Fact: Shop without intermediaries
Reko stands for substantial consumption and is a way of shopping for food that is produced locally without intermediaries. Consumers and producers in a locality come together and start a record-keeping where raw materials and products are sold directly from producer to consumer.
The farmer’s market is also a way for farmers to sell their goods directly to customers.
In Skåne there is Mylla, which is an association of producers who jointly sell to consumers. In the north, there is Noah in Umeå, which works in a similar way.
Source: Household association, Farmer’s own market, Mylla and Noah
Food now takes new routes to customers from growers and farmers. Interest in buying locally produced food directly from the producer has increased. Farmers organize their own channels, such as the Farmer’s Own Market, and many also sell, for example, meat in their own small unmanned farm shops.
In addition, there are so-called registrations all over the country, which means that the customer books goods online and then picks them up at a fixed time and place where the farmer leaves the food.
During the pandemic, more and more people started shopping for food via receipts, says Stina Dahlquist, a farmer in Höglund in Jämtland.
— The peak was during the covid pandemic, immediately when it was over it went down a little. But now I don’t experience any decline, she says.
Freshly harvested. Roger Elgnäs from Östersund collects rhubarb that his wife ordered from farmer Stina Dahlquist.
Her farm sells, among other things, meat and vegetables directly to customers in the local area via its record store.
— I sell everything I produce via reko.
She says that now, when food prices have soared, customers think they might as well buy the food directly from the farmer.
Small-scale and local
— The feedback I get from customers is that it is about as expensive to buy from me as to shop at Coop or Ica. Then they would rather buy from me, who is a small-scale producer. I don’t have to raise my prices as much as the chains.
She also believes that many people want to favor small-scale production and local companies.
— I am impressed by people. They have a tough time financially, yet they buy locally produced food.
A bunch of radishes just pulled from the ground. Stina Dahlquist from Långberget’s farm hands out locally produced goods via a counter at Stortorget in Östersund.
In Skåne there is Mylla, which has taken the idea of selling directly from producer to consumer one step further. Mylla is an organization that was formed by producers in 2019 to be able to sell their goods to consumers via a common website.
— So far, we are tiny. We expect to sell for SEK 25–27 million this year, but this could become a billion-dollar deal, says Jens Thulin, who is one of the founders.
He is a meat farmer himself, and tired of all the middlemen. Together with other producers of meat, poultry, fish, vegetables and bread, Mylla was created.
— We are around 120 producers now, but more are coming and we are growing. Last December we had 736 unique articles on the website, in April we had 1,000.
He says that so far this year, sales have increased by 230 percent.
— We have sold as much in five months as in the whole of last year.
The goods are ordered online and delivered to customers in Skåne above all, but also to a certain extent in the Stockholm and Gothenburg areas. A similar organization exists in the north, Noah in Umeå.
Jens Thulin says that Mylla wants to become an alternative for customers who want to buy food that is produced in Sweden.
Cuts some joints
Now, when the prices of food are soaring in the shops, he sees that both customers and producers benefit from trading with each other directly.
— You cut a few joints.
— If the price increases by two kroner in the store, perhaps the producer only needs to increase by one kroner. There will be better margins for us and lower prices for the consumer.
The prerequisite for food to find its way home to customers in new ways is, of course, online shopping.
— Being able to sell online is a bit wow… But we also want to inspire customers, and not be anonymous producers. At the food giants’ online store, it’s pretty boring.
He also thinks it is good to create alternatives to the big chains.
“The food giants get a lot of scolding now, but we don’t want to single anyone out.” Although it is unhealthy that a market with a turnover of one billion a day only has three players, says Jens Thulin.
Farmer Stina Dahlquist hands out pre-ordered rhubarb and radishes at Stortorget in Östersund.
Gustav Dellback is a former ICA trader, who has now moved on and instead runs a kind of distribution center for small, local food producers, which also helps small producers with digitization so that they can reach out.
He sells on to, among other things, pubs and small shops all over the country, so that the goods from, for example, the mustard manufacturer or the broth producer reach a larger market than the local one.
— We connect the small food producers with, for example, delicatessens. Producers are often small, and have difficulty reaching out.
Often they can only sell the goods very locally. But through his company they reach wider.
“You don’t have to enter Ica’s range to reach out,” he says.
Digitization
Now a lot is happening in the food sector, he says. But on a small scale, so far. Other routes from producers to consumers are opened up via digitization.
— I don’t think the big chains know how to deal with what’s happening now. They are engrossed in their own business.
He believes that customers will increasingly want to shop on the side of the chains in the future.
— Many people think that you can only buy food from the chains. But actually there is a lot more. It is growing now, says Gustav Dellback.