Co-founder Justin Walsh said the hub was a grassroots community initiative and although still in its early days, it was developing a strong customer base.

The Food Hub generally starts taking orders for its locally produced organic veggie boxes at the beginning of December, with the scheme running until about August, depending on the season. 

“Our core business is local fruit and veg,” Mr Walsh said. “But we are looking for ways to support other farmers who operate in an ecologically regenerative way. It makes it more of a convergence of different farms coming together so people can engage with local food in a broader sense of the whole system.”

With a harvest to order philosophy, farmers deliver their produce to the hub once a week before the produce is packed into boxes for customers to collect. 

Co-founder Glenda Holmes said the initiative allowed customers to meet the farmer or producer who they were purchasing their food off.

“That relationship is important so you know where your food comes from. Rather than just buying it from a supermarket, you are paying a fair dollar for all the hard work that the farmers do. It is bypassing the monopolies and profit making of huge businesses.”

Mr Walsh said this was similar to the model of Farmers Markets, but the Food Hub was about making connections with producers and making produce available where it otherwise wouldn’t be.

“It is scalable and it doesn’t require the farmer to give up a whole day,” he said.

The hub hosts events throughout the year, like the Cookers, Growers and Eaters Dinner to improve this interaction.

“We find these are the main opportunities for customers to interact with farmers in a social context, rather than in a transactional interaction.”

He said other draw cards were the freshness of the produce and a lack of packaging.

“We are trying to build an economy of scale here to make it viable for local producers to bring their produce. We are trying to create a market for new, small farmers to help them streamline the sale process and share the risk as broadly as possible,” he said. “The food system is really broken – we are trying to bypass the whole system of imported, chemical-sprayed produce to get back to basics and build resilience and local strength.”

He said if more customers got on board, farmers could diversify and the Hub would have scope to offer produce throughout the year.

Orders can be made through the website.