Kootenay Farm-to-Folk customers follow the Facebook feed to be able to get fresh-picked produce as soon as it comes in.
CRANBROOK, B.C. — He enters the store with a bouquet of flowers in hand.
His wife is there, but the flowers are not for her. They’re for store clerk Laura Young.
“She treats me like royalty, so she deserves them,” says Ed Saffin as he sings the praises of the staff at Kootenay Farm-to-Folk, an organic food store featuring fresh local products.
“There’s just no comparison (to bigger grocery stores) because this is like the old country stores where you were treated like family.”
Rhianna Embury started the local organic grocery service in her Cranbrook home in 2017 after her family switched diets away from anything processed to strictly organic meals. The mother of four boys found herself struggling to access the diet her second youngest son required.
“Our son was in Vancouver for six months being treated for an eating disorder and when we got home, we ended up driving all over the place to try to get food straight from farmers,” says Embury, who was forced to give up her job as an educational assistant when her son became ill.
After connecting with a variety of farmers throughout the East Kootenay region to get organic meat, dairy, produce and grains, she decided to make it easier for all area shoppers to access local food as well.
The initial Farm-to-Folk service was an online one, with customers ordering food boxes of various sizes and varieties priced at $40 to $100. Embury sourced everyday products, from steak and eggs to potatoes and apples. During the first year of operation, Embury met customers in a parking lot to hand-off her treasure chests of local goods that had been gathered by her and her husband, Jessy, and put together with the help of their four sons.
Within six months, demand was so great for the Farm-to-Folk boxes that it was becoming impossible to operate out of the family home.
Read Also
Manitoba horticulture hits the books
The 2025 Horticulture School in Brandon covered tools to extend Manitoba’s vegetable and fruit growing season, horticulture crop agronomy and new research like peat sustainability
“At one point I had 1,000 pounds of plums in my living room,” recalls Embury. “That’s when I thought, ‘oh my gosh this is crazy.’”
The next step was the rental of a 350-sq. foot warehouse, which eventually led to the opening of a downtown Cranbrook storefront in the spring of 2018. As the customer base grew, so did the number of farmers selling an ever-widening selection of products.
Currently, Kootenay Farm-to-Folk works with more than 80 local farms and producers.
“We’ve given people a chance to realize how much the Kootenay area actually has. People come in here and say, ‘holy cow’ because they didn’t realize how many producers are in the area,” says Embury, pointing out products like organic chocolate, coffee barbecue sauce, wild-herb tea, organic flours, cheese-filled perogies and shrimp-stuffed potstickers.
In the winter, Farm-to-Folk accesses west coast items through two organics suppliers to keep the flow of fresh produce coming to the East Kootenay. Embury is also part of a west-coast collective that buys seafood directly from fishermen so that each frozen package sold at Farm-to-Folk bears the photo, name and background of the person who caught it.
More than 250 food boxes now leave the Cranbrook store weekly containing everything from Borscht made in Rossland, to alpine cheese from Creston and elk pie created in Fairmont.
If you add to this list everything from fresh-picked peas, locally grown cherries and garden-fresh greens, it means Farm-to-Folk will be expanding again next spring, having leased an even larger premises to keep up with demand.
Embury says COVID-19 has created a huge boom in business. Sales jumped 600 percent since isolation began and communities from as far as Fernie, Sparwood and the Crowsnest Pass are now receiving food boxes by weekly subscription.
While Embury’s initial focus was on finding wholesome food for her family of six, it has now shifted to developing trusting relationships with area farmers and producers to ensure supplies of farm-fresh products.
“It takes effort to build relationships with farmers, but when you do, you realize how much they care about what they produce and how hard they work,” says Embury, adding that many farmers in the area have been able to increase their crop size because of the new market Farm-to-Folk has opened up for them.
“Every single day someone comes into the store and asks where something comes from and I can absolutely tell them,” says Embury, explaining that she often works 12-hour days driving directly to farms to pick up products when they are ready or ripe.
As for staff member Laura Young, she is in tears having received the best compliment she could get — a bouquet of flowers from a valued customer.
“It’s like home here because we know most people who come in by their first name,” says Embury. “Our customers realize that when you shop here, you’re not helping a CEO get another bonus, you’re helping local people and local farm families.”
The community also gets a huge boost thanks to Farm-to-Folk as thousands of dollars in food hampers have been given to the food bank, the local women’s shelter and local organizations.
For more information on Kootenay Farm-to-Folk visit kootenayfarmtofolk.com.
