To our customers and locavore community: First and foremost, we want to thank you, sincerely, for being part of this journey.

Secondly, it’s with deep gratitude and sadness that we announce that after 17 years of reimagining the food system and working toward a more local, sustainable, and community-rooted model, On The Move Organics’ grocery service has officially closed.

Our Story

Here’s our origin story, and here’s a look back on some of what we’ve accomplished together. If you read these, or if you’ve been following along for some time, you know that our mission has always been motivated by a tenacious belief that an agroecological future is possible. We’ve worked towards a food system that is regional, resilient and rooted in community. With your help, we’ve created strong relationships with small-scale farmers, increased access to locally grown organic food, demonstrated the viability of bicycle delivery in London, Ontario, and helped spark the beginnings of a food sovereign community - one shaped by partnerships with all its participants (that includes you!).

In a world of big-box convenience and industrial food, it’s safe to say this work has never been easy, but it has always been meaningful. As On The Move evolved, we’ve explored many ways to move the needle: farmers’ markets, our market juice bar, The Root Cellar restaurant, creative composting experiments, cargo bike delivery, the Zero Waste Club, LOLA Bees environmental education, and so much more. And of course, at the heart of everything: our home delivery program. Throughout it all, we’ve prioritized ways to reintegrate waste, reduce our carbon footprint, and prioritize people and the planet in every business decision.

Over the years, we’ve encountered so many amazing people - coworkers, producers, customers, fellow food system innovators - many of whom have shared our values and helped shape this journey. Our On The Move crew always worked hard: they managed enormous volumes of data; communicated through multiple channels with our customers and supply chain; procured just the right balance of food for our farm pick up run; managed our warehouse receiving from many producers and suppliers; aggregated and arranged around 700 separate retail items and backstock; carefully selected and packed every item into every individual custom order; prepped, processed and packed all of the bulk and ready-made foods; organized, washed and sterilized all of the delivery bins, cooler bags, freezer packs and jars (soooo many jars!); maintained and repaired a lengthy list of equipment, and delivered orders through record heatwaves, sleet and snow without fail; and returned with delivery vehicles full of reusable packaging thus restarting the complex and labour intensive juggle of reverse logistics!…. This low-waste, minimized-carbon footprint, local food supply chain is a beautifully intentional choreography when you take a moment to consider it.

Closing Down

We are so grateful to our team, past and present, for their years of dedication and hard work. Without you, we never would have made it this far.

To our farm and producer colleagues and friends, thank you. Communicating the deeply misunderstood complexities of the small-scale family farm in Ontario has always been a driving force of our mission. We hope that one day, broader society beyond niche locavore communities will understand and appreciate the sophistication and hard work involved in your craft.

There are many reasons to bring On The Move’s retail journey to a close. If you read our reflections, you probably have a good sense of the challenges we’ve faced over the years, and the many barriers to a low-margin business model that prioritizes people and the environment. During the early days of the pandemic, our business grew by over 500 percent virtually overnight. We quickly scaled operations and invested in our infrastructure to meet this surge in demand. But our home delivery program has steadily declined over the past four years while costs have continued to rise. We can’t compete with the retail prices of the rapidly growing natural food sections of big-box grocery stores, and we’re not interested in using the detrimental social media tactics that drive small business sales these days (we have many observations on that, but that’s a topic for another time).

Most recently, trade issues have folks reaching, once again, for the local food light switch. We’ve been at this long enough to recognize the signals of impending grocery-market volatility on the horizon, which, at the extremes of each oscillation, leaves no room for ecological and social priorities within a fragile local food system.

At the root of it: the world looks very different now than when we began 17 years ago, and honestly, so do our lives. We have young kids at home now, and have found more family-focused ways to work towards our vision of a food-sovereign community.

We want to thank you, sincerely, for being part of this journey. Putting those reflections together really underlined the impact of what we’ve accomplished together, building up our local food system. It’s been profoundly rewarding to get to know so many of you, and to hear your reasons for seeking out and continuing to support On The Move. You’ve shaped this work alongside us, and you’ve been the fuel that’s kept us going for so long.

Speaking personally (this is Jeff and Ellie here, writing this) - the two of us met at the farmers’ market almost 15 years ago. The local food movement has been a thread through our lives together, from the early years of On The Move, through the Root Cellar era, and now into LOLA Bees and beyond. We are not done with local food work, not even close. Our experience gathered from so many years of experimentation on the frontlines of developing local sustainable food supply chains has given us an unbelievable education, readying us for a new chapter.

What's Next

So where do we go from here? On The Move Organics will continue running the Community Food Box Project with LIFE*SPIN, thanks to the generous support of the London Community Foundation, as well as the local food network On The Move has developed. Jeff has accepted the role of managing the Collective Action for Regenerative Agriculture Program (CAP), a highly innovative transdisciplinary action-research program designed to study the social conditions necessary to enhance resilience among small to medium-sized ecological farms in Middlesex County. Ellie is excited for a summer of natural beekeeping and pollinator workshops (join us!), and we have long-anticipated, exciting plans for LOLA Bees shaping up for the fall. And hey - stay on (or join) our mailing list too! We’ll send out periodic updates about what we’re up to and how you can keep supporting the local food movement.

From the early days, through the farmers’ markets, The Root Cellar, the home deliveries, the innumerable farm trips to pick up (and often help harvest) produce - what has really left its mark on us are the human connections we’ve built, rooted in this wild local food work we’ve been doing together.

Thank you for being on this journey with us.