Fuge Sausage, Drift Food Truck and Eatery, and Not Your Babas have partnered to create a new way for charities to raise funds.
Local Eats Fundraising aims to streamline the process for groups looking to raise money by equipping them to sell locally made items like sauces, perogies, or sausage to their friends and family. Instead of having to deal with bulk orders of food and hefty markups, fundraisers sell standard-size packs of food at retail prices and get 25% of the proceeds.
"A lot of food-based fundraisers, you're buying like a case of 48, when you buy something, and so you have to buy a huge amount, which makes it a little more difficult," said Gavin Fedorak, co-owner of Fuge Sausage. "So our whole goal with this was to sell standard retail products in standard retail pack sizes."
The idea for the venture began when one of the other partners in the initiative approached Fedorak for help with a school fundraiser. Positive feedback from the school made them consider keeping the partnership going.
Local Eats Fundraising also has a community partner program that works with larger charity organizations within the city. Consumers can buy food through Local Eats and 25% of the order will go to a selected charity. Previous community partners include the Mill Woods Seniors Association and Win4Skin, which raises money for cancer research.
While they don't have large-scale plans for it, Fedorak hopes to establish Local Eats Fundraising as a reliable partner for charities in the Edmonton area.
"Ideally we'd like to build it into a well-known entity in the Edmonton region," he told Taproot. "For us, this is 'Let's build a locally focused vehicle that works with a bunch of teams and organizations and groups and charities to raise money every year.'"