces supply? John encouraged farmers to study their local grocery store's produce section as a real-time signal of consumer demand, since retail buying patterns ultimately drive what the whole industry stocks.

Members in the chat also flagged several resources worth checking out: the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's member advocacy program, Food is Medicine South Carolina's push for public health dollars to cover local food, and the SCALES Farm to School program's SC-only purchasing model.

Thank You

A big thanks to Erin Bradley, Margaret Burn, and John Ellis for sharing their time and expertise, and to everyone who joined the call. We'll be back this fall to dig into the retail side of the local food economy.