Our Sourcing Philosophy

Taste the Difference

Because if it doesn't taste good, why bother? That's why we taste-test every single item (sometimes twice!) to be sure we're only offering the kind of stuff that'll knock your avocado socks off. Every time.

Support Local

We've got a soft spot for local, so our never-ending quest for good food always starts close to home before venturing outward. It helps to reduce food miles, our carbon footprint and puts more money into our local economy to boot.

Sustainability is Key

We're serious about sustainability (like, seriously serious). That's why we're all about farmers working to regenerate soil health and the overall ecosystem, and those reusable bins and glass bottle returns. It's also why we donate unsold food to our community partners and why we've optimized weekly delivery routes. We're not perfect, but we're working on it by trying to further reduce our reliance on single use packaging throughout our system (both internally and with our partners!).

As we work to keep improving, our order of preference for packaging is:

Avoid/Reduce
Reusable/Circular
Recyclable or Compostable (backyard ideally)
Waste

Real Food, Real Ingredients

Real food doesn't have ingredients, it is ingredients. You can rest easy knowing that we've done all the background checks to make sure that you'll never find any artificial colours, artificial flavours, artificial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated or artificial trans fats, bleached or bromated flours in anything that we offer.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Our market features products from 150+ small producers that we work really closely with, together as partners in this local food biz. We plan ahead with our farmers, making commitments on quantities and fair pricing so that everyone in our community is clear on who's growing what to reduce the collective risk.

As for our artisan partnerships, we love finding partnerships with like-minded folks who are locally owned, using sustainability initiatives and who love giving back to the community (bonus points for B Corps!).

Labour and Love

We're super passionate about fair wages for farmers (vs the lowest going rate) in addition to pre-planning with our local partners. We also support fair trade as much as possible too (especially for items like chocolate, coffee, bananas and coconuts). And being a certified B Corp, you can trust that we're always looking for ways to continue to use business as a force for good - through supporting local businesses, empowering our team, environmental conservation and giving back to our community.

Full Transparency

We're all about trust and honesty, which is why we like to be fully transparent with you and expect the same from our farmers, suppliers and producers. And if you've got a question, we've got a team of super nice customer service folks who will do their best to answer whatever's on your mind.

Members Matter

At Mama Earth, you're not just a customer, you're a family member too! We really appreciate you, and if there's a super cool item you saw at a farmer's market or there's a new up and coming food you read about somewhere, let us know! We'd love to try to make it happen for you.